Glossop Line -
Manchester-Hadfield & Glossop

I've been living in Manchester since I started University in 2019, so I was super excited to finally get started on this DLC as I'd noticed it in the plans when I joined DoveTail back in January 2023. Once I'd moved onto this route, I found that I was slightly ahead of schedule so was able to go into some fantastic depth when developing the detail sounds for this route aswell as developing some new tech that'll help improve our future routes going forward! 

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I started off by creating a route map and research document; marking down points of interest, researching each, and collating it all into a research document.

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I supervised Rivet Games in the use of my audio assets as they were building the route themselves and therefore I wasn't able to drag my work into the scene as they work from a separate repository server.

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Here are the cues I also made:

 

How about the detail sounds I developed?

• Industrial estate - Busy during the day, with foxes coming to roam at night. I also implemented some weather logic so that when it's raining, you can hear vehicles driving round in the wet, rain hitting the rooves of the estate. The foxes also only come out when it's also not raining.

• Cricket / lawn bowling club - I've grouped these together as I included them inside the same sound cue, providing options to the audio designer placing the sound into the route that allow them to customise the sound to fit the place it's in. In this case, I provided an option for whether to include the sound of a lawn bowls as I'd noticed there were a few cricket clubs on the route aswell as one that included a bowls club on the same ground. The cricket and bowls schedules flow into eachother, with bowls being played in the mornings and evenings, and cricket being played through the late-morning and into the late-afternoon. The options basically just enables / disables the bowls portion. There's even a snowball fight when it snows!

• Park - Carrying over from the cricket / bowls club, I made this even more customisable! There was a huge variety of parks on this route and so I decided to provide options for if there's a playground and if there's a pond. These options can be combined or used seperately depending on the park the sound's being placed on.

• Allotments - Digging, pruning and wheel barrows. But the most elaboate part was the logic behind the lawn mowing sounds! I developed some logic that makes use of the game's time of day, month & weather systems. Someone will start mowing the grass  as long as it's summer, between 1 & 3pm and dry outside. You hear them turn the mower on and run it until it rains or reaches 3pm. In which casem you'll hear them turn the lawn mower off.

• Quarry - Taking the logic from the allotment and applying it to control digger sounds. I used my research to implement the quarry's real-life working hours. I also added in a lunch break which also turns the digger off as well as at end the end of the working day. Similar to the lawn mower, they stop the digger in the rain for some reason I'm sure's valid, you can hear the rain hitting the mud aswell as people walking around in the mud.

• Golf course - A very simple one, they play golf during between 8am & 8pm (I originally set up a day of the week system that changed the schedule to match each day correctly but some days the club is open to 11pm and I really didn't think people would play golf at 11pm). I also added in a trigger to enable some small crowd claps during the tournament season advertised by the golf club. As you can imagine, they stop playing golf in the rain and wait until it's dry again.

• Siemens rail depot - A collection of machine noise and engineers working

• Warehouse Project - I produced a short piece of music by re-instrumentalising the TSW3 theme into an electronic track. For anyone not familiar, The Warehouse Project is a large venue / club next to Piccadilly train station.

• Secondary School - A school bell plays at 9:30, 12:30 & 15:30- As long as it's during the working week. 

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I also used some of my very own recordings in and around Manchester Piccadilly station to add that next level of authenticity. I re-used my bird recordings from my visit to Peak forest which brought even more life to the route!

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​I also produced a version of the TSW3 theme as an icecream van jingle that plays every now and then during the summer, around the more towny areas of the route.

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Since release, I've already been hearing some super positive stuff about my route audio! Really happy that people are noticing & appreciating my improvements. Thanks!