How to replace a bell?

[gisa]

Hi All,


I posted this before the forum crash but I know a lot more about trainz now than I did then and I'm hoping I'll get a good answer that I can understand. What I want to ask is if there is a way that I could replace the bell for a particular engine with another one? I can't seem to find a bell tag in the config.txt file and I was wondering if there is a tag I'm missing. I have a feeling it's linked with the enginesound or something, but any help would be appreciated!

:wave:

Gisa ^^

 

[ex-railwayman]

Hello gisa, when you say a bell, do you mean a bell as in horn or whistle, sound, cos to change anything like locomotive assets is quite easy, just open the config.txt and search for hornsound and replace the kuid number shown, which may be the Auran built-in version, with one that you like, then "save and close" and if you have TRS2006 you have to "commit" it in CMP. Hope that answers your query, if not, then please expand your question and I'll try and help you, although I don't use TRS2004 very much these days, so I may need a bit of time to remember what to do in TO. :hehe:


Cheerz. ex-railwayman.

 

[gisa]

The Bell itself

Hi ex-railwayman,


Thanks for the reply! What I mean is the actual bell (the bell sound when you press the B key). The horns I know how to replace.

You see, I notice some bells are too quick or too slow for my taste, or others have an irritating click as the sound loops, or doesn't sound prototypical. I found a bell that sounded great (when I first heard it it brought back a flood of memories!) and I want to replace all the bell sounds I don't like with the one that I do. The problem is, I don't think an actual *bell* tag exists (although I wish that one did so we could easily swap them). I suspect it's a part of the enginespec or engineconfig sp? tag so I was wondering what I would have to do to change the bell sound.

Hopefully, this seems more clear now!

:wave:

Gisa ^^

 

[ex-railwayman]

Hi gisa, I do apologise, yes it makes more sense now to me, as clear as a bell one would say :hehe: , unfortunately though, I cannot help you as I also have no idea if the bell sound is attached to the enginesound config.txt or something else. I generally only drive diesel or electric locomotives, have you looked at the config.txts for the bells you have got, and maybe the locomotives which have bells attached to them to see if there is anything that gives you a clue. I used to think that the bell was attached to the hornsound as I only press the H key, very rarely the B key, as I thought this was sometimes the same sound, and I don't drive many Steam Loco's, so I'm unsure if there is any difference there or not. Just look at the config.txts and any other information you can get from the DLS, is all I can suggest my friend, sorry...

Cheerz. ex-railwayman.

 

[beamcold]

Dear Gisa,
if you open the file hornsound there is contained
horn.wav
and idle.wav
horn.wav is the horn
Idle.wav is the bell and can be replaced.

beamcold

 

[hoboron]

hornz

Hi ex-railwayman,


Thanks for the reply! What I mean is the actual bell (the bell sound when you press the B key). The horns I know how to replace.

You see, I notice some bells are too quick or too slow for my taste, or others have an irritating click as the sound loops, or doesn't sound prototypical. I found a bell that sounded great (when I first heard it it brought back a flood of memories!) and I want to replace all the bell sounds I don't like with the one that I do. The problem is, I don't think an actual *bell* tag exists (although I wish that one did so we could easily swap them). I suspect it's a part of the enginespec or engineconfig sp? tag so I was wondering what I would have to do to change the bell sound.

Hopefully, this seems more clear now!

:wave:

Gisa ^^

When you do try to replace the sound (idle.wav) with your own the file HAS to be the lowest rate,, or will not work, (found this out the hard way)

 

[gisa]

When you do try to replace the sound (idle.wav) with your own the file HAS to be the lowest rate,, or will not work, (found this out the hard way)

Hi Ron,


What do you mean by lowest rate? Do you mean the encoding? I'm just swapping one bell sound for another...is it going to be a problem?

:wave:

Gisa ^^

 

[gisa]

Yay!

I did it!


It took me about 20 minutes and some heavy heavy thinking (at 4:00 am for me) but I did it. Man, what a pain this was!!! It was hard because the horn and bell are both linked together in a single file which makes things difficult to say the least! For others interested in changing a bell or a horn, I will explain what you need to do:

*Note that this is for TRS04 and that I used Trainz Objects*

1) Find an engine with the bell sound you like. We'll call this engine AA. Try to find an engine with the best bell and a lousy horn. Why? It will make sense later on. This is important because you'll be overwriting the old horn and you don't want to lose a great sounding horn if it's possible. I will reiterate the importance of this: find a custom bell you like but on an engine with a horn that doesn't tickle your fancy.
2) Find any engine with a horn sound you really like. We'll call this engine BB
3) For me, I found that Engine AA's hornsound file had a great bell, but had a horn I didn't like. I found that Engine BB had a great horn, but not a great bell. Can you see the pattern here? So we'll take the best from one and overwrite it on top of the other. It's a matter of choice, but I decided to replace Engine AA's config as a horn has more priority to me as compared to a bell, but you could do this the other way if you wanted to. I wrote these instructions for Engine AA's hornsound config, so if you are doing the reverse, keep that in mind.
4) Note that if you do this you will obviously lose the horn sound for not only that loco, but for all locos that reference that hornsound kuid. If it's a horn sound you really don't like, it's not a big loss at all (two birds with one stone if you'd like )
5) - also before I go any further, note that tinkering with this stuff is a bit tricky so take your time when doing this. Further, you wont be able to redistribute these locos in your layouts or the DLS because many authors will not allow you to release these engines out, as different people made different components and have their own copyrights. You could email both authors, explain the situation perhaps and get their permission, but yeah, keep this in mind as we all love high quality freeware and an angry content creator probably wont make much freeware for long. :'(
6) So then I went into the Trainz Objects rolling stock parts tab. I found the engine BB's custom hornsound with the great horn, and copied the 3 horn .wav's (not the idle of course as that's the bell) - it would also be wise prior to this point, to backup Engine AA's custom hornsound waves as a safety precaution.
7) Then I found Engine AA's custom hornsound with the great bell, and pasted Engine BB's 3 horn wav's, essentially giving that loco (and any other that references it) a great horn and great bell.
8) Then if you want, you can find all the engines with the bell sounds or horn sounds you don't like, and just change the hornsound tag in it's config to the newly modified Engine AA's hornsound kuid.
9) Voila! I tested it tonight and it seems to work. ENJOY!
10) Remember: do not redistribute these modified locos as per their EULA unless of course, you have the author's permission.

Anyone who has questions about how to do this, just send me a PM or post here.

Thanks everyone for your help!

:wave:

Gisa ^^