echolevel

Awesome that @unrealengine.bsky.social lets you do this, but BOY do you learn about threading the hard way. Only realtime audio lets you shoot yourself in the foot 48000 times per second

And while in the past I had a janky dance with a SynthComponent wrapping other SynthComponents and instancing an entire submix architecture on the fly, now *everything* is done in one SC where I can measure DSP work properly and segment the audio callback for sample-accurate timing

Well...slightly higher CPU usage in Unreal Editor. But that includes send effects (reverb, delay, chorus); group buss effects (anything, in any order - just a few EQs and compressors for now); master chain (compressor and limiter). The group buss compressors can be sidechained from other busses.

I wrote a combined sample reverse & pitchslide up/down command for my #UnrealEngine runtime tracker! (also optimised everything to hell - this tune inc DSP FX uses ~2% of my CPU budget and a ~500kb memory footprint - but who cares, jungle reeewind spinback is what I'm excited about) #gameaudio

He was about to write Marillion and then said to himself "but hang on, I'm one rung above those pub bore clichés" and wrote Dave Greenslade instead. "Phew, now she'll know I'm Roger Dean-adjacent but not *too* on the nose"

Cheers! And no worries, same here 😅

Another legendary demoscener gone too soon: my pal StingRay of Scoopex. Everyone in the scene has a "StingRay fixed my shitty code" story, me included; my fondest party memories are of hanging out, hearing about his granny smuggling C64s into East Berlin, chatting industrial music & VW Golfs. RIP

Wtf

With Metron, you _can_ send it note events directly from gameplay, specifying instrument and velocity etc, and also a desired quantise boundary; it'll add those to a queue and trigger them at the correct time (or the next equivalent time). But I don't do that in this game.

When I say the mix system handles those gameplay events, I mean that those notes just exist perpetually in the tracker song, but they're ignored until a mix state change enables the note event. This allows them to be in musical sync, but silent without using any resources.

Oh god bluesky, what have you done to my audio...again...

But the sample instrument will cheerfully do long loops as well, so I do sometimes play big rendered pad beds or looping, precisely-timed stem chunks in the conventional way! A hybrid approach is sometimes best.

Part of the point of Metron is that for the most part, notes rather than looping stem sections are triggered in realtime on a musical clock. Ideally drums are individual instruments, not rendered loops, so they can be selectively muted, transposed, velo-adjusted or FX processed.

The mix system handles things like spot layer volumes and camera pulls (ie "play nice vocal layers to draw attention to some pretty thing"); enemy suspicion (proximity bass throbs, suspicion 'kettle' riser synth, cooldown shakers); some sidechain plumbing to keep VO clean, and the mastering chain

A glimpse of my composing & mixing workflow in The Siege and The Sandfox. I tend to work at runtime with Metron Tracker & my mix system as #DearImGui overlays. I can override gameplay mix events or test in place, tweak synth/sample instruments, adjust quantised sync offsets #UnrealEngine #gameaudio

Save 10% on The Siege and the Sandfox on Steam A 2D stealth Metroidvania with parkour platforming. Explore the majestic palace and ancient prisons of a kingdom under siege. Don the mantle of the legendary Sandfox as you venture into the ruins belo...

More than a decade ago I made a little logo for a game, now it’s finally out!!! Be free little sandfox!!!! 🥹💖

store.steampowered.com/app/653060/T...

Thanks for the boost, Mike - hope you enjoy it! And yeah, a...journey...!

And we're live! £10.79 introductory price, a wee bit more in dollaridoos and eurotokens

I'll have plenty to say about the (looong) dev process in coming days/months if anyone wants to hear

But mostly I'll rave about how good UE is for audio, and particularly thank @minuskelvin.bsky.social & @dannthr.bsky.social at Epic for their help over the years; and @chriszuko.bsky.social for his!

Some things of note:
* We made it in @unrealengine.bsky.social using @heavybullets.bsky.social's awesome PaperZD plugin and my own Metron tracker synth plugin!
* Narrator VO by the amazing @ameliatyler.bsky.social, who you'll know from #BaldursGate3!
* Excellent QA team from our pubs, Plaion!

Our game is finally released today!
The Siege and The Sandfox is a 2D #metroidvania with gorgeous pixelart; stealth-based gameplay; and lots of dynamic music and game audio by meee.

4pm GMT on Steam, Epic & GoG for PC
store.steampowered.com/app/653060/T...

#indiedev #gameaudio #unrealengine

YouTube video by Cardboard Sword The Siege and the Sandfox | Release Date Trailer

🚨 NEW GAME ALERT!🚨

Get ready to meet a very different Narrator...

Yes, I'll be your guide through a mysterious tale of adventure and exploration... The Siege and the Sandfox!

I can't wait for you to experience just how beautiful this game is.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjhl...

More aggressive optimisations for my #UnrealEngine FM synth, which now has this beast of a LUT-based waveform blending LFO that can be cheaply mapped to per-operator params. It's 'only' 4-op, but all ops have feedback, multiple waveforms and can optionally use phase distortion

borp clang fart plarp

Wrote a custom LFO for my #UnrealEngine FM/phase distortion hybrid synth. It precalcs lookup tables to keep it cheap, and can blend two waveforms. This is triangle vs interpolated noise and looks nice and hairy on the scope. It’s just very slightly modulating the pitch of one operator. #gameaudio

The FM Synth in my #UnrealEngine tracker DAW plugin hasn't had much love for a while, so I added a phase distortion synthesis option to each FM operator. Sort of a hybrid of Yamaha-style FM via PM and Casio-style PD via...trial and error. Sounds ok! Just needs some modulation hookups.

#gameaudio

Gonna tell my kids this was a tent at Fyre Festival

Of course if you want HIGH quality effects for your NTS-3 Kaoss Pad, please check out bsky.app/profile/sine... who have some amazing ones at very reasonable prices!

I only got my NTS-3 the other day and haven't played with it much yet, but I've got my eye on www.sinevibes.com/korgalbedo/ and Hollow

Oh, forgot the link: github.com/echolevel/lo...

Source plus a download of the unit.

YouTube video by Echolevel Echolevel: Portable Lofi Moments 2017-2018 [Yamaha SU10]

There's a Docker env that's actually quite slick once you get it running, but there's no debug logging and deployment is a pain if the CLI tool doesn't work for you... You have to use Korg's Kontrol Editor and it remains terrible. Anyway, here's me enjoying my SU10:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=muO-...

I wrote this effect for the NTS-3 Kaoss Pad using Korg’s open source Logue SDK. Cool, you’re thinking, they made it easy so everyone can get involved? No, of course they made it a total pain in the arse! But if you know some C and don't mind faffing about with weird toolchains it's fun.