echolevel
@echolevel.co.uk
Brendan O'Callaghan Ratliff - Audio Director/Coder, Sound Designer & Composer at Cardboard Sword Games • Film Sound • BBC radio drama • Irish traditional music • chiptune/demoscene stuff as Syphus^UpRough
https://echolevel.co.uk
https://echolevel.co.uk
Compelled to share the name of this actual person, Scan Tester - an English folk musician of the previous century, sadly born too early to pioneer late '80s EBM/industrial goth music. Scan was short for his childhood nickname "Scantelope". Brother was Trayton Tester. Paging @misterabk.bsky.social
December 17, 2025 at 1:35 PM
Compelled to share the name of this actual person, Scan Tester - an English folk musician of the previous century, sadly born too early to pioneer late '80s EBM/industrial goth music. Scan was short for his childhood nickname "Scantelope". Brother was Trayton Tester. Paging @misterabk.bsky.social
The ostentatiously dot-matrixed #DeathInSpace character sheet wallets have reached their final form. And I wish I’d used a sponge for the gummed paper tapes instead of licking them. #ttrpg
December 15, 2025 at 7:43 PM
The ostentatiously dot-matrixed #DeathInSpace character sheet wallets have reached their final form. And I wish I’d used a sponge for the gummed paper tapes instead of licking them. #ttrpg
Now that our game's out, I can show off Metron Tracker running on Quest (ARM) in #UnrealEngine 5! Late in dev I whipped up a pattern/VU-meter display in UMG as a backdrop for the intro, so you can see the sample & synth notes being played in realtime. CPU usage is pretty minimal
#gameaudio #indiedev
#gameaudio #indiedev
December 14, 2025 at 3:46 PM
Now that our game's out, I can show off Metron Tracker running on Quest (ARM) in #UnrealEngine 5! Late in dev I whipped up a pattern/VU-meter display in UMG as a backdrop for the intro, so you can see the sample & synth notes being played in realtime. CPU usage is pretty minimal
#gameaudio #indiedev
#gameaudio #indiedev
Vaguely retrofuturistic document wallets and character sheets for #DeathInSpace #TTRPG. The easiest way to achieve it was to use appropriately obsolete stuff that doesn’t quite line things up right. I had to rewrite a 1989 printer driver for Amiga to get the correct(ish) line height. Worth it…
December 13, 2025 at 5:17 PM
Vaguely retrofuturistic document wallets and character sheets for #DeathInSpace #TTRPG. The easiest way to achieve it was to use appropriately obsolete stuff that doesn’t quite line things up right. I had to rewrite a 1989 printer driver for Amiga to get the correct(ish) line height. Worth it…
Printing off some more #DeathInSpace character sheets on the printer that I keep maintained exclusively for this purpose
#ttrpg
#ttrpg
December 10, 2025 at 11:27 PM
Printing off some more #DeathInSpace character sheets on the printer that I keep maintained exclusively for this purpose
#ttrpg
#ttrpg
Never flung money at anything so fast. Absynth 6! And it's backwards compatible with 20 years' worth of my nonsense! Thanks for the heads-up, @pkirn.bsky.social
Wish it could bulk import said nonsense though. Also some knobs are vertical mouse drag while others are horizontal 🙃Stay weird, Absynth
Wish it could bulk import said nonsense though. Also some knobs are vertical mouse drag while others are horizontal 🙃Stay weird, Absynth
December 9, 2025 at 5:12 PM
Never flung money at anything so fast. Absynth 6! And it's backwards compatible with 20 years' worth of my nonsense! Thanks for the heads-up, @pkirn.bsky.social
Wish it could bulk import said nonsense though. Also some knobs are vertical mouse drag while others are horizontal 🙃Stay weird, Absynth
Wish it could bulk import said nonsense though. Also some knobs are vertical mouse drag while others are horizontal 🙃Stay weird, Absynth
Finally I'm allowed to answer the question "why DID you write a sample/synth tracker in #UnrealEngine and optimise it for ARM?"
A: so I could beat-sync everything to everything else in our 90s parcel courier training sim VR game for Quest, out next week!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_eg... #gameaudio
A: so I could beat-sync everything to everything else in our 90s parcel courier training sim VR game for Quest, out next week!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_eg... #gameaudio
December 6, 2025 at 2:52 AM
Finally I'm allowed to answer the question "why DID you write a sample/synth tracker in #UnrealEngine and optimise it for ARM?"
A: so I could beat-sync everything to everything else in our 90s parcel courier training sim VR game for Quest, out next week!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_eg... #gameaudio
A: so I could beat-sync everything to everything else in our 90s parcel courier training sim VR game for Quest, out next week!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_eg... #gameaudio
My actual day job (one of them, anyway) is to compose 90s atmospheric drum and bass, in the custom tracker wot I wrote, for a video game. The game responds to the music data and vice versa. In 1994 I hoped I’d get a job doing this on the Amiga when I grew up - close enough.
#gameaudio #demoscene
#gameaudio #demoscene
September 19, 2025 at 2:19 PM
My actual day job (one of them, anyway) is to compose 90s atmospheric drum and bass, in the custom tracker wot I wrote, for a video game. The game responds to the music data and vice versa. In 1994 I hoped I’d get a job doing this on the Amiga when I grew up - close enough.
#gameaudio #demoscene
#gameaudio #demoscene
Metron Tracker standalone is a feature-complete 2.4MB exe! This example song is 2.6MB on disk and its memory footprint is 3.7MB. Playback averages 2% of audio CPU budget.
That leaves me ~4GB and 98% CPU to spend on ambient fart emitters with convolution verb
#UnrealEngine #middleware #gameaudio
That leaves me ~4GB and 98% CPU to spend on ambient fart emitters with convolution verb
#UnrealEngine #middleware #gameaudio
September 8, 2025 at 2:12 AM
Metron Tracker standalone is a feature-complete 2.4MB exe! This example song is 2.6MB on disk and its memory footprint is 3.7MB. Playback averages 2% of audio CPU budget.
That leaves me ~4GB and 98% CPU to spend on ambient fart emitters with convolution verb
#UnrealEngine #middleware #gameaudio
That leaves me ~4GB and 98% CPU to spend on ambient fart emitters with convolution verb
#UnrealEngine #middleware #gameaudio
Wrote a new sample loader for Metron standalone so all the oldskool tracker commands are back! No DSP effects here, just sample manipulation - very cheap on CPU. Multisample instruments at diff octaves played randomly, but all share 1 buffer in mem.
#gameaudio #gamedev #unrealengine #middleware
#gameaudio #gamedev #unrealengine #middleware
September 6, 2025 at 6:59 PM
Wrote a new sample loader for Metron standalone so all the oldskool tracker commands are back! No DSP effects here, just sample manipulation - very cheap on CPU. Multisample instruments at diff octaves played randomly, but all share 1 buffer in mem.
#gameaudio #gamedev #unrealengine #middleware
#gameaudio #gamedev #unrealengine #middleware
I rewrote my #unrealengine tracker in raw C++ so it’s a 3.5 megabyte exe instead of a 35GB engine/project. This is a core player engine with a Win32 wrapper and a UE plugin wrapper. Testing with my hybrid FM/phase distortion synth and waveform blending LFO, and my cheesy-but-cheap reverb algo
September 1, 2025 at 7:00 PM
I rewrote my #unrealengine tracker in raw C++ so it’s a 3.5 megabyte exe instead of a 35GB engine/project. This is a core player engine with a Win32 wrapper and a UE plugin wrapper. Testing with my hybrid FM/phase distortion synth and waveform blending LFO, and my cheesy-but-cheap reverb algo
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
July 15, 2025 at 6:51 PM
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
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
May 26, 2025 at 1:00 PM
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
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
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
May 20, 2025 at 9:11 AM
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
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
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
borp clang fart plarp
May 12, 2025 at 1:03 PM
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
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
April 28, 2025 at 7:50 PM
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
#gameaudio
April 26, 2025 at 6:35 PM
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
#gameaudio
Gonna tell my kids this was a tent at Fyre Festival
April 14, 2025 at 3:50 PM
Gonna tell my kids this was a tent at Fyre Festival
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.
April 6, 2025 at 5:09 PM
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.
I added an allpass filter to my #UnrealEngine Karplus-Strong synth with a random coefficient per note. It's everything I hoped for and more.
#gameaudio
#gameaudio
March 22, 2025 at 4:08 PM
I added an allpass filter to my #UnrealEngine Karplus-Strong synth with a random coefficient per note. It's everything I hoped for and more.
#gameaudio
#gameaudio
Genuinely forgot I wrote this hardware->virtual MIDI routing app over Christmas, because it's just been chugging along in the system tray, merging and filtering 3 hw controllers into one multiclient loopMIDI port that I can use in #Reaper and #UnrealEngine simultaneously
github.com/echolevel/Gl...
github.com/echolevel/Gl...
March 15, 2025 at 2:39 PM
Genuinely forgot I wrote this hardware->virtual MIDI routing app over Christmas, because it's just been chugging along in the system tray, merging and filtering 3 hw controllers into one multiclient loopMIDI port that I can use in #Reaper and #UnrealEngine simultaneously
github.com/echolevel/Gl...
github.com/echolevel/Gl...
Jeeves is brought the gentlemens' gentlemen's book of gentlemens' indiscretions after dinner at the Junior Ganymede club by - presumably - a gentleman's gentleman's gentleman
March 4, 2025 at 4:11 PM
Jeeves is brought the gentlemens' gentlemen's book of gentlemens' indiscretions after dinner at the Junior Ganymede club by - presumably - a gentleman's gentleman's gentleman
I wrote a #Reaper script that explodes multichannel BWF items from my Sound Devices 633 to child tracks while preserving the metadata (it's discarded by default), muting the source, and appending item names with track names and circled state from SD's iXML tags. Niche but ninja. #locationsound
February 4, 2025 at 1:47 PM
I wrote a #Reaper script that explodes multichannel BWF items from my Sound Devices 633 to child tracks while preserving the metadata (it's discarded by default), muting the source, and appending item names with track names and circled state from SD's iXML tags. Niche but ninja. #locationsound
Absolutely love doing audio on skate videos. I've always considered them one of the most sublime forms of vibe since falling in love with those hypnotic city trip sections in late 90s vids. My body's now too derelict and unfit for human habitation to be out skating in it, but I can enjoy vicariously
January 25, 2025 at 1:41 PM
Absolutely love doing audio on skate videos. I've always considered them one of the most sublime forms of vibe since falling in love with those hypnotic city trip sections in late 90s vids. My body's now too derelict and unfit for human habitation to be out skating in it, but I can enjoy vicariously
