Nightjar Release news

Data sheet NJ-01 / Audio for Unity / Rev. 2026.11

Author sound in a browser. Ship it on an engine you own.

Nightjar is an audio engine for Unity and the studio that drives it. Build events on a timeline, hear them exactly as the game will play them, and ship them with no third-party runtime and no licence fee.

See the studio Read the data sheet

Pre-release Plays every sound in Tungsten Lands, a co-op horde shooter in development.

Fig. 1 / The event editor in the Caterpillar theme, drawn for this page.
37effect kernels, from gain to vocoder
0third-party runtimes in the shipped game
1text format, edited by designers and agents alike
20studio themes, each a single file
01

The studio

It does the whole job, in a browser.

Nightjar Studio is a browser app served by a small local host. It edits the same plain text files the game imports, so there is no second copy to keep in sync.

S-01

Events on a timeline

Tracks nest as containers. Clips, curves and effects share one time scale on every row, and loop regions release on the conditions you set.

S-02

Hear it as the game will

Preview renders through the engine itself. Drag a parameter while the event plays and the running render takes the new value.

S-03

Bind any control

Every knob opens the same Bind picker: a parameter, a curve or a random source, mapped by the same arithmetic the runtime uses.

S-04

A library that files itself

Drop sounds in with an optional note. Each one is filed with a conventional name, tags, notes and where it came from, and keeps its identity through every move.

S-05

Versions with provenance

A generated sound keeps the prompt it came from. Every generation stays in a history you can audition and go back to.

S-06

An assistant on every page

Choose a provider and a persona. The assistant works through the same actions you do, and nothing that costs money starts without your press.

S-07

Usages

A background scan of the Unity project shows which scenes, prefabs and scripts reference each event, and which events nothing uses.

S-08

Live game link

A running game, in play mode or a development build, links to the studio. Play an event in the game and watch the engine's live numbers.

02

The engine

A mix that holds together when the horde arrives.

Everything the game makes a sound with runs on one engine. It never stalls the frame, it does not thin out under load, and it does not give away its machinery at the seams.

Game code Lock-free queue Burst mixer Audio device
Mixer
Burst-compiled, over a fixed memory arena, fed by a lock-free command queue.
Frame time
Signal processing stays on the audio thread, away from the frame the player sees.
Seams
Loop points do not click, streamed clips hand over without a gap, and a stolen voice fades instead of cutting.
Code first
Hand it any AudioClip and a small builder makes a real event: buses, envelopes, playlists, loop regions and effect chains.
Snapshots
Drive bus gain and effect parameters on three interpolation curves.
Streaming
Long clips stream from exported artifacts. Residency is decided once, at export.
Diagnostics
An in-game overlay and live stats, compiled into development builds only.
Dependencies
Nothing outside Unity's own packages.
03

Acoustics

The room is part of the mix.

Nightjar Acoustics bakes the spaces a sound travels through, the way light baking works: place a volume, press bake, see what it found, listen, and go round again.

Floor plan: an organ inside a church is heard from the yard through the church door, not through the wall. CHURCH · STONE, LARGE ORGAN DOOR WINDOW YARD · OPEN, DRY LISTENER through the wall: duller, quieter
Fig. 2 / The organ reaches the yard through the door, still sounding like a church.
Found, not authored
Rooms, openings and probes are discovered by the bake. Hand-placed volumes and portals are an override for taste, not the workflow.
The path's own room
A sound carries the acoustics of the space it came out of, so an organ heard from the churchyard still sounds like a church.
Nothing switches
Several openings blend as the player walks. A step to the side never turns anything on or off.
Never silent
Behind a wall a sound is duller, quieter and bent around its path. Something loud enough leaks through, bass first.
04

The format

One file, two authors.

An event is a plain text file. A designer shapes it in the studio, an agent edits the same file, and there is no second representation to drift out of date.

  • The event authors its content and behaviour. Whether it loops is the caller's decision.
  • The canonical writer makes every round trip byte-identical, so a change is a small diff.
  • Tags and notes live beside the event, keyed by the file's identity, so a rename never strands them.
  • A reader refuses any version it does not know rather than guessing.

Megaphone.audioeventv5

{
  "version": 5,
  "bus": "Effects",
  "parameters": [
    { "name": "drive", "default": 0.5 }
  ],
  "bindings": [{
    "target": { "track": 0, "effect": 0, "param": "drive" },
    "source": { "type": "parameter", "name": "drive" },
    "from": 0.0, "to": 1.0
  }],
  "track": {
    "effects": [{
      "type": "megaphone", "hornHz": 1200.0,
      "drive": 0.5, "squeal": 0.3, "mix": 1.0
    }],
    "tracks": [{
      "name": "Shout",
      "instruments": [{
        "type": "single", "start": 0.0, "length": 4.15,
        "clip": { "name": "AUD_Ref_Voice_Shout90_Loop" }
      }]
    }]
  }
}
Fig. 3 / A shipped demo event, shortened.
05

Effects

Thirty-seven effects, live while you listen.

Every effect is a kernel inside the engine, the same one the game runs. Change it while the event plays and you hear the change; bind it to game state, a curve or a random source.

Level and dynamics

GainCompressorLimiterGateTransient shaperNormalize

Filter and EQ

Low passHigh passParametric EQMultiband EQThree-band EQBass boostEnvelope filterComb

Time and space

ReverbEchoChannel delayStereo widthChannel mix

Modulation and pitch

ChorusFlangerPhaserTremoloRing modulatorPitch shiftHarmonizerFormant shiftVocoder

Character

DistortionSaturatorBit crusherTapeRadioMegaphoneUnderwaterGlitchGenerator

06

Themes

Twenty looks. Each one is a file.

A theme sets more than colour: the frame, the rules, the knobs, the faders and the playhead. Every shipped theme is measured for legibility over everything it draws, and a theme file of your own loads beside them.

07

Architecture

Unity optional, in both directions.

The studio runs on its own host, with or without an editor open. The game runs on exported artifacts and the engine, with no authoring process anywhere. Between them sits one explicit export, committed with the project.

Authoring

Nightjar Studio

  • Browser app
  • Standalone host
  • Desktop window

Tracked export

Audio artifacts, committed

Development link

Play in game, live diagnostics

Shipping

Your game

  • Nightjar engine
  • Baked acoustics
  • No authoring process

Release

A public release is being prepared.

Nightjar is in private development inside Tungsten Lands. The engine, the studio and the acoustics are being readied for release as Unity packages.

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