Patches

A patch is a named, procedurally-generated sound. It is the unit of work in sndlab. You write a patch by calling the patch function with:

• A name — used for triggering and for cross-references between patches in the same project.
• A role — either "one_shot" (plays once, dies) or "ambient" (loops continuously until stopped). See Roles.
• A body — a Rhai closure that returns a signal expression.

patch("name", "one_shot", || {
    sine(440.0, 1.0)
});

The closure runs once at evaluation time. Whatever it returns becomes the signal graph that’s rendered to a buffer when the patch is played. Patches are deterministic — same script, same buffer — which is what makes them safe to bake into a game build.

What’s in a body

Rhai is a real scripting language with variables, conditionals, loops and arithmetic. The body of a patch is just code; you can compute parameters, sweep frequencies in a for loop, decide envelope shapes based on flags. The DSL primitives (sine, noise, env, …) are the operators the body uses to describe the sound; everything else around them is ordinary scripting.

Naming

Patch names are global within a project. Two patches with the same name collide; the second one wins, with a warning in the log. Conventional shape:

• Snake case: sonar_ping, hull_creak, merchant_screw.
• Domain-grouped: ui_click, weapon_torpedo_launch, ambient_ocean.
• Avoid generic names like test or default — the more patches you add to a project, the more ambiguous the log gets.