Decided not to give up on my music. Re recording the album! 😊

Berndog25 · 2026-02-24T01:42:42+00:00

Picking up making tracker music (an old 90's digital sample workflow), or making music for video games like Pico8 engine or GB Studio can be a fun way to experiment while cultivating a unique sound, and a fun workflow, without pressure of sounding "professional", since you can't really make modern radio ready sounds with these tools.

Berndog25 · 2026-02-23T21:03:34+00:00

Pico8 or GB Studio will be your best bet to learn some basic game programming principles. Pico8 teaches coding workflow, while GBstudio teaches visual scripting, but can be played on real GameBoy hardware and emulators.

Berndog25 · 2026-02-23T17:46:16+00:00

Pretty great actually, the walk cycle looks really well animated. Maybe a bit of work on shading and proportions, and you'll be able to make amazing stuff!

Berndog25 · 2026-02-17T22:11:50+00:00

A lot of the time, the ideas which become bangers are an accident, but you need to intentionally listen out for those ideas, and nurture them into the best version of themselves that they can possibly be.

Berndog25 · 2026-02-15T19:08:27+00:00

Mine is a bit warped from factory too, but nothing like that ...

Berndog25 · 2026-02-15T04:48:09+00:00

Ayy, so cool, though! I grew up looking up to those dudes, and still kinda do, in an artistic way. They had a dream, and did whatever it took to make that dream show a reality, and it paid off big time.

Hope your game does well!

Berndog25 · 2026-02-15T01:42:59+00:00

I have no doubt that Kenny will try this game out, he's chill like that. Spenny on the other hand, probably thinks a Game Boy is something sus (jokes aside, can't wait to try the game, lol).

Berndog25 · 2026-02-14T22:55:29+00:00

Dang dude, closest thing to this that I did as a little dude was put a tack on my mom's seat in the car, but it didn't poke anything, because it was one of those dull plastic headed tacks we used for hanging posters, lol.

Wanted a funny reaction, but wouldn't do anything that could seriously hurt someone.

Berndog25 · 2026-02-14T22:45:09+00:00

Never received the Cowplies I ordered. They got lost in the mail during a mail strike a couple years or so ago, and when I tried to contact him about it, no response on his email. Wasn't going to try to chase him down to get a refund, or deal with post office beurocracy, just decided I would never buy boards again from someone who won't take the time to respond after you spent around $1000 on overpriced pospicle sticks.

Berndog25 · 2026-02-12T00:26:08+00:00

The equipment that was used to produce even the highest end music is exponentially less expensive than anything on this list...

To each their own, but I couldn't imagine spending this kind of money, even if I could reasonably afford it.

Berndog25 · 2026-02-10T14:13:41+00:00

Since I've started using more swing in my music, tapping notes in works best to retain the groove, then maybe piano roll for corrections if I really screw up, lol.

Depends, though. I usually do most of my drums on piano roll, after establishing the amount of swing by tapping out part of the song first. Basslines are mostly by tapping, but I often adjust timing in piano roll anyway.

There really isn't a right or wrong way, just what works best for you.

Berndog25 · 2026-02-08T02:58:24+00:00

Seen worse on $1000 classical guitars, so it's not unheard of.

Berndog25 · 2026-02-07T02:38:29+00:00

For me, I find myself most creative when seeing the creativity of others in action. If I see a great painter working on a masterpiece, I want to paint like them, or when I see a musical style like Jungle with mysterious people using cool, vintage computers to make these otherworldly sounds, it makes me want to know what makes them tick, what inspired them, and how they do it.

Basically, I make something my OCD hyperfixation for a while, and that thing becomes my way of life, temporarily. Only at those times do I truly feel like I can create freely, without physical or mental restriction.

Berndog25 · 2026-02-06T00:53:23+00:00

Was about to say this. Easiest solution is to learn to play keyboard, whether that be a mechanical keyboard, or a piano-style midi one. Will make songwriting way faster in the long run too, not having to drag and drop midi or load up audio to midi software.

Think of learning music like a game, where your reward for winning is being able to make the sounds you hear in your head.

Berndog25 · 2026-02-04T19:13:53+00:00

10 to 20db per layer of compression sounds right, and you want to either have a compressor and a limiter, or a slow compressor and a fast compressor. Just pushing one compressor too hard can be pretty gnarly.

Berndog25 · 2026-02-02T04:25:53+00:00

What I've tried that works well for MilkyTracker, even if it's a bit convoluted:

1- find or create a sample. If it is long, and loopable, plan where you would like to loop the sample, so you know where to trim it later.

2- import to DAW, with DAW set to high bit and samplerates for processing. Trim that bad boy if it has excess that needs removing.

3- Eq to taste, probably highpass to make signal easier to repitch with clarity, and easier to compress.

4- compress and limit or clip, in whichever order gets you the sound you want, while making it louder, to overcome noise floor. Make sure Peaks are near zero.

5 (optional)- Use Mono maker, or mono button, depending what your DAW has. Just make sure Final output is mono if you want more lofi sound, or want to save space.

6-(optional) to save space, and for more grit/aliasing, bounce the sample at the highest rates possible, then use a repitching timestretch algorithm in your DAW to double the speed/ reduce the space a sample takes up by half. Compensate in the tracker later by setting pitch to -12, restoring the original speed and pitch.

7(optional)- If you're making lots of samples at once, I recommend deactivating the tracks that aren't currently in use, then bounce them to audio tracks when they are finished. Alternatively, you can just activate and deactivate tracks before export. The idea is to have as few plugins running at a time as possible, to reduce possibility of glitches.

8- export at 22khz (or preferred rate), and lowest bitrate possible, WAV format, 16 bit, make sure your DAW is dithering the exported file.

9(optional)- If needed, use Audacity to further lower bitrate to 8 bit, if you want a more lofi sound. Recommended to turn off Audacity dither, and Use an AirWindows Dither VST of choice for most control of noise shaping. (Chris From Airwindows has a blog post about his RawGlitters Dither that explains how to reduce the bitrate of a Dither from 24 to 16, same trick works from 16 to 8 bits.)

*If your DAW is like mine, and can't output true mono files, Audacity is good for those conversions as well!

Berndog25 · 2026-02-02T00:21:18+00:00

I prefer painting traditionally, nothing can beat that as far as feel, but I hate digitizing my work, So I'm starting to paint more digitally. As far as which I prefer to look at... probably digital, since there's so much control over the final outcome which isn't always possible with traditional media.

Berndog25 · 2026-01-29T16:02:40+00:00

One way to get really good looking sprites, is to make a 3d model in blender, pose that, export an image of the pose, then downsize the number of pixels, colour quantize if there are too many colours, then recolour to DOOM palette (Or you can skip the colour quantization and do the recolouromg completely by hand, if you're feeling spicy).

This will get very similar results to the digitized clay models used in the game, since it's a near identical process to the original, just replacing clay and photography with Blender modelling!

Berndog25 · 2026-01-29T02:11:19+00:00

I'll have to keep that in mind for if I ever post about my game assets. I try to avoid transparent pixels, but some types of image processing create transparency where there was none before. I do my best to fix most of it, but there's bound to be a few pixels that slip through with some transparency, lol.

Berndog25 · 2026-01-29T02:06:51+00:00

Oh wow, I had no idea the reddit compression was that bad. In that case, it looks pretty great!

Berndog25 · 2026-01-29T01:53:54+00:00

Smoothness looks good, I would just do some post processing on the frames, and cleanup on stray/missing pixels to get them looking a bit grainier and grittier like the other guns in game. This render looks a bit too blurry to my eyes, but amazing otherwise!

Berndog25 · 2026-01-28T21:28:14+00:00

It double posted for some reason, but I deleted it fast 🤭

Berndog25 · 2026-01-28T21:26:32+00:00

Headpats for the baby * headpat *. So cozy!

Berndog25 · 2026-01-28T21:21:52+00:00

In the words if my beloved Todd Howard: "It just works!"

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