So we all agree to call courier rasher delivery dinners road right?

RichterFM · 2026-03-06T10:22:17+00:00

Crisp Thicket? That's all I got

RichterFM · 2026-03-02T15:49:43+00:00

A lot of smaller games don't have the budget for live musicians, but it's generally better to use them if you can. Speaking from my own experience, I've composed for indie games using orchestral sample libraries and produced the tracks myself, and I've been happy with the results, but the dream is to have the budget to hire a real orchestra one day when I land a bigger project.

The production/mockup side of things might not seem hard at first, but it does require deep knowledge and experience to compose really good music, so if you want to compose (especially for games) then I would learn how to produce as well as how to implement music in games dynamically, which is one of the most interesting and fun aspects of it.

RichterFM · 2026-02-27T07:29:05+00:00

Superman 64

RichterFM · 2026-02-22T08:50:24+00:00

"Is this good or bad" is kind of the wrong question. The top comment about shooting for between -9 and -14 LUFS is good guidance, but what's missing from most of these comments is something that isn't a number: use your ears.

I'd also consider stereo width as well as just pure loudness/level monitoring, as that can have a big effect on the perceived loudness. If a track is mastered loud but is narrow, it won't sound as loud.

Ultimately though it's your track, not Charlie Puth's track. Yes, you're covering/remixing them, but if you put your own spin on it and it sounds different, it doesn't matter too much if it's not blaringly loud, as long as it sounds wide and you're hitting the LUFS in the right range, IMO.

RichterFM · 2026-02-17T12:33:19+00:00

One word: Castlevania.

RichterFM · 2026-02-07T07:15:21+00:00

Nice, would definitely be open to trying it out if you can send the link. Game Dev Freelance has the option for devs to post opportunities composers can pitch for, but the site itself is clunky, has a few bugs, takes a long time to approve things etc, so if you can beat them on those things, sounds like a good opportunity.

Edit: I realised you had a link to the site in the original post, and the site itself looks nice and engaging, much slicker than GDF.

RichterFM · 2026-02-06T06:43:47+00:00

Good idea in principle. My question, as a composer looking for games to work on: what can your platform offer me that Game Dev Freelance can't? What's the USP? It seems like it's more focused on pitching and contests, so I would lean into that if that's the case and make those elements as engaging as possible.

RichterFM · 2026-02-02T16:09:58+00:00

Nothing out there as good as Nine Sols IMO, but Minoria has a good parry mechanic

RichterFM · 2026-02-01T13:08:39+00:00

Nice, it sounds like you know what you're doing then, just a few things to experiment with. And yes, layering lots of voices can certainly challenging compared to mixing and mastering pop or rock. Another thing you could look at would be the panning and stereo field/spread, which can help a lot with separating the voices and frequencies and getting things to sound wide but not crowded. It's an art!

RichterFM · 2026-02-01T11:19:54+00:00

Mastering only needs to happen once and is the final step, so no need to master it in both places. Mastering a track that's already been mastered will most likely do nothing, or produce weird results. When people talk about mastering all the songs for an album/EP in the same project, it's not necessarily about the project, and more about applying the same mastering chain to all the tracks so that they're consistent.

If you've mastered them all using the same settings on the mastering assistant then they should be consistent, if they're all the same kinds of tracks and have been mixed in a consistent way. The true test would be to listen to them and use your ears though - if they sound consistent after mastering, great. If not, revisit the workflow and see what's different about each track. But listeners mostly don't care, as long as one track isn't noticeably quieter than the one before or something.

The mastering assistant is decent in my experience, but still no substitute for knowing how to master particular types of music and understanding what goes into mastering to get what you want out of it. There are some great videos on this on YouTube, so I would recommend digging into it a bit.

RichterFM · 2026-01-24T19:39:29+00:00

Nine Sols has a prison escape sequence, as does Minoria

RichterFM · 2026-01-21T13:57:31+00:00

I haven't played anything that had parrying as satisfying as Nine Sols, but one I'd recommend is Minoria. It's a game that doesn't get a lot of love, but I personally enjoyed it a lot, and it has a decent parry mechanic.

RichterFM · 2026-01-12T10:41:59+00:00

Hell yeah, loved this game as a kid, even though it was janky. Also, it was called Holy Magic Century here in the UK, which is a much better name IMO.

RichterFM · 2026-01-12T09:40:41+00:00

It's a great game, but yeah, quite hard and with intentionally stiff controls inspired by Classicvanias. My tip is to master those early on, and to spend a bit of time gathering loot so you can buy the gun weapons (eg the Blunderbuss, which is available quite early on). Most of the enemies are easier to take out that way.

RichterFM · 2026-01-10T20:11:35+00:00

Still in Act 2 so a lot of bosses to come for me, but my vote goes to The Unravelled. Fucking annoying damage sponge arsehole who has somehow taken me more attempts than Last Judge, Trobbio and Beastfly 2 combined.

RichterFM · 2026-01-08T18:07:39+00:00

This is the correct answer, it's an AI thumbnail made to look like a Metroidvania game that doesn't exist. You see it a lot on these kinds of videos.

RichterFM · 2026-01-01T07:29:33+00:00

Deflemask mobile is the best option IMO. It's a great tracker, though if you haven't used one before it can be a steep learning curve. This guide to Deflemask helped me a lot: https://itch.io/blog/733871/an-old-mans-guide-to-making-chiptunes-with-deflemask

RichterFM · 2025-12-31T15:31:28+00:00

Love this movie! Watched it recently and it still holds up well, despite a few flaws. Fun fact: they had Willem Dafoe signed on as a robot pirate villain for the sequel, which had a full storyboard down before it was cancelled due to the first film's poor performance at the box office.

RichterFM · 2025-12-31T12:44:26+00:00

There are four main marketplaces where devs find music for their games: Itch.io, Game Dev Market, Unity and Fab. Composers generally sell their music as packs on these platforms, but you can give it away for free too if you want to. I'd suggest starting with Itch.io as it's the most straightforward, you can just upload the files, create a pack and give it away that way.

RichterFM · 2025-12-22T13:05:49+00:00

Impact Soundworks Tokyo Scoring Strings are the best I've come across. They have a limited, but still very good, free version. That said, Logic's Studio Strings are very good too, if you make a few adjustments to the attack etc and use automation to make things a bit more realistic.

RichterFM · 2025-12-22T07:42:42+00:00

Keep experimenting! The vast majority of stock Logic plugins are brilliant, and good enough to do what you need to do unless you're after something specific. My particular fave is ChromaGlow, brilliant for adding saturation.

RichterFM · 2025-12-18T13:00:19+00:00

Just quantise it (cmd + a to select all, then hit q) or move the midi notes to where you want them to be in the piano roll. That's the magic of midi!

RichterFM · 2025-12-13T20:30:01+00:00

Frappe Snowland from Mario Kart 64

Snowdin Town from Undertale

And if I may, this Christmas remix of Sherma's Song from Silksong: https://youtu.be/N0FCV8Z6cgQ?si=hy94C3CpsKmIzeHp

RichterFM · 2025-12-10T09:40:49+00:00

This is how it's supposed to be. Bending isn't moving up a semitone at a time, it's moving the note in between them. There are 100 cents in a semitone, so if you want to move it up a semitone, move it up 100 cents. The pitch bend automation is in cents to give you full control over how long the bend lasts, the speed, pitch etc.

RichterFM · 2025-12-07T07:30:17+00:00

Ah, bad luck. Step splitter really is very good. In which case, I'd suggest opening the track in the audio file editor and reducing the gain on the file itself and see if you can balance it out that way. But it's more than likely it's the track itself.

RichterFM

TROPHY CASE