Diablocide

Music is extremely important in your game as it is used to set the mood; it tells the player to be sad, to feel heroic, to feel overwhelmed. You know when you're in a boss battle because the battle music gets harder. You know when you're in the final boss battle because the first few notes set an otherworldly tone that gets you PUMPED to kill this beast.



You need to know what your game sounds like. Even if you are using FF7 midis, you need to know what your game sounds like. After you figured out a lot of the game feel free to listen to Pandora/Winamp/whatever, but during the initial development you need to listen to your soundtrack. If you're working on character stats and skills, listen to character themes. If you're making monsters, listen to the appropriate battle theme. When working on a dungeon - you get the picture. There are several advantages to giving up your Linkin Park and doing this: 1) you know if one of your tracks sucks, 2) you know if one of your tracks doesn't fit, and 3) you know that you can stand listening to the track throughout the actual game. If you can't say that a piece of music passes all of the tests, get rid of it. Music is essential and poor choices can ruin a scene or feeling.



But where do you get your music? Now that the majority of your audience has decent internet, I suggest turning to mp3s unless you have some great midis (mix the two randomly and I'll give you .5/600 stars). If you really are worried about filesize, maybe using mp3s for boss battles and the final boss at least. They deserve to be of the highest quality. Anyway, newgrounds.com has an audio portal. It has free music. This music is free mp3 music. It is free. It is in mp3 format. It ranges from ~2-5megs/song, usually. It is free. If you've bought the right OST sometime before, you can also get videogame music from blue laguna (google it).



As you get your music, document it. You need to credit the musicians or else you will burn in hell/jail.



When you need to edit your music tracks to cut off a long ending or have it fade out early, use Audacity. http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

It's free (!), it's pretty simple and it has never crashed for me or ruined any music. You'll need to follow the in-program instructions to get an mp3 encoder, but it only takes three minutes tops.

Summary: LISTEN TO YOUR MUSIC SO THAT YOU KNOW WHEN IT SUCKS