I'm opening up the game to give followers a chance to see their personal levels and hear the tracks they produced in the game. Read the description for rules.

Posted by spncryn on Jan 7th, 2016

Why I'm Doing This

Recently, I've been bogged down by a lot of personal issues, and while I'm still working my absolute hardest on Midnight Animal, a lot of time and energy has been wasted alone on the struggle to constantly vacillate between the independently difficult tasks of maintaining the quality of my game and fending off personal crises. Right now, my main objectives are primarily to get the gameplay functioning to the best of its ability, and to finish up the script, and begin integrating it programming-wise. Consequently, this leaves me little time for some of the other aspects, particularly level design; and because of how little energy and effort I'm able to spend at the moment on level design, my creations have become redundant and the idiomatic writer's block has begun to really show off. So for both the sake of helping the mod progress as a whole, and for the perseverance of my sanity, I've decided to let fans submit their own content.

Guidelines

You can submit your levels to me either here in the comments, or in the relevant Reddit thread which I'll link later.

Levels should be created in the level editor. For most of you, this goes without saying, but for the one person who decides to create it in GameMaker, I appreciate the effort, but please don't.

DON'T POST LINKS TO THE LEVEL EDITOR FILES UNTIL YOU'VE BEEN PERSONALLY APPROVED! I don't mean to come off as scummy or as an asshole, but the last thing I need is a bunch of Dropbox links cluttering up the submissions feed.

I don't mean to come off as scummy or as an asshole, but the last thing I need is a bunch of Dropbox links cluttering up the submissions feed. Submit at least four screenshots through imgur (one of each floor in the overview, and at least two screens in-game) or screenshots of each floor along with a video. The floors go without saying, but for those who don't understand the in-game shots; they're to let me know how well the maps will look 'on the ground' and in action. A video is the most preferable means; but if you can't or don't want to, screenshots, will suffice.

A description of the level - what it is, the story behind it, why the player is there to begin with. Try to be unique, and as descriptive as possible. The more attention to detail, the better. Bonus points for the following kinds of levels: Art museum/gallery. Shipping yard/construction site. Any kind of minimalist corporate structure. Skyscraper penthouse.

For characters, it doesn't really matter who you choose; just make sure you don't limit it to one mask, and make sure the map is flexible in that it can be approached through a number of different playstyles.

Deadline

The deadline for this set for the end of this month (31 January 2016) but is pretty flexible, and if people continue to be interested, than I'll continue to accept submissions.

Some tips

More enemies =/= better or more difficult maps.

Keep in mind that the player character in Midnight Animal moves, attacks, and reacts much faster than pretty much every character in the Hotline Miami series.

Enemies are also a bit more responsive, and react faster.

For inspiration for the corporate levels, look to Mirror's Edge, Syndicate (2012), and Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

For the more urban environments, check out the example screenshots below:

Music submissions

If you're a musician interested in the Hotline Miami series or this mod and you'd like to submit some tracks, I'm opening up for submissions. If you can, please convert them to .ogg format first, so I can test them in-game without having to convert them myself. In particular, I'm looking for more calm and peaceful ambient tracks. For more action-paced tracks, I'm looking for dark, heavy tracks, along the lines of M|O|O|N's Paris, and artists like Carpenter Brut and Dance with the Dead.