Beta installation and Beta period information.

Hey everyone!

So we are finally here!:D At the point where you all will get a chance to play around with the editor (and hopefully doing so without to many problems or bugs!). We would like to thank everyone who waited patiently, everyone who hacked the alpha editor and came with suggestions to improve it, everyone who said kind words to boost our morale when it was low! Thanks so much!!!

With that said, here we go! Please please please read all the way down to the end of the post before doing anything else, so you are fully informed! Thanks and enjoy!:) 

Beta availability
Current availability status for the Level Editor Beta as of December 10th 2015 is: 

• Windows: Available. Workshop TBA.
• Mac: TBA
• Linux: TBA

INSTRUCTIONS:
How to access the beta:
First of all, make sure to restart Steam! To access the level editor, navigate to Hotline Miami 2 in your Steam library, right click the game and select properties. From there go into the betas tab and select editor_beta from the drop-down list and press Close. Your game will now update to the beta version with the editor included [editor_beta] should appear next the title in your library. If it doesn't update straight away either wait a little while or restart your Steam client. Some also need to reinstall the game (try this if you launch the game and steam crash).

How to opt out of the beta:
Repeat the steps above but select 'default' instead of 'editor_beta' as the branch to change your installation to. Your local Hotline Miami 2 installation will revert back to the non-beta, game-only version as it was before you opted into the Beta.

Usage Instructions and tutorials.
We've made a manual post here that explains the basics. We are working on having a extended manual or video tutorials for the cut scene editor up as soon as possible (feel free to play around with it though, you will figure it out I'm sure:).

How to report bugs and feature suggestions:
Use the "Level Editor Bug Reports" thread for bug reports and the "Level Editor Feature Suggestions" thread for feature suggestions. This is quite important since we are only two people gathering all the information, so keeping all of this in one place makes it a lot easier to monitor. Things posted elsewhere will be asked to share the information on steam instead.

How to share your levels:
As of right now the Steam Workshop support for the editor is not yet available. Until it is available you can share your levels via any online file storage provider, e-mail, or other any other way you can think of to share some files with a friend or community.

Once you've finished your level or campaign you can select it in the custom level selector (the Editor menu) and press 'O' on your keyboard to show the level's files in Windows Explorer. From there you can zip the folder and send it to whoever you like!

How to play shared levels:
As mentioned above, Workshop is currently unavailable so you'll have to obtain shared levels through some other means. Once you do get your hands on some levels simply copy them into /My Documents/My Games/HotlineMiami2/Levels/single/ or /My Documents/My Games/HotlineMiami2/Levels/campaigns/ making sure to put the files in a sub-folder in either of the two locations mentioned. Single levels should go in the/single folder and campaigns into the /campaigns folder.

Once the files have been placed in the correct location the levels should show up in the level selector.

THE SUPER EXPERIMENTAL CUSTOM SPRITE MOD:

I know we have said all along that the editor wouldn't feature custom sprite mods. Well, now it does have a test version of it and all thanks to Frans at Abstraction (some of you know him as Wussie or snarfk:) and Tct2k. So please give them a digital round of applause while I leave it to Frans to explain it all.

IMPORTANT: Modding support is currently highly experimental and driven by community created tools. We are very thankful to the authors of these tools and the players that have shown such passion and dedication in creating mods so far. To show our gratitude we've included some additional functionality in the December 10th update to make their lives a little easier and allow them to reach a larger portion of the community with their creations. However, we cannot currently guarantee any official support or liability for the modding tools themselves or any issues arising due to using community created mods. 
Proceed at your own risk.


Background:
Some of you may be familiar with HLMWadExplorer[github.com] by TcT2k. If you are not, here's the gist of it:

HLMWadExplorer has been around for a little while and has been used by the Hotline Miami community to create basic mods for the game. The tool allows you to extract, modify and replace most of the raw data used by Hotline Miami 2 and is most often used to alter the appearance of various elements (sprites and tiles) within the game. Here is a tutorial on how to change sprites.

The tool modifies the WAD files that shipped with the game, replacing (some of) the data with custom versions which will then be loaded by the game. While this works it's prone to breaking down when we update the game (Steam will re-download and overwrite the patch WAD file when it changes, causing the player having to re-apply any mods that were in use) and also doesn't really allow level creators to easily ship custom sprites and other assets along with their levels.

In the December 10th update we've added some rudimentary support to make managing community created mods a little easier and allow dedicated content creators to customize the look and feel of their levels and campaigns further by including additional mods that will be used by the game when their levels are being played. Included below is some information on how to author and use this new functionality.

Instructions:
Creating Mods
Use HLMWadExplorer to create a .patchwad file by exporting, editing and replacing assets present in the WADs. Save the file to /My Documents/My Games/HotlineMiami2/mods to have it load throughout the entire game. Alternatively if you want to include a mod only with your custom level or campaign, navigate to the in-game level selection menu and select the campaign or level you wish to include mods for. Press 'O' to show the directory containing the level/campaign files in Windows explorer. Create a mods directory there and save the .patchwad file in this directory. The mods included in this directory will be loaded when playing or editing the level and can be sent to other players as well.

Limitations:

• Mods included with levels or campaigns currently do not support custom sounds. While they can be included in the mod files they will not be loaded by the game as it loads all the audio information once, when the game starts. Mods included in your savegame folder are able to customize sound effects.
• Modifying the in-game music tracks is not supported due to legal reasons. 
• As of right now we are unsure if we can include the functionality as-is for levels distributed on the Steam Workshop. More information on this will be available once the Steam Workshop support is enabled.

That is all for now! Hope you like it and let's stay in touch;)

Peace // Dennis & Jonatan