‘What are you doing with your game?’ This is a question I have been asked a number of time recently, in more or less explicit variations. Especially after the fairly sudden and controversial Steam store page update I made a few months back, I think it’s a fairly decent question, and one that deserves to be asked. Although I created a Discord server some time ago to allow anybody to address immediate and pressing questions, it still seems many people are in the dark about the way things are going. Consequently, I have decided to start a public development blog, which I will be updating fairly frequently, on a more or less weekly basis.

You can read the first three entries here:

• Concerning artistic decisions
  
• Concerning gameplay
  
• Concerning narrative, and themes

Hopefully this will serve to clarify some things for people who are confused about the game's current direction. If you have any further questions, feel free to either join the official Discord server, or ask them in the forums. Thanks for reading.

Have a nice day,

Spencer

So, after reviewing some of the feedback I got over the past day in terms of how people received the demo, and in terms of the issues some people were facing, I decided to release a more stable build with a few modifications, and fixes.

First, however, I'd like to say that, thanks to the help of some people, the Out of Memory error which plagued the game previously has now been fixed! I can confirm that it works for the actual game itself as well, meaning that now, the game is playable for many, many more people without having to run the game using cheap artifices such as virtual machines. This is incredibly good news in terms of the long-term scope of development; I now no longer have to worry about developing the game for a limited audience, and can now focus my attention back on making the game itself as good as possible.

On this note, I would like to point out a slight clarification on a notion which I've seen a good number of people express: Midnight Animal is not comparable to either Hotline Miami, or Hotline Miami 2 in terms of performance. Just because the first two games ran at 60fps on your computer doesn't mean that Midnight Animal will run at 60fps, or anywhere close. This is for two major reasons.

First of all, the versions of those games which many of you are playing are built in completely different engines, having been processed by and re-encoded in an entirely different language by a conversion company. Hotline Miami is essentially a port of a console version built in a modified version of PhyreEngine; Hotline Miami 2 is built in GameBaker, which is a proprietary conversion engine created by Abstraction to basically translate the game into C++. Both, by virtue of their languages and structures, are much more stable than Midnight Animal, which is being made in GameMaker 8.1, and is pushing the engine to its absolute limits.

Secondly, Midnight Animal utilises a lot more advanced visual features than either Hotline Miami or Hotline Miami 2 as part of its aesthetic, many of which could be considered on par with more visually-demanding games. Eventually, in the options menu (which is missing from the demo), I will give the player the ability to turn off things like screenshake, emissive glow, occlusion, bloom and specular highlighting, but for now, they're present to demonstrate what the game SHOULD look like. Keep in mind that while the game has been heavily optimised, this doesn't mean that your computer will automatically be able to run it as it ran HM or HM2; treat Midnight Animal as if it were a fairly high-end, graphically-demanding game rather than as an extension of HM's engine, since at this point, at least from a technical perspective, it leans far more towards the former than the latter.

Anyhow, that's all I really have to say about that matter. In the mean time, I've uploaded a new build of the demo with a bit more optimisation, and a number of fixes. Most importantly, if you were having issues with an Out of Memory error, this build SHOULD be playable for you.

You can download it either at https://spncryn.itch.io/midnight-animal as before, or if the download servers on itch.io are giving you issues, I've also uploaded a version to Mega. I hope you enjoy it!


- strange glitch where knives started pouring out of dead enemies should be fixed

- knife throw animation no longer spawns another knife

- collision masks on the player have been fixed, meaning moving around should be a lot more fluid and easy

- enemy AI has been tweaked a little, meaning that they should be a bit more perceptive upon seeing the player

- issues where players could mess around and pick up other weapons while talking with Amy, or choose not to talk to her or shoot her have been fixed by making the cutscene non-interactive

- pressing 'F' no longer slows the game down a crawl

- pressing 'escape' in the main menu now exits the game properly

- the player can no longer 'disappear' Amy after picking her up by spawning in the C4

- spawning in C4 by pressing 'G' drops the player's current weapon instead of erasing it

- four new weapons added

- lights replaced/moved around to both increase performance and establish a more consistent tonal lighting

- replaced Static.ogg with Electrostatics.ogg

- player persistence has been adjusted across both floors, meaning no more weird visual artefacts when shift-aiming

- shift-aim has been roughly cut in half to avoid whiplashing the player's view across the level

- game should see approximately 5 - 10 average FPS increase due to d3d8.dll

- overall folder size has been reduced from ~200mb to ~90mb


- if you get stuck in furniture after an execution and can't get out, use the C4 to kill yourself in order to restart the level

- if after returning to the first floor with Amy you find the player sprite 'floating' above everything else, pause the game, and then unpause it

Hey, everyone. As promised, in light of the holiday spirit, I've decided to release a fairly large update which will include a discussion of some major changes I've been making and what I've been doing, as well as a surprise at the end.

First off, I'd like to say that, regardless of the questionable politics behind the holiday or whether you live in a culture that celebrates it or not, I still think that this presents a good chance for me to take a moment to offer some words of appreciation for the amount of support and patience which so many have demonstrated in the past several months. There have been many days where finding the motivation to do anything, let alone work on the game, has been difficult for me, but reading through the positive comments and encouragement always helps recalibrate my vision. So for that, thank you.

Now, moving on to the actual content of the update itself.


The most significant updates are to the story. Pretty much everything has been changed in regards to the story, save for the names, timeline and the core personalities of the characters; all previous content, including the Steam store page description, the content on my website concerning the game and any comments I have made prior to last month regarding the story.

The first major change is that the game no longer takes place in Miami. While this may come as a disappointment to some, ultimately it's for the best, both narratively and thematically. I tried my absolute best to adapt the story and theme to Miami's culture, but the more I researched into its history, the more I came to realise that it was fundamentally incompatible in virtually every sense with the world of Midnight Animal - from geography to political history, to culture to meteorological conditions. Instead, Midnight Animal has been moved to the NY/NJ region, which is not only much more appropriate to the themes and aesthetic of the game, but also much more familiar to me as the place in which I grew up.

The second major change is that Fifty Blessings is no longer relevant. In the previous timeline, Fifty Blessings rose to national power by drawing on the xenophobia and anxiety of a generation which felt that its culture was being infiltrated and invaded by a foreign presence which also happened to be a major enemy.

First and foremost, I chose to cut this narrative because I was tired of seeing many similar narratives, especially in today's geopolitical climate, which similarly condone revolutionary forces (regardless of ideological affiliation), and celebrate an anti-establishment, pro-rebel message. I wanted to explore a world in which systemic frameworks and entities not only prevail over the 'common people', but actually turn out for the better. Midnight Animal's world is not intended to be dystopian, but rather a utopia in the making. Of course, it can be argued that every dystopia is a utopia for some, and vice versa; but this story will be one about those who benefit from it, rather than the ones who are persecuted and oppressed.

Secondly, I chose to cut the narrative because I realised just how disinterested I was in telling what essentially amounted to a weak political allegory; and even more than that, I didn't feel it was necessary to further contribute to the trend of games attempting to deal with complex sociopolitical issues on a grander scheme, especially since I can't claim to either fully understand or care to understand their motivations. Instead, Midnight Animal is a game about individuals. There are larger themes at work here which can be derived, but the focus is on the people, and their individual histories.

The third major 'change' isn't so much a change as it is a clarification about the thematic direction the game is taking. A lot of people are under the impression that the game is a very dark, gritty and 'edgy' story, which focuses on themes of bloodlust and vengeance. I don't necessarily blame people for this misunderstanding, as much of the content I've realised was designed specifically to appeal to fans of the previous games, who I knew would be interested in such a plot. However, this was intentionally misleading, I must admit in retrospect; in reality, Midnight Animal is thematically not very dark at all, and is in fact for the most part quite light. While it does deal with some serious themes which do carry some gravitas, I don't consider it tonally to be very 'gritty' in the slightest. It's difficult to speak about any of this without revealing more of the story, which I would like to keep as a surprise; but the best way to describe it, a bit facetiously, would be less John Wick interpreted as Refnian psychological thriller, and more Hitman interpreted as a coming-of-age romance.


Not too much has changed in terms of the core gameplay experience; many of the changes made have been in terms of refining key concepts inherited from the source material of Hotline Miami, and expanding upon concepts which I found interesting, often inspired by mechanics from other games or films.

The most major changes have been in the way certain mask abilities are conferred.

There are three different categories of masks:

- cosmetic, which alter the visual makeup of the game (some of these potentially also affect the actual gameplay): these are self-explanatory, so I won't go into too much detail about it
- loadout masks, which I'll discuss in further detail below
- gameplay masks, which significantly alter the gameplay by changing the abilities of the player

Loadout masks

A number of the masks now 'lock' the player within certain loadouts, which include:

- a primary weapon,
- a secondary melee weapon,
- a projectile weapon, and
- either an active ability or a secondary ranged weapon.

For example one mask carries a flamethrower as a primary, a fire axe as a melee weapon, firebombs as a projectile and a flare gun as a secondary.

The point of these 'themed' masks is to offer players an interesting experience that focuses on a particular kind of mindset, as well as introduce them to different combinations of weapons which they may not yet have access to via the contracts system. They're meant to make the game easier due to the excess of ammo supplied, and the often powerful nature of the weapons offered; however, and this applies to the game in general, but the game is designed to be as difficult as you want it to be.

Due to the increased complexity of this scheme, I've added a few keys to the control scheme, and modified the controls a bit:

- Left mouse fires the primary weapon, which the player starts with.
- Clicking right mouse switches to the melee weapon
- Pressing F activates the ability in question
- Pressing G throws a projectile, and automatically switches back to the previous weapon
- Mouse wheel switches between the primary and the secondary ranged weapons

Gameplay masks

A slightly more complex example is the new modified Tony mask:

- Tony is now completely nonlethal, although every hit is a one-hit 'kill' (except on the fat enemies, which need to be knocked down and 'executed' like Tony in HM2)
- The player moves faster as a passive ability, but also has the ability to dash forward in the player's current direction by pressing F (both in order to compensate for the emphasis on ranged combat)
- The player presses right mouse to disarm guns, which adds to the combo the same way in which Evan's disarms work

This 'build', to use a slightly-different terminology, completely changes the way in which players must approach levels, and offers an alternate playstyle and a set of challenges unique to that playstyle. These kinds of masks, which radically alter the abilities of the player, are meant to grant additional challenges that are meant to reconfigure the means by which levels are handled.

In another sense, the masks have been changed in terms of what they represent. I felt that masks as physical artefacts were inappropriate to the context the game was taking place in, and practically nonsensical no matter how much one was willing to suspend disbelief. Instead, I changed them to better reflect the themes of the game itself, and to reveal more about the characters behind them, the world they occupy and John himself. Each mask now comes with a fairly detailed biography of the characters themselves based on how John understands them in relation to his own values. More diligent players can use these biographies as a means of piecing together a greater timeline or context.

They're no longer 'masks' in the sense that the player physically wears one of them, but rather, more akin to 'spirit animals' (although I should note right now that the animal theme has generally been dropped; while some of these may be animals, many of them are not) - or, more accurately, John's interpretation of them.

So canonically, this means that John does not actually wear physical masks to missions.


Despite saying that I wouldn't previously, as an extension of my gratitude for your patience and in accordance with the holiday spirits, I've decided to release a demo which includes the first level of the game. It's still a bit buggy, and obviously it represents a work-in-progress; consequently, many of the previous technical issues which plagued me still plague this build. If you download the demo and get an Out of Memory error, this should be a confirmation of the fact that there is still a significant ways to go in terms of development: the only thing I can promise is that one day, the game will be complete, and it will be released with as large of an audience as I can feasibly serve within my current means.

Without further ado, you can download the build here on itch.io!

(Please actually read the READ_ME.txt; it's there for a reason, and includes legitimately useful information.)

Have a nice day,

Spencer

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything publicly, and a lot has changed in the interim. I expect to be releasing some major updates on Steam quite soon, within the next couple of weeks at most, including a new gameplay video, and a major announcement which will highlight some of the most major differences and clarify some misunderstandings I've been noticing.

I've also created an official Discord for Midnight Animal's development, which you can join here: https://discord.gg/W4gM6Ng. You can track updates in real-time, talk about the game, offer suggestions and feedback, or just have a conversation and get to know each other, and me better!

Have a nice day,

Spencer

After taking some time to figure some things out, I've decided to resume development of Midnight Animal. I never got a chance to really publicly address the incredible amount of support I received when I decided to postpone the project, so before I say anything else, I want to just say thank you, in lieu of any greater and grander attempts at eloquence which will surely fail to properly capture just how much gratitude I felt - and continue to feel - as I work to complete this project. I was genuinely surprised about just how supportive and considerate people were, and although it wasn't my intention, I'm glad now that I postponed the game if only to have been able to bear witness to such a tremendous outpour of care. I will try my absolute best to repay that through the quality of the game itself; and hopefully, it lives up to all our expectations, and maybe more.

Now, speaking in practical terms: I still have not addressed the issues that I was beleaguered by prior to the delay, and as of the present, I'm still largely uncertain as to how exactly I'm going to fix them in my current situation. I have, however, decided on a general course of action regarding how I wish to handle the release of the game in the future.

My biggest priority at the moment is finishing the game in terms of content and getting rid of the most salient bugs related primarily to in-game elements such as gameplay and presentation. In regards to the larger issues pertaining to the limitations of the engine in question, I still haven't a clue how to fix a single one of them; but any fixes that I do eventually implement should, in my opinion, occur after most of the game is already completed, and when most of what I have intended to accomplish has already seen fruition.

Once the game is content-complete, I will be releasing it via itch.io in a pre-release - or early access, if you will - state. This means that anyone can download and play the full game prior to it being on Steam - theoretically. The problem is that in the event that the technical issues are not addressed (which, honestly, they most likely won't be, at least in my current capacity), most people will outright not be able to run the game at all, and of those who can, many might experience bizarre and immersion-breaking visual glitches due to the way GameMaker handles events such as drawing graphics to surfaces and the like. A very select few will be able to play it, and I grant them full authority to release playthroughs and do streams and write reviews and all that stuff, so at least someone can experience it beforehand.

Concurrently with the itch.io release, I will also be launching a Kickstarter, primarily for funding the Abstraction port. This will likely be one of the most difficult stages in the release cycle; $100,000 is no joke, and despite my hopes and ambitions, I realistically don't believe Midnight Animal has nearly enough attention or widespread interest in order to receive such a large amount of funding. That being said, however, it can't hurt to try; and since it uses a rigid funding model, in the rather likely incident that it fails, everyone gets their money back, and at least we could say that we tried.

In the event of failure, I'll try one last time to port it to Studio. If that too fails, then I'm out of options, and both you and I are a bit fucked in the short-term: you, because you can't play the game; and me, because I just wasted two years of my life working on something that in the end, nobody could play. So hopefully it doesn't come to that.

Of course, all this is in the event that I'm not able to overcome the issues that I'm plagued with at the moment. I've been experimenting with a number of functions and scripts which have drastically lightened up the RAM load of the game (collectively, from about 900mb to 30mb; I'm not too sure if this is relevant, but for those more technically adept, I have 3GB of RAM, with 64mb of allocated VRAM). I haven't tested the latest build yet in states which previously induced failure, but I will soon in the hope that somehow this will fix the error.

If I do end up fixing the error, then the game's relesae will simply proceed as normal: about a month prior to release, after the game is content-complete (I'll let you know when this happens, no worries), I'll release an update explaining what's left, establish a certain release date, and then just roll it out on Steam on the fixed date. This is the ideal situation, and the one I'm hoping to achieve.

All of this which brings us to...

While I will not be working on Midnight Animal at nearly the same rate as I was before, development will now become consistent and regular, and has been re-incorporated into a part of my daily schedule.

So, what does this mean in regards to timelines?

Honestly, not much, unfortunately; at least in regards to how much I can tell you at this point. For the sake of not disappointing people anymore I'm going to be a bit more cautious with how I handle public affairs from now on; so if anyone has any questions about things concerning projected timelines or things like that, I'm afraid I won't be able to answer them honestly - not because I don't want to, but because I can't predict what will happen several months or even several days from now. I don't want you to build confidence in things that are founded in uncertain realities.

That being said, I will continue to remain as transparent as possible in all the aspects you as players deserve to know about; just nothing that could potentially lead people to false or misrepresentative conclusions.

In regards to the status of the actual game itself, I don't have much to address publicly; a lot of stuff now is just about writing and incorporating the story (stuff like dialogue and cutscenes, which are really just more frustrating than difficult), designing unique levels and features, cleaning up random technical glitches, and in general just polishing gameplay to feel better and more fluid. I'll probably be releasing some stuff regarding some of the masks and their unique abilities some time in the near future, as well as some more posters and wallpapers for those interested in those kinds of things.

I've also started streaming development on schedule: technically, it's a series teaching people how to mod Hotline Miami in general, but most of the time I don't really get that many requests so I just work on Midnight Animal in the downtime. I stream on Twitch every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from about 1600 to 2000 EST; times are liable to change with my personal situation and if people aren't really active then I'll end it prematurely, so it's a rather flexible schedule where you can just drop in and out whenever you want. If you have questions about modding Hotline Miami, game development, or just things in general; or if you want to check out progress on Midnight Animal and see some (highly unstable, 480p, 12fps) gameplay, feel free to stop by any time and check it out.

That's all for now.

Have a nice day,

Spencer

So, with great disappointment and a fair amount of sorrow as well, I can confirm that Midnight Animal is officially delayed - indefinitely. Now, before you break out in hysterics and attempt to call me out as a lazy and inconsistent developer, at least hear me out a bit. This is a bit of a rant, for fair warning; hopefully, you stick with me to the end, but even if you don't, I ask you to have at least have some sympathy and not be deliberately callous or ignorantly offensive.

I've been developing Midnight Animal for just over a year now, since April 2015. It started out as nothing more than a curious side project I'd stumbled upon in the final days of high school; bored and unoccupied in my computer science class, I came across a pirate copy of Hotline Miami one afternoon in a hidden folder on the public school drive, which some of my more technologically-literate peers used as a sort of in-your-face fuck-you against the establishment. It was the first game I ever played on the PC, and it utterly enthralled me, just like it did so many of you. Conveniently, by some fortuitous stroke of fate, we had begun a unit on GameMaker just around the same time I discovered Hotline Miami, and very quickly I was able to put two and two together and realised that, armed with a highly-illegal decompiler and a lack of scruples typical to most bored high school seniors with four weeks left till graduation, I could decompile Hotline Miami and browse its source code: something which, at the time, seemed almost mystical in its secrecy. I looked on the Internet for others who had done the same, and I found only reams and reams of bug sheets. I was alone, a pioneer on the verge of something extraordinary, I thought to myself. I can do something with this.

And so I did.

Of course, the original attempts were, as to be expected from any stupid kid who fell off the wrong end of the Dunning-Kruger continuum, absolutely shit. My Reddit profile proves testament to a long, artistically troubled history of attempts and failures at 'mods' (read: randomly throwing shit and colours over a map so that the end result looked like Jackson Pollock and a futurist architect had a spastic orgy over a derelict apartment building) and other such confused notions.

But eventually, somehow, somewhere down the line, I started figuring shit out. And eventually, things started coming together for me, and the more I worked with the code, the more I immersed myself in the work I was doing, the more I began to understand on a fundamentally intuitive and instinctive manner the things I was doing: I began to incorporate aspects from my personal life and started injecting myself into what I was doing, and in that confluence, I realised that there was something utterly sublime about what I was doing. For once in my life, it felt like I was doing something right for once, that things were beginning to make sense and that maybe, perhaps I could be satisfied after all. And from that, Midnight Animal was born.

I love Midnight Animal. You read that and you think, well, of course you do, every developer loves their game, because why else would they be developing it? And of course, you're right. But something a lot of people don't understand is that that love, it's a complicated relationship. Yes, Midnight Animal could very well be the exact thing I need which will get me past those ironclad doors, over the vast and interminable hordes of wannabe dreamers and repeated failures, right into the industry I've always dreamt of being a part of, but never believed I could be until now. Yes, Midnight Animal is an intensely personal story, and is in many more ways than one probably my single most concentrated attempt at coming to reconciliation with things inside of me, things in my past. Yes, Midnight Animal was for several months the only thing keeping me alive, the only bulwark against an ocean of overwhelming despair and mutilation.

But it's also killing me.

For the past month and a half, I've been working eighteen-hour days, trying to fix bugs, optimise performance, and finish the game itself, all at once. Rarely do I leave my room to interact with others. When I sign off to go to bed, it's already light outside. Some nights, I just don't sleep at all, because I know that if I do, I'll forget what I did the night before and lose momentum. And yes, before you say anything, it's all my fault: I readily admit it. This is, sadly, the life of a game developer: absurdly long hours, constant fatigue bordering on exhaustion, a generalised state of crippling depression. And this is the choice I made, and am making, and will continue making. Not because I particularly have a death wish against the cells in my body or because I want to see my (now ex-)girlfriend or friends once for a few hours every week, but because I believe that ultimately, I am doing the right thing, if not for my personal health, than for you.

Sure, in the end, Midnight Animal is a mod. But it's also a completely new game, with completely new features, and a completely new story. In scope, it's larger than anything even Dennaton themselves probably intended. Dennaton had three years to make a game which significantly improved upon its predecessor in every way - and as far as I know, they were working full-time. I had six months, at best. And that's what I have - had - to work with. And so I tried my best.

But no matter how hard I try now, I feel like it's not enough. There's this quote from GTA V which always stuck with me. This guy Franklin's just saved his friend Michael from an abattoir after the latter's been captured by some criminal element from his past, and Franklin asks in anger why he took the choice to save himself at the cost of everyone around him. To which Michael responds: 'It was that or die. Look I know it sounds cold I don't expect you to understand it, not yet but you will when you got ties of your own. Look, you wake up one day and your legs, they just give... and you just can't run anymore.'

There are two reasons why I'm writing this now.

The first is because this morning, I checked my email and Abstraction got back to me. In case you're not aware, you can read about the situation here. They were very friendly and helpful, and offered a number of useful (and might I add unsolicited but very appreciated) tips regarding my current situation. Most importantly, however, they were open to the idea of entering into a contract, which is what I contacted them in regards to. However, due to the fact that the code for Midnight Animal is apparently too different from that of HM1 and HM2 to convert via Game Baker (which was used to convert the first and second game), Midnight Animal would be adapted as a standalone title, requiring an entirely new engine. The price of this would be roughly around $100,000. Initially, before hearing this, I thought I stood a legitimate chance, and could get raise sufficient funds via a crowdfunding platform like Kickstarter or the like; but $100,000, while fairly normal for the games industry, is probably more money than I'll ever see in the next few decades, and very well might be worth more than my life itself. So as much as I'd like to work with Abstraction, especially considering how friendly and open they were, there is virtually no hope anymore for any kind of contract of any sorts. I am not nearly good enough of a programmer to fix the most critical issue present in Midnight Animal; and the situation might very well be that the game has reached a point where it's transcended the limitations of GameMaker itself and will be terminally fucked by the very engine it's written in, meaning the only way to get the game working in any sustainable and stable would be to completely convert the source code to a different language - a technical feat I am not nearly qualified enough to perform.

The second is because tonight, my girlfriend broke up with me. Next week, exactly, we would've been together for a year. Certainly, this is a subject more fit for a therapist than an audience of gamers, but anyone who's gone through the experience (which I imagine to be many of you) knows just how crushing it is. For those who don't know, the first couple of times, you feel this pain distinctly and sharply, this unprecedented kind of agony which cuts deep and punctures straight through you. But after that, you start getting used to it, and the pain dulls down, and you get used to it; you stop hurting so bad, and eventually, all that's left is just the interminable ache of nothing. And that's where I am: no longer sensitive to the slings and arrows of bitter misfortune, but a straw man cored and left with nothing but the sensation of hollow emptiness inside my chest - no pain to validate the sudden subtraction of a former essential, yet still haunted by that terrible ache, the irreparable loss of holding someone dear.

If you've read up to this point, I thank you for patience, and I hope that even if you're upset and disappointed over the content of this announcement, that you'll still find it within you to at least be sympathetic, if not for me, than for the painstaking process by which all developers, from the smallest indie startups to the largest AAA studios, produce the games which ultimately end up in your hands, or on your desktops. As I've said countless times before, I, more than anyone, want Midnight Animal to be a game that people can not only enjoy, but appreciate as well; something that really speaks to people on an intimate level and which will inspire others to not be afraid to see something they love, some impossible dream they've held in their hearts but are too afraid to chase, and just go after it. Not just for you, but for me.

But everything comes at a cost, and for me, the cost has long since begun to take its toll. I've been running for almost a year now, trying to get things work, trying to make things perfect. The burn has been coming on in excruciating, brilliant flashes of agony: moments of existential collapse, and suicidal clarity. But up until tonight, I've been ignoring them, in this twisted, desperate hope that somehow, I could work past them, that I could just push past the clear and obvious signs that everything around me was collapsing, and that in one last second wind, I could somehow rush to the finish line and in one fell swoop clear away months upon months of now-irreparable damages. The worst thing that can happen is that one day, I'll wake up, I'll lie there and think to myself, you know what, fuck Midnight Animal. Fuck games, fuck game development, this was all just an interesting diversion but now I'm done and I'm moving on. Because if that ever happens, well, all of this would be for nothing. One day, I'll finish this race, and by God, I'll be damned if it's not a good finish. But until then, it's time to take a break. And so, before my legs give out, I'm going to stop running.

Some of you may have noticed that the release date for Midnight Animal is no longer 18 August, but rather Q3. This is unfortunately intentional, but for a somewhat complicated reason. Very generally put, there's a possibility of a potential setback due to technical issues which are unlikely to be surmountable within the current conditions I'm developing in.


In terms of content, the game is progressing well and is on track towards its original release date. The game itself will almost certainly be finished in terms of all its content by 18 August; but the problem is that in its current state, it's literally pushing Gamemaker 8.1 to its limits, and consequently, this is causing severe issues in many computers, the most prominent being a crippling 'Out of Memory' error that occurs on 90% of the computers the game has been tested on.

I'm not certain yet as to what exactly causes this issue, but I've gathered a few facts which may be relevant:

• Every version of GameMaker builds to a 32-bit executable, meaning that it has a 4GB memory limitation upon compiling.
  
  
• There are currently 4092 sprites (not counting individual sprite indices themselves) in Midnight Animal, which is over triple the amount in Hotline Miami (1492), but less than the amount in Hotline Miami 2 (if I had to guess, probably somewhere around 5000).
  
  
• There are currently 264 sound effects in Midnight Animal, which is over triple the amount in Hotline Miami (72) and nearly double the amount in Hotline Miami 2 (around 140).
  
  
• Surfaces, which are responsible for many of the visual effects in-game (such as lighting, blood and floor tiles) consume a large amount of memory depending on their size; and Midnight Animal has quite a few surfaces.
  
  
• GameMaker stores images (sprites, backgrounds, etc) in texture pages; these are images of resources with dimensions of powers of two. The largest texture page is 2^11, or 2048x2048. When the game runs, images are stored in these texture pages so they can be called quickly.
  
  
• The Out of Memory error is, as expected, an issue with memory; too many resources are rapidly occupying space, and, hitting a memory limit, the game automatically fails to run because the exe itself cannot handle the load.
  
  
• I'm not a very good programmer, and as hard as I've tried to optimize everything, it's definitely not nearly enough to ensure stability anywhere near the professional level seen with Hotline Miami 2 (which was a much more demanding game than Hotline Miami, hence why I'm using it as the benchmark).

No matter what, I will remain in Gamemaker 8.1 until all the content in the game is complete, which, as I said previously, should be on time (for a number of reasons, most of them being technical and not relaly relevant). Barring the chance of some technical miracle, however, it is highly unlikely this build will be ready for release; I'm not releasing a build that maybe only 10% of people at best could possibly play and calling that an 'initial release' only to get eviscerated by an army of pissed-off and self-righteous keyboard warriors who don't bother to read anything, since that would be humiliating, pointless and would utterly defeat the point of all my work heretofore.

• I'm currently investigating the possibility of porting it over to a more powerful version of GameMaker - Gamemaker Studio - in the hopes that the greater stability offered by that environment will make it easier to get the game working fluidly. However, this stability will not come without its costs; conversion will take a lot of time and effort due to a myriad of incompatible code, deprecated functions, and tighter programming practices enforced by Studio. Also, because I'm working on a relatively weak machine and the game contains a vast amount of resources, compilation takes roughly an hour, at least; meaning that in order to test even the slightest changes, I would have to wait at least an hour between each compilation. This would dramatically slow down development, and success is not certain; although Studio is more powerful, it's still limited to similar memory constraints as the current situation, meaning that even in the miraculous event that somehow it is converted successfully, there's no guarantee that the Out of Memory error would in fact be fixed.
  
  
• The other option is involving Abstraction, who ported the first two titles, to port this one as well. This would involve creating a contract with them that's strictly technical; although Abstraction offers services within the production pipeline as well (QA, publishing, distribution, promotion), as much as I'd like those things, what I really need the most is just technical assistance, and this would involve them using the Game Baker engine which they used to convert Hotline Miami and Hotline Miami 2 to C++ to convert Midnight Animal as well, guaranteeing maximum stability. It would also allow for a concurrent and definite release with Mac and Linux. This is, by far, the most fruitful option, since it guarantees not only stability but cross-platform support. The downside to this however is that first, I'm uncertain as to whether or not they'll even agree to do this, since Midnight Animal at the end of the day, stripped of all pretensions and ambitions otherwise, is just a mod. Secondly, in the off-chance that somehow they agree to this, I can only imagine the price would be exorbitant. If it's not completely and hopelessly beyond my means, I will attempt to pay it off most likely with a Kickstarter; but given how difficult the Kickstarter environment is these days, that would be an entirely new struggle unto itself and yet another uncertainty. I've already sent an email to Abstraction waiting to hear an initial price in order to arrange a contract, and hopefully I'll receive an answer soon so I can determine whether or not this is even a viable option.

I thank you for your time, and patience. Let it be clear that I intend to delay Midnight Animal not a day more than necessary; both for the sake of your interest and patience, and the sake of my personal well-being. If you're upset by this, believe me, I'm more upset than you are. Making games is brutal. And in my case, even though all I've technically done is, in the words of one brilliant critic, 'edited the HM1 engine and took sprites from HM1 and 2' and 'made a black version of HM and called it a deep fangame, wow', it's still been a terribly taxing process, no matter if you agree with what the final product looks like.

I've always stood by the notion that a good developer stands by his or her actions, and takes full responsibility for the consequences of such. On the other hand, though so too does the audience have a responsibility to respect and evaluate the labour which they consume. Hence why I've always been as transparent and honest about the development process all this time; but consequently, I expect the same from you.

Have a nice day,

Spencer

Hey, everyone! In case you missed the post on Reddit, I am currently conducting a survey for purposes of gauging the community's interest in certain features. This survey proposes a number of potential ideas concerning the gameplay which the community will vote upon, and discuss. Please answer honestly, and in much detail as possible; the more you cooperate, the more likely the end product will positively reflect the community's desires.

You can access the survey here.

Thanks for participating!

For updates 00-03, please visit the modDB page.

It's been a while since I've released any news publicly about Midnight Animal, and a public update's been long overdue. So, without any further ado, let's get into it.

First off, all weapons for Midnight Animal are complete. There are 95 weapons in total as of right now; there are about seventy 'normal' weapons (weapons that are acquired, well, normally, either carried by enemies, or which spawn naturally within the environment), and just under thirty 'experimental' weapons, which are weapons which can only be acquired through the contracts system.

Speaking of the contract system: this is a new feature that I've added to replace the weapon unlock system, and to complement the mask system. In designing the masks, I sought to create for each individual mask a very particular and unique kind of ability, so that each different mask yields dramatically different kinds of playstyles. Consequently, I realised afterwards that there ought to be a better way to differentiate masks than just giving them different starting weapons (because once those weapons inevitably ran out of ammo or were lost amidst the scuffle, the masks' unique advantages would simply be rendered obsolete). Consequently, I stripped a lot of the masks which were simply 'start with x weapon' of their weapons, and altered them to be more unique. That being said, some masks will still start with weapons, but those weapons will typically be locked to the mask, and will be used in unusual or unique ways.

From that decision was born the contract system: as one of the American government's most successful and prolific operators, John has unparalleled access to an unusually wide arsenal of advanced and experimental weaponry being developed by renowned arms manufacturers. These weapons, designed with maximum lethality in mind, grant the user unique and extremely powerful abilities; although in most cases, their experimental nature means ammunition is scarce, if nonexistent, and each shot must be fired with punishing accuracy.

Weapons can be purchased using funds awarded following successful completion of each contract, and can be retrieved from the trunk of John's car once unlocked, to be used during the contract. Cash is awarded based on the quality with which each contract is completed; the raw numerical score you receive based on your performance will be converted into a monetary equivalent, with 70% going to your expendable income, and the other 30% allocated towards various fees deducted from your pay.

Below is a list of every single weapon in the game (minus most of the experimental weapons), along with their in-game variant names, if applicable:

• SB USG-SR (generic automatic service rifle)
• Bartoli FR-12 (SPAS-12 combat shotgun)
• Bartoli FR-12S (suppressed SPAS-12)
• Golf club
• Lead pipe
• Baseball bat
• Combat knife
• Bartoli 220 (double-barrel shotgun)
• SB Zenith 40S (suppressed semi-automatic handgun)
• SB Zenith 40 (semi-automatic handgun)
• Katana
• Sz. Type-336 (Micro-Uzi)
• Aries DB357 (high-calibre revolver)
• MR vz26 (Skorpion machine pistol)
• Maschinen Taktische Pistole 37 [MACHT 37] (MP5K)
• MACHT 37S (suppressed MP5)
• Pool cue [+ broken pool cue]
• Fire axe
• Nightstick
• Crowbar
• Machete
• Sledgehammer
• Trophy
• H&H 18V power drill
• Frying pan
• Pot [w. boiling water]
• Pot [w/o boiling water]
• SB M10S [suppressed MAC-10]
• SVG-76 [Kalashnikov automatic rifle]
• Isando Gehenna Mk II [generic flamethrower]
• Bronson M310 [bolt-action sniper rifle]
• H&H 18 in. 40.2cc gas-powered chainsaw
• H&H 18-gauge 2-1/8 in. brad nailer
• Bicycle chain
• Meat cleaver
• H&H Type 10 (signal pistol)
• Skateboard
• Fragmentation grenades
• Mannequin arm
• Statue bust (Bust of Helios l m a 0)
• Bronson 1928M (Thompson submachine gun)
• Aries Vindicator (generic light machine gun)
• SB Geist (auto-loading tactical crossbow)
• Electric guitar
• Hammer
• Pipe wrench
• Bartoli Model 90 (hunting rifle)
• SB Mk23 (P90)
• Aries Widowmaker (AA-12)
• KT 12GA (KSG assault shotgun)
• Bartoli FR-15 (semi-automatic tactical shotgun)
• Bong [+ shattered variant]
• Shovel
• Brick
• Glass bottle [+ shattered variant]
• Hobby horse
• Scissors
• Screwdriver
• Petrol bombs
• Hatchet
• Fire poker
• Zweihander
• Morning star
• Battle axe
• War hammer
• Briefcase
• Stack of cash
• Bartoli S1000 (sawed-off double-barrel shotgun)
• Bronson SAA-5 (Colt Single Action Army)
• ZR v418 (Mauser C96)
• Windurger No. 2 (tranquiliser pistol)
• Isando RGL-220 (MGL-140)
• Bartoli Auto 9 (burst-fire pistol)
• Isando CL-40 (pump-action grenade launcher)

Now, you may be looking at that list, and asking yourself, wait, he just listed 75 weapons, how the hell is he going to make all them unique? To which the answer is, broadly, they're not. On the whole, many of the weapons (particularly the melee ones) are primarily cosmetic, and there for novelty's sake - because who hasn't fantasised about beating people down with a thick wad of cash? That being said, I have done a few things to make weapons feel better to use in general, and hopefully these following principles translate well across all the weapons:

• Firearms now must be fired according to their fire modes: you must now click to fire each individual round for semiautomatic weapons, instead of just holding down left mouse and unleashing a torrent of bullets. This adds a sense of urgency and deliberation to the gameplay; while gameplay itself moves much faster, the process of shooting becomes an act which must be carefully and consciously considered. Having the player click multiple times in order to expel bullets, as one would expect when firing non-automatic weapons, builds tension by giving the player a more intimate, though subtle connection to the gameplay. This also applies to burst-fire weapons, which are a new addition to the series. Certain firearms have alternate fire modes, which can be toggled by pressing X. This will probably be unavailable on controllers.
• Certain melee weapons will break after attacking, taking on different forms; for example, the bottle will first act as a blunt weapon, then shatter, becoming a bladed weapon. This isn't particularly new or innovative, but there are more weapons that act like this, which is the only reason I deemed it particularly notable.
• Melee weapons will now have multiple uses:
  • Heavy weapons can destroy things like doors and weak walls.
  • All blunt weapons will be able to temporarily knock down fat enemies, like Tony's punches in HM2. This won't kill them, but temporarily disable them, preventing them from chasing you. You cannot execute them; you're just buying yourself time.
  • Heavy weapons can kill fat enemies.
  • Every knife throw will kill fat enemies.
  • Thrown bladed weapons will always be lethal to normal enemies.

Hopefully these changes will give each weapon a sense of uniqueness past the novelty. Ultimately, much of them simply exist to increase immersion, and give the player a certain amount of variety (both aesthetic and mechanical) in completing each contract.

The interface has been entirely redesigned in order to meet the new aesthetic principles I sought to pursue with Midnight Animal. The interface is heavily inspired by modern typography and corporate aesthetic, and is clean, utilitarian, and minimal: at once informative, and unobtrusive. In creating the new interface, I identified the two main issues I had with the former UI:

• Enemies at the periphery of the screen often got obscured by the large and sometimes distracting HUD.
• The HUD itself contained unnecessary components such as the score, and oftentimes (particularly in the case of ammunition) was confusing because symbols were unclear.

Consequently, I made several major changes:

• I completely removed the score element from the game (no popups, no score display in the top-right corner), both to free up space, and because the score is entirely unnecessary. Some people use the score as a means of determining if they got a kill; in order to provide some kind of feedback, I added small impact sounds upon death, which play if the player gets a kill. These provide a more fluid, and natural confirmation that is integrated better within a diegetic context.
• I shifted everything to the bottom, since in almost every level, players will be moving from the bottom of the screen to the top, and this prevents enemies at the top of the screen from being obscured by the score or the combo. It also anchors the player's HUD to the bottom of the screen, and instead of looking left, the player will naturally shift her gaze downwards to view the UI; which in turn also subtly promotes environmental awareness, and helps deal with enemies that were otherwise previously not dealt with.
• Instead of using an ammo counter for guns, I opted to convert the ammo entirely to text, and have the current ammunition count be represented by an actual weapon icon. This makes sure the player knows exactly what weapon she is holding to minimise any possibility of confusion (for example, in HM2, the 9mm handgun and the submachine guns all held the same ammo icon, which was confusing for me on more than one occasion). This icon will also display for melee weapons (due to the changes above, melee weapons each have special properties now, so distinguishing between them could be potentially vital during a playthrough), sans ammunition counter.
• The fonts have been updated to be easily readable at even the slightest glance. I'm still having some issues with rendering the fonts smoothly, as seen below in the screenshot, but this isn't too big of an issue.

The current HUD looks like this:



(Note that this is just a mockup, and that the ammo counter doesn't actually represent the current situation at all.)


Now, you may be looking at that interface, and you may be thinking to yourself, that looks nothing like the Hotline Miami I know and love! And you may even be thinking, hey, in fact, doesn't that look awfully familiar? People have been asking about the aesthetic style of Midnight Animal for a while, and whether or not it will continue in the trend of the rest of the Hotline Miami series. The answer to this is, in case I somehow haven't yet made it abundantly clear, a firm and definite no. The 80s are over. There are no glittering synth glissandos; there are no palm trees; there's no Ferrari Testarossa to drive off into the burning neon sunset. Midnight Animal is not Hotline Miami - if you're looking for a good old-fashioned nostalgic time, the Hotline Miami Reddit community has produced some excellent work. Now that that's cleared up, I'll talk about what Midnight Animal does look like.

Midnight Animal is, at heart (or at least one aspect of its duplicitous, convoluted heart), a game about men (and women) in suits. Though it may not be apparent yet, really, it's a game about bureaucrats, and economists, politicians and executives pushing pieces around on a whiteboard and watching the pieces fall into place. The game, then, should reflect that: even amongst the grime, even amongst the filth, there is still a sense of control and refinement. A large part of the game takes place in dirty, lonely places; flooded shipping yards, condemned apartment blocks, derelict metro stations. Despite the absolute ruin of these haunted locales, John passes through them neither as a blind inhabitant, as the mute protagonist of Hotline Miami did, nor as a vengeful victim, as the many broken antiheroes of Hotline Miami 2 did; but as an assassin, a literal agent of strife sent with the very purpose of exacting glorious and devastating violence. Although he is by no means immune to the violence of the world in which he lives, John, through virtue of his profession and his status, is able to escape the violent geopolitical trap of the city itself, yet still stand at its gates, peering in - ready to strike whenever he is called upon, but always removed. He is in many more ways than one detached, and he carries with him the professional callousness of the politicians and businessmen to whom he answers. Although the smooth, airport-esque curves of the UI's type-face (Coolvetica RG, for the typographically curious) may seem initially jarring and even off-putting, standing at stark contrast with the abject violence it records, this is by no means accidental, but very deliberate, and deliberately alienating, and distancing.

On the other hand, Midnight Animal is also a game about a man struggling to find meaning in a world devoid of meaning, or sympathy. John is a man plagued by sadness; born and raised in an era of calamitous change, haunted by a history of violence, John's anger and melancholy has manifested physically in the world of Midnight Animal. Inspired by Silent Hill 2, and the notion of a world in which an individual's pain, suffering and pathos can be so powerful as to change the very constitution of the world in which they live, I wanted to explore the concept of Miami as not just a city doomed by its own troubled history, but as a psychogeographical canvas for each one of its inhabitants, whose individual agonies and melancholies have, catalysed by decades of civil unrest and strife, become inextricably interwoven into the very psychosphere of the city itself. Consequently, in Midnight Animal, which is primarily the story of John, the world appears as a manifestation of his sadness, and his pain: Miami, to John, is a city of Cimmerian shadows and perpetual rain, desaturated and faded, drained of colour and will to survive.

In more casual news, as the semester comes to an end and summer rapidly approaches, a lot of time is opening up in my schedule, which means that very soon, I'll find myself with a lot of free time. I plan on dedicating most of this time to finishing up Midnight Animal and making it as good as possible; while there may be some features which may have been a bit too ambitious for the August release date (executions for all weapons is looking a bit unfeasible at the moment), the bulk of the game should be finished upon release date, with any extra or miscellaneous stuff being added afterwards through seamless updates. I don't want to rush anything if it means that the quality will go down, so if it means a dozen or so of the more esoteric weapons are missing executions on release, I'm going to set my priorities straight, and you're going to have to deal with it.

In the meantime, I'm also looking for translators; whatever language you're willing to add, I'm willing to add it in if you're willing to provide a faithful and well-written translation. I won't have a completed script ready for translation until about mid-June or so; until then, please provide a translation of the Steam store page (can be found here), so that I can assess your abilities, and also have a bunch of translations for the Store page. If someone has already translated the language you want to, don't worry; I'm not a polylinguist in any sense, and any and all editing is more than welcome! If you can think of a more faithful or poetic way to say something, by all means, let me know. Anybody interested in translations can email me at spenceryan123@gmail.com.

A lot of people have been asking if they can get apparel or posters of the official artwork, and as promised, I've opened up a Society6 page where you can get whatever you want, from shirts to iPhone cases (exclusive to Apple, unfortunately) to wall prints to goddamn clocks(!) I specifically chose Society6 because I've heard from multiple reputable sources that their content is extremely high quality, and I can verify this personally. The prices are a bit high, and I apologise; I made them as low as possible, and I'm only making an average of $2.00 or so on each one, so if it's any ease to your mind, this is more for dedicated fans than as a means of profit for myself. Though if you are interested in supporting me financially, I definitely recommend you check out either my Patreon or my PayPal... ;)

Here's a picture of one my close friends wearing a shirt he and I designed together. If you're interested in download the full resolution image album, check out the Tools of the Trade album on Imgur.