On the future of Hotline Miami Redux.

It's been quite some time since I've publicly talked about this project.

Whenever someone contacted me directly and sincerely asked me about what my plans with Redux were over the last few years I've always been straightforward and given answers that were accurate at the time of each response, but I feel the need to write this entry so that there is one public and easily accessible article addressing this issue as of early 2023.

But first, some background...

Hotline Miami Redux was a mod I made when I was 16 years old with the help of a very talented group of friends I had at the time who collaborated by making artwork, sprites, sound effects, level design and many more things. We had a group chat called Tokyo Team. This sort of group chat / development team was born out of dissatisfaction regarding how long it took for Hotline Miami mods to release (some of which was aimed at some of our very own projects at the time).

We released a demo of a Hotline Miami 1 mod called Tokyo 2041 back in 2017. The goal of this project was to develop a total conversion mod in a week. It was well received by the community at the time.

A lot of us in the group thought it would be cool to bring over some of the features of Hotline Miami 2 to the first game and so we started working on what would become Redux. I was very pushy when it came to releasing the project as soon as possible, aware of its bugs and flaws, because I didn't want to add another mod to the ever growing pile of unfinished Hotline Miami projects stuck in development limbo. In my mind, it was better to release something bad with the potential to improve it later than to release nothing at all. Specially since it was just a free mod we were making for fun.

In some ways, I think I was right about this.

The community didn't like it. One of the early comments I got that really stuck with me to this day was someone saying I ruined Hotline Miami. I think it's awesome to receive any sort of criticism and feedback and I'm extremely grateful to have released something that caught people's attention the way Redux did. As a creator this is the best thing that can happen when it comes to helping you get better at your craft and build a thicker skin (haha...) and as such I don't regret releasing Redux one bit.

The vision I had for Redux initially, when I had that mentality of "it's better to release something bad than nothing at all"; was for the mod to potentially be something I could update weekly with improvements and suggestions from the community (hence things like the e-mail address where bugs could be reported).

But what I honestly didn't expect and I wasn't really prepared for was how big the mod got right away at the very beginning. People were commenting about it everywhere and multiple YouTube videos were being released all at the same time (which in tone, were a lot more cynical rather than critical). At the time this was just too much for me and as a result I distanced myself from Hotline modding for a few months in order to sort of take it all in and regain my senses.

The issue was that when I was finally ready to work on Hotline stuff again, too much time had passed and I felt like I had to release a big, flashy, content-heavy update to make it up to people for the wait and silence.

The future.

I really, really did try to make that work. I got very far into developing a more optimized Redux running on a newer version of GameMaker, with far less bugs and a lot more features. The issue was I never managed to get it into a state where I felt "This is something I can give to people to make it up to them".

Now one thing I need to point out is: I'm not a kid anymore.

I'm an adult with responsibilities and I work as a game developer. That is where I want to pour all of my effort and time into because it's what makes me feel fulfilled, happy and like I'm giving people something of value.

However, Hotline Miami is something that I am extremely passionate about, in particular when it comes to working with its code.

Over the past few months, I've been working on optimizing Hotline's code to make mod development easier, this project can be found over at https://github.com/Pi0h1/HotlineMiami.gmx and you can track its progress on its Trello Board. (Whenever I remember updating it lol.)

I'm working on this project purely as a side thing for fun on my free time whenever I get into a Hotline modding kick. Just like I've always done with my Hotline projects.

Beyond optimizing the code for mod development, I'm also working on adding quality of life features to the game, such as support for higher refresh rates, proper controller support using GameMaker's built-in functions, 3D environmental audio (think a radio playing music that gets louder as the character gets closer to it) and a volume slider for sound effects.

I'm also doing a lot of the invisible work needed to make adding new playable characters, enemy factions, weapons, levels, etc. a lot easier by untangling Hotline Miami's 11 year old spaghetti code and adding debugging tools that allow you to quickly test out new features.

Hotline Miami 1's code was written for a game that had to be released in 9 months, it wasn't written with the intention of providing a community with modding tools to allow them to release projects for years to come. It's necessary to clean it up if I want to continue doing this.

Once I have this proper base I can build off of, I can use this source code not just with the intention of developing more stable and feature-rich Hotline Miami mods, but also to make this process a lot more easy and less time-consuming. I find the latter to be really important, as for me developing Hotline mods is just a fun hobby when I'm tired of working on games and I want to keep it as such.

My plan is to incorporate some of the features I like from Redux into the project, things such as hard mode, Hotline Miami 2's weapons, or the Hotline Miami 2-style sprites on a separate optional branch, and as such organically end up developing a stable and content-rich "Redux 2.0" without any unnecessary pressure.

When will this be finished/released?

I don't know.

What I do know is that I'm more likely to want to work on a project like this as long as I keep it fun and engaging for myself and I don't think about it as something I owe people, which is how I have been feeling about Redux since its release and why I haven't been able to get the project to a state I'm satisfied with.

That's all for now. Take care,

Pi0h1.