This guide requires you to have some knowledge of preexisting modding techniques, at least the basics, why does it require that? Because I'm far too lazy to rewrite everything that has been written before, read these guides if you're new to this stuff.

This probably has everything you need... Probably.
https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=676175384

While I think I'm the first to discover most of the things in this guide, or at least find ways to put them to use, it is entirely possible that I'm wrong, I haven't caught up with the modding scene in a while, at the very least I'm pretty sure a lot of this has not been documented very well.

For the love of god put this stuff to use and make something innovative, the reason I'm making this whole thing is because I'm annoyed by most of the community for not actively trying to make anything innovative, be ambitious and aim for the stars ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥!

While this specifically has been known for a while, to my knowledge no one has ever put them to actual use, aside from myself, if I'm wrong feel free to prove me wrong. Through the use of these flame throwing turrets, and a player character that cannot attack, you can make a level where the player must rely on these flame turrets to kill all of the enemies in a level.

Replace an object in Notepad++ with these fancy numbers
(-1, 325)
Replace the character with any that cannot attack
Make sure the enemy faction consists of soldiers
And by doing this, you've turned HLM2 into a strange immolation themed puzzle game, congrats!

https://youtu.be/l-89JrH_xco

Note and Bonus: The fire sprites can be changed in the effects spite sheet, and those glass walls, "makeupmirrors" or something I think they're called, function as walls, but can be broken with a gunshot, I find them extremely useful for adding new ways to traverse a level, ♥♥♥♥♥♥ use em

Through the use of cutscenes, you can convert the ammo supply of nearly any weapon, to that of piercing bullets, this can function as a power up the player can collect part way through a level, or work in a power trip level.

Either you can have a set up where a player walks into a cutscene which converts whatever weapon they have into this piercing ammo supply of omega deth
Or you can have the player spawn as Mark, or The Son with dual wielded MP5s, and grant them with this piercing ammo supply that makes them nigh unstoppable.

This is all done by just having the player walk through a cutscene that changes their sprite to that of a player holding a magnum revolver, that's it, it basically works the same as the 30 round double barrel shotgun trick

Remember to use creativity and imagination when utilizing this, you can resprite that magnum player sprite into anything you want, could be a piercing laser LMG that eats the ammo of your original gun, could just be a normal old LMG the player is given

https://youtu.be/3LeKkO9-rbM

There's a sprite called "Noise" in the files, use it, you can do cool ♥♥♥♥ like this... That's all really, there's not much to this one...

Like, just edit the image called "sprNoise.png" and you can do this, I think the colors of it are inverted once put in game, so you might have to do some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ around with it before you get it right... But once you do get it right, you can overlay whatever pattern you want on top of the gameplay, have fun with that!

Although like, if you do it too hard, it might obstruct gameplay... So you mightttt want to not do that

Note: I entirely forgot who made this level, or what this level is, but it was a good level, sorry that I can't credit whoever made it

https://youtu.be/RCKwxwK-m48

Basically by spawning the weapon table and making sure the player isn't able to reach the weapons you don't want them to have, you can make Nicke have an upgrade in weaponry, and full ammo refill, as the level goes on.

Here's a diagram showing how to do it, because I don't have an already made video from like a year ago demonstrating it.

It's a simple cool idea I haven't seen someone use before... Go nuts.

This contains the somewhat unstable/untested tricks that I have not put thorough use into, I hope you can be as ambitious as I and find some uses for these.

1. Sticky floors
I discovered this entirely through a ♥♥♥♥ up, I do not know how they work, I do not know why they work, I do not know how stable they are, all I know is that there's a way to make hard to traverse flooring that makes the player struggle to get through.

Replace some object with (2491, 1398) and you'll get this illusive floor hazard, it could be used to represent barbed wire, bushes, webs, dimensional rifts, whatever you want, all I know is that it ♥♥♥♥♥ with player movement in a certain area of space.

2. Hybrid characters

Through using a cutscene to transform one character with abilities into another, you get to have the abilities of both characters. For example, you could combine Tony and Corey together to get a one hit punching player that can also roll.

You'd do this by spawning as Tony or Corey, and then using a cutscene to change their sprite to that of the other, there may be a specific order to doing this that I have long forgotten.

I do not know the full extents of this technique, but I do know its downfall... If you ever execute an enemy in this hybrid state, the player will revert back their original form.



By the way, you can totally take the tile sheet from a different game, and shove it into Hotline Miami 2, have fun with that, it's really cool looking sometimes.

It's been a long time since I've really been into modding this game, and I've known about all of this stuff for years, and only ever told a few people about it. Hopefully, now that I've made this guide in a couple hours, all of thee will go on and make something new, something creative with new twists on gameplay.

All of you are free to contact me in some way, showing whatever you've made with this stuff, or asking some questions about it... Although entirely fair warning, this is all information that hasn't been fresh in my mind for a very long time, it's been forever since I've tested any of it, and there's probably some stuff I'm forgetting.

I just hope that some of you will go out there and use this stuff to make something new, even gimmicky if it has to be.