UPDATE: Note that a few things have changed by now. There's now three Hitman games on here wihle when I first wrote this guide there was only one. I also wasn't aware of any good Glide wrappers at the time. Anyway, please don't expect this guide to be complete or correct anymore.

Being a huge Hitman fan I've spent quite some time to get the games to work on more modern computers and on that occasion I also discovered some other stuff. Anyhow, here's some basic stuff that should enhance your Hitman experience.


1. Choose OpenGL rendering (only Hitman: Codename 47, skip this step for Hitman 2)
Hitman: Codename 47 supports three different renderers. The only one that makes sense on modern computers is OpenGL as Hitman's Direct3D mode causes a lot of crashes and occasional graphics corruption and 3Dfx is simply unsupported by any modern hardware. You may use the configuration tool or the ingame options to change the renderer but you may also edit the hitman.ini file located in your game folder. In case you wish to edit the ini-file:
There are several lines starting with the word "DrawDLL", only one of them does not start with two slashes ("/") - make sure it's the one saying "RenderOpenGL.dll".

2. Activate Window Mode
Don't worry, running the game in window mode doesn't mean that you have to play it in a window - however, it will allow using ALT+TAB to switch to another program and to use any custom resolution you want. You can activate window mode through the game's configuration tool or by opening the hitman.ini file in your game folder and adding a line that says "window".

Note that in case of multiple screens the game will by default be displayed in the middle, spanning both screens. This problem can be circumvented by adding this line to the hitman.ini file (thanks to Toyla for this suggestion):

StartUpperPos 0,0

This will align the game to the left screen. If the screen you want to play the game on is the right one you may have to replace the first zero with the horizontal resolution of your left screen.

3. Custom / Widescreen Resolution
Once you've made sure that your game runs in windowed mode, you can choose any resolution you want - the game handles them very well. Most likely you will want to choose your system's desktop resolution. So open your hitman.ini file and look for a line that starts with "Resolution". Change the value that you find there to your desktop resolution (i.e. 1920x1080). This way the game will fill your whole screen without any stretching (so basically the game has native widescreen support). Note, however, that instead of expanding the FOV the game will crop the top and bottom of the screen. If you insist on avoiding this you will have to switch to a 4:3 resolution.

4. Slowing down the game
UPDATED:
As mentioned in the original guide, causing massive CPU stress while launching the game seems to fix all speed related issues that especially tend to occur on laptops. This has just gotten simpler than ever thanks to fellow GOGer ShedoSurashu who has made his custom launcher available to the community. You can download it from here:

Hitman: Codename 47 launcher by ShedoSurashu

Note that it only works for the first game, at least for now. For Hitman 2 and any other games that use the Glacier engine (such as Freedom Fighters) you will have to generate the CPU stress in another way, at least for now.

If the method mentioned above doesn't help: The game also features an internal solution for this problem but unfortunately it is hard to determine the right configuration and you will have to execute this method every time you enter a new map. The solution is a console command. Open the console using the tilde key. Enter "IP_TIMEMULTIPLIER" followed by a value. 1 stands for default speed, 0 for a total freeze. In my case 65% of the game's default speed seems to be approximately the right one, so I have to enter "IP_TIMEMULTIPLIER 0.65". Finding the right speed is only possible via trial and error.

5. Activating EAX (Enhanced Audio)
Windows Vista and Windows 7 do not support EAX but if you're a proud owner of a Creative Labs sound card from the X-Fi series you can still activate EAX by using a little tool called ALchemy. You can find it here:
ALchemy for X-Fi
Note that GOG's Hitman version may not be automatically recognized by ALchemy but you can still locate the game manually.

Anyhow, hope this helps someone.

If this helps out a LOT of people, it should end up being stickied. :)

Thanks for the comment. I just edited the post and added another tweak that addresses the game running too fast.

That works! Thank you so much!

I have a bug on Anathema where all the NPCs turn black randomly. is this because of bad openGL support or is there some option i can play with to fix it?

so far it's only happened on Anathema. so i'm not sure now. i'll look into it a little more.

Oh yeah, I should have put more emphasis on the fact that I'm talking about Hitman 1 here. In Hitman 2 you have to choose Direct3D as a renderer because the developers never finished the OpenGL support (which isn't officially even available for this game). Choosing OpenGL causes all characters to be completely black in most areas. It's a pity that the developers never added the OpenGL support in a patch, especially since it seems to eliminate all problems caused by too fast CPUs.

Fantastic, Hitman 1 looks alot better on my PC now, though I have a few questions:

1. The Field of View looks a bit "zoomed in" in Hitman 1, like I can see Agent 47 from his head down to just below his shoulders and that's all I can see of him. Is the game supposed to look this way?

2. I can't seem to use EAX on Hitman 1, I'm running Windows 7 64-bit, but it seems odd that you said Win 7 doesn't support EAX without a Creative sound card as i've just got done playing Thief Gold using EAX by installing OpenAL and without a Creative card. Should I try installing ALchemy to see if it will work with Hitman 1 anyways or would I be wasting my time?

I have not checked out any FOV options yet as everything seemed okay to me but yeah, the camera is generally extremely close to Agent 47. It's somewhat further away in the alternate controls/camera mode but that one is kinda awkward as it won't allow to use the mouse for turning the character.

I haven't tried Thief recently but I just read that one of the community patches emulates EAX through OpenAL. It seems that the version you have already comes along with that update.

It's also worth mentioning that there's a fair amount of games where the interface may suggest that EAX is supported and activated but you won't actually hear a difference unless you have the proper hardware.

And as for ALchemy - I have used it a lot and in my experience it won't work without a Creative soundcard (I would have noticed as I tested the stuff a lot last year - whenever I forgot to connect my external soundcard basically all games would automatically turn off EAX). But IIRC Hitman 1 does not make any good use of EAX anyway, it's more noticeable in Hitman 2, however.

I see, just wanted to confirm as the only Hitman games i've ever played were the console versions of 2 and Contracts, i've never played 1 until it came to GOG so i'm not familiar with it.

The EAX difference in Thief was pretty noticeable to me, though I didn't realize the fan patch emulated it so that makes sense.

Thanks for confirmation, i'll stick with the FOV as I really don't want to try and play this without mouse controls.

Hi,
I tried to play Hitman 2 in 1080p but it's nearly impossible. Framerate drops a lot.

Edit: Maybe we can shout at the eidos forum...
http://forums.eidosgames.com/showthread.php?p=1812360#post1812360