F4LL0UT: 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.
Thank you.
