HI all,

I have recently obtained a copy of the 2004 PC version of Hitman: Contracts, which is hands down one of my favorite games of all time & in my opinion the best of the entire series. There doesnt seem to be much in the way of mods available online, but a few methods do exist to improve graphics & add in some nice touches to the gameplay.

I will try to get it as impressive looking as possible on my own set up, which will be trail & error until I can find a balance between performance & ascetics. I want to share my experience on this forum for anyone else to reference in the future.

My PC set up consists of:

• Lenovo Thinkcentre M93P SFF desktop computer
• Windows 10 Pro (64 bit)
• Intel i5 4570 (quad core 3.2GHz)
• 8GB RAM (DDR3)
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 LP graphics card (4GB GDDR5)

 

[iamisaac]

Looking forward to see how this goes. I enjoy the newer hitman games but hard a hard time trying to go back and play the others as they felt dated.

 

[hooky1992]

First off, I wanted to increase available RAM to 4GB from 2GB, so used this: https://ntcore.com/?page_id=371

Next up was sorting out the controls, as this PC version of the game has no support for joypads:

To achieve this I used Xpadder controller emulator (https://www.moddb.com/downloads/hitman-contracts-controller-support). This allows you to capture various buttons / sticks on your joypad & then map keyboard / mouse controls to each. It has the ability to save multiple joypads & multiple profiles too, so you can save new default controls for each game in your collection. Here is a good video explaining the process:




So first off I added in a controller & various buttons / sticks, then saved it

Then, I mapped whatever keyboard / mouse items I needed to each joypad control & saved that

This is what I ended up with:

When I launched the game none of the controls worked .... It seems running the game as Administrator was causing the issue. To disable it, right click the desktop shortcut & untick the option in the Compatibility tab. Then when I opened the game again all worked as expected !

I had all the graphics settings pumped up to the max, and although the game ran smoothly Agent 47 seemed to be walking / running slower than I remember him in the console version of the game. Also the FPS was running ridiculously high, so my next problem to solve is to get FPS locked to 60:

Stay tuned

 

[hooky1992]

To lock the game at 60fps, I used RivaTuner Statistics Server (https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Glossary:Frame_rate_(FPS)#Universal_solution) which has the option to specific apply settings Globally (i.e.) to every gane it detects running, or to individual games as required. Very simple to set up, just set 'Framerate limit' to 60 & let it run in the background. After game launch Agent 47 ran at normal speed& FPSnever got higher than 60.

We have the ability to improve the visuals by tweaking the .ini file too. I would advise making a copy & saving on Desktop, incase you end up breaking something and the game wont load. It is located in this folder location.

C:\GOG Games\Hitman - Contracts\HitmanContracts.ini

One value that caught my eye was 'Resolution 1024x768' , which I changed to the HD standard of "Resolution 1920x1080"

On game load we can see the jagged lines that usually go down Agent 47s arms have disappeared ! Is worth noting that in the above screenshot we can see the entire H.U.D , however on my 32 inch TV the bottom left & top right was slightly cut off (the health bar was all off screen except for a tiny sliver). I will be trying out a graphics upgrade soon that should eliminate tweaking the .ini resolution & will do a follow up post explaining how to get it working.

Before we leave the .ini file there are a few more interesting modifications we can try out ... cheat menus !

There a 3 methods of activating cheats in game:

• menu UI
• console cmd line
• scroll lock

Here is a video giving a good run down of the methods & the actual cheats too:





For all methods, we first add two lines to end of hitmancontracts.ini & save:

ENABLECONSOLE 1
ENABLECHEATS 1

menu UI
-------------
In game, we click Shift & Escape buttons together to open the cheat menu

console cmd line
--------------------------
In game, we click the button under Escape with 3 symbols to open the console. Nav through options with Tab, then put in 1 & click Enter to apply the cheat

Scroll Lock
--------------------------
In game, we click the Scroll Lock button to open the Debug menu



To unlock all the game levels, I went through all levels & applied "end level" code so I instantly completed the mission.
Alternatively, for an actual level select menu you can modify the HitmanContracts.ini file like this:

change "DefaultScene=AllLevels\Logos.gms" to "DefaultScene=AllLevels\LevelMenu.gms" and save the file.

Now when you start up the game, a menu showing a list of all the missions will appear.


To get all weapons in the training level, start it & then enable the "end level" code. You will complete it with a "Silent Assassin" rank. Choose the training level again, and all the weapons in the game will be unlocked in the weapons storage area.

 

[hooky1992]

I found a blog post (https://helixmod.blogspot.com/2017/11/hitman-contracts.html) that claimed to have a '3D vison fix', that:
- Stereoized bloom
- Disabled distant "shadow/fog" at a fixed distance from the character

For this I needed to download & extract some files (https://s3.amazonaws.com/masterotaku/Hitman+Contracts/Hitman_Contracts_3D_Vision_fix.7z) to the game folder & use it in conjunction with a program named dgVoodoo2.

dgVoodoo2 (https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/DgVoodoo_2) is a legacy DirectX and 3DFX Glide wrapper program. The purpose of this software is to translate or wrap function calls to old, legacy graphics API functions into calls to the much more modern Direct3D 11. In other words, it acts as a translator, changing old games to run with newer, modern graphics techniques (https://www.play-old-pc-games.com/compatibility-tools/dgvoodoo-tutorial/).

I downloaded the latest version of dgVoodoo 2 (https://github.com/dege-diosg/dgVoodoo2/releases) and from inside its "MS" x86 folder, I copy "D3D8.dll", "D3DImm.dll" and "DDraw.dll" into the Hitman game folder.

I then copied the actual dgVoodooCpl.exe into the Hitman game folder & ran it from there This will create a config file that will control the graphics improvements implemented by the other 3 files. Make sure you save config file in game folder too:

I pumped up all the settings to the maximum values (I think ....), here is what I saved:

Please note I left the "dgVoodoo Watermark" setting ON so I could tell if I was infact being applied in game. This can be switched OFF t a later stage.

When I played the game the difference was immediate, almost all jagged edges on screen were eliminated when Agent 47 moves. A good example are the neon signs in Slaying A Dragon:

Here is what it looks like without the dgVoodoo applied, check out the yellow sign on the middle left:

To be honest I cannot see much of a difference regarding the fog fix mentioned in the blog post, I even modified the value in the d3dx.ini file & it looked exactly the same:

;Disabled close distance fog. 1=disabled fog. 0=enabled fog.
z1=0

Perhaps because I have applied higher settings it was fixed by that ? Here is the draw distance fog with it set to disabled:

Thats about it for the time being regarding graphics improvements. I had hoped to use Reshade (https://reshade.me/) to try out some nice lighting effects, but it seems it does not work so well with this game (https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/ReShade):

Happy gaming