HITMAN HD Trilogy


We ported IO Interactive’s hit stealth games Hitman 2: Silent Assassin and Hitman: Contracts from PC to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and HITMAN Blood Money from Xbox 360 to PlayStation 3.
These titles were released by Square Enix as HITMAN HD Trilogy, both on disc and as a downloadable title. We passed submission on the first try for all titles.
Our Contribution
We identified the technical heritage of three generations of HITMAN games and retrofitted them with a unified platform abstraction layer, taking care of things such as endian-swapping binary assets. All games are rendering at 1080p and with greater texture- and shadow map resolution at a rock-solid 30Hz. In order to achieve this, we emulated the DirectX 8 fixed function rendering pipeline with custom shaders on both platforms and re-implemented Blood Money’s animation system using the PS3’s SPUs. We revived the original tool-chain and re-packed upscaled textures. This came in handy when we fixed numerous game-breaking bugs present in every other released version of the game. We provided an advanced in-game camera mode to capture marketing footage at increased resolutions and in slow-motion. Finally, we introduced Achievements and Trophies to the older games in the series.
All images © IO Interactive
