Silent Hill HD Collection ported from unfinished code
As nonsensical as a Silent Hill puzzle.
Silent Hill HD Collection was ported from incomplete code, Konami has revealed.
Developer Hyjinx was forced to work with buggy code because Konami lost the final release version of the game, senior associate producer Tomm Hulett told 1up.
"We got all the source code that Konami had on file - which it turns out wasn't the final release version of the games!
"During debug we didn't just have to deal with the expected 'porting' bugs, but also had to squash some bugs that the original team obviously removed prior to release, but we'd never seen before."
He added: "I think at one point [Silent Hill 3 protagonist] Heather was blue."
Hulett blamed poor archiving for this impediment. "10 years ago, a lot of game companies assumed the games were 'done' once development finished, and that they wouldn't need to use that data ever again.
"Now it's clear that having all that data in an easy-to-manage format is important."
Due to the rough state of the source material's code, it took Hyjinx more than two years to develop Silent Hill HD Collection. "That's how long it took to make Silent Hill 2 in the first place," Hulett noted.
He stated that while Silent Hill HD Collection has numerous issues, there are plenty of enhancements he's proud of in the new version.
"There are a ton of details in the textures of SH2 and 3 that are impossible to see on the console originals, so the artists at Hijinx took extra time looking at every texture and making sure these details stand out. They range from puzzle clues written on objects to odd scratches covering a wall. It's great finally being able to see all these things that the original team included but have never been seen by a lot of gamers." We assume he's not referring to telephone wires that end in midair.
Despite this, Hulett is not happy with the final conversion, and is working closely with Hyjinx to release updates to address the numerous complaints made by fans.
"After our initial patch, I played through Silent Hill HD Collection armed with righteous indignation and internet complaint threads. I made a list of every issue I could find. Hijinx is hard at work addressing as many of those issues as is feasible given our resources."