View Full Version : Unofficial Vampire Bloodlines v1.9 Patch
Evil Avatar
12-06-2005, 02:31 PM
An updated, uncorrupted and unofficial v1.9 patch file is now available for Troika's long abandoned (by the publisher at least) Source-engine RPG, Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.
Mirrors:
Worthplaying (http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=30358)
3D Gamers (http://www.3dgamers.com/news/more/1096483498/)
You have to wonder how Valve feels about the first non-Valve Source engine game getting dropped on the market as a buggy nearly unplayable POS and then the Publisher and Developer just abandoning it? Not the kind of thing that helps sell engine licenses, that is for sure.
jacob.armitage
12-06-2005, 02:34 PM
it was a great game if you could get past that though. And it wasnt the Developers fault really, if i remember the story correctly, but the publishers.
PIPBoy3000
12-06-2005, 02:36 PM
Calling it a POS is a bit much. There were some bad bugs, which was the worst of it. The very end of the game was also very combat-heavy and the conclusion was a bit odd.
Still the beginning of the game was stunning and the voice acting combined with facial animations were perfection. It also had one of my favorite levels in nearly any game I've played - the haunted mansion at the beach. Very creepy.
lpmiller
12-06-2005, 02:41 PM
while I'd agree the publisher abandoned it, it's not fair to say the dev did, since they went belly up. Abandoning it and closing your doors aren't quite the same thing.
Best RPG game in the last two years. Never ran into a problem after the first official patch.
But people trying to spark reactions can say what they want. Troika made games that were fun, even if they needed patching, while just about everyone else put out a graphical remake of games from the 90's.
Now there's one less of those few companies that took risks and actually made refreshingly good games(disclaimer: post patch). And people out there cheer that fact and then over hype and parade the clones we've all played before. Take a bow.
Buggy, yes, unplayable, not quite, and piece of shit? hardly, it was one of the best games of last year.
I was under the impression that some Ex-Troika members were involved in the unoffical patch?
it was a great game if you could get past that though. And it wasnt the Developers fault really, if i remember the story correctly, but the publishers.
Given Troika's history, from Fallout to Vampire, I think it's safe to blame them ;). They spent more time on the gameplay than anyone else and the technical side suffered.
Was always a fair tradeoff in my opinion. Maybe they could of released the Fallouts in perfect condition by spending more time tuning the code and squashing bugs, which would likely of led to a now forgotten game not of the legendary status they are considered now.
I'm not spreading this leeway to all the buggy and trashy games out there.
WastelandDan
12-06-2005, 02:53 PM
There were parts of the game that were great and then there were parts that went nowhere. I was really looking forward to something more open ended but the scope of the game was very limited. The zones you could visit were small and there wasn't a lot to explore, and I felt like most of the game was very slipshod. It was just a huge disappointment for me.
GrinR
12-06-2005, 03:03 PM
There were parts of the game that were great and then there were parts that went nowhere. I was really looking forward to something more open ended but the scope of the game was very limited. The zones you could visit were small and there wasn't a lot to explore, and I felt like most of the game was very slipshod. It was just a huge disappointment for me.
LOL IDIOT.
(sometimes it's not even worth it to spark up the ole thought-factory.)
nonchalance
12-06-2005, 03:11 PM
Given Troika's history, from Fallout to Vampire, I think it's safe to blame them ;). They spent more time on the gameplay than anyone else and the technical side suffered.
Agreed.
From Fallout, to Arcanum, to Vampire, every Troika game I played had an amazing story and very good gameplay mechanics - but technically they're poor, and their QA was shit.
Arcanum, for example, had a bug where if you took a certain background option at character creation, fifty-five hours down the track (on the good path) you got stuck and it was impossible to go further. I was pretty fucking pissed off when I ran into that one, let me tell you.
Citizen Philip
12-06-2005, 03:35 PM
I agree, EA you're being too critical, Troika tended to trade technical stability for amazing gameplay. A bad game does not get +5 fan based patches if the underlying structure wasn't worth working on.
Troika was a company in dire need of more time and funding. Still a shame about them going under.
Liquidize105
12-06-2005, 03:59 PM
The question is why do they have to "trade" stability for gameplay?
Bushido
12-06-2005, 04:01 PM
I dont think its fair to say that Vampires sucks. The game was terrific and even after it got a stake to the heart, the fans have resurected it. Troika made many excellent games and it I dont like hearing fallout just because the company was just a little long in the tooth.
The game didn't perform -great- on my rig, but crashes were rare - the worst problem was just a lot of slowdown in high-poly areas. Nor did I remember any significant gameplay bugs.
As much as I hate sounding like a fanboy, it was a lot of fun. One of the better first-person RPGs in the last few years.
The question is why do they have to "trade" stability for gameplay?
Because they don't have an unlimited flow of time and money? Every game makes that tradeoff.
AversionFX
12-06-2005, 04:23 PM
Best RPG game in the last two years. Never ran into a problem after the first official patch.
Anybody who says that any "RPG game" was the best one of the last two years has 0 credit.
I hated the game, personally. It simply wasn't fun.
The feeling's mutual. Enjoy Dungeon Siege 2 or whatever FF clone is all the rage these days.
Suicidal ShiZuru
12-06-2005, 04:25 PM
The question is why do they have to "trade" stability for gameplay?
Ill take my 50+ hours of fine gameplay with a few minor problems inbetween or a massive one somewhere, over a bug free game thats mediocre, or even great, but lasts only 10 hours and has one story path.
Liquidize105
12-06-2005, 04:28 PM
Because they don't have an unlimited flow of time and money? Every game makes that tradeoff.
That's no excuse for poor management. Troika has got to be the only dev that I've heard of who trades one essential element of the game for another essential element.
Mason
12-06-2005, 04:32 PM
Couldn't be less correct, Evil. After a company has made a certain number of infamously buggy games, you can't really keep blaming it on their engines.
There is not a game engine in existence that prevents you from writing a buggy game on it, if you're so inclined. Now, HL2 doesn't have the pretty abstraction layer that something like Unreal Engine has, so one could argue that it lets incompetent developers shoot themselves more accurately in the foot. But that abstraction comes with overhead and its own bugs, so you have to pick your poison.
But that wasn't really relevant here. As I understand it, the showstopping bugs in Vampire were in Troika's scripting (hence the patches, they aren't unofficially patching the engine unless they're really, really good with assembler), so to draw conclusions from that regarding the quality of HL2's engine is not logically sound.
That's no excuse for poor management. Troika has got to be the only dev that I've heard of who trades one essential element of the game for another essential element.
I'm not sure I grasp your thought process. You figure companies just keep throwing time and money at every aspect of the game until it's perfect, and Troika can't because of management issues? There's no need to allocate the resources you have to different aspects of game development?
I mean I don't know anything specific to game development, but I'd imagine basic project management applies to pretty much everything.
MasterKwan
12-06-2005, 04:45 PM
People who expect commercial software to run on every PC are dreaming. As a developer, I find 90-95% to be a decent number. It's what I shoot for. Some people I just have to suggest a windows re-install and a copy of memtest. Many PC's are simply too loaded down and messed up to run some software. People have hardware problems and they don't even notice or do anything about. PC's crash once a day? They just blame windows when in fact they have hardware or driver problems. So, when I read about buggy games, I take it with a grain of salt. Just because it doesn't run right for you, doesn't mean it won't work on my (pathologically) clean PC.
I thought the game was amazing and I had no problems running it whatsoever. It was the best RPG I've played since Deus Ex.
aversion2k
12-06-2005, 04:47 PM
I hated the game, personally. It simply wasn't fun.
Aversion 2k dissagrees with Aversion Fx!
I thought it was a great game, it had some bugs and the guns sucked, but it was a great game. Good fun and not unplayable at all.
Liquidize105
12-06-2005, 04:47 PM
I'm not sure I grasp your thought process. You figure companies just keep throwing time and money at every aspect of the game until it's perfect, and Troika can't because of management issues? There's no need to allocate the resources you have to different aspects of game development?
I mean I don't know anything specific to game development, but I'd imagine basic project management applies to pretty much everything.I don't know what the milfunction at Troika was, building one buggy mess after another. Your "limited resources" excuse is a matter of looking at the shopping list of games Troika has managed to "trade stability for gameplay."
But wait a second! Don't you need stability for gameplay? And isn't gameplay, like graphics, audio, and art a part of the whole, all of which which rest on top of software stability?
RIP
They also built one AAA game after another. Yes you had to wait for a patch. Yes it was worth it. I think I've covered this. Some of the best RPG's ever created for the PC were released by the Troika team, I never had a problem waiting for a patch to play them.
Really there's a laundry list of games that were nearly unplayable at launch(Deus Ex comes to mind) but turned into some of the best games ever. Cake tradeoff to me.
And as I said, this does not extend to crap games that would still be crap with no bugs.
Mason
12-06-2005, 04:53 PM
I mean I don't know anything specific to game development, but I'd imagine basic project management applies to pretty much everything.
Umm, I'd say that scoping your game so that all of it can have sufficient QA is the very definition of project management. That's an immutable cost, cutting down on it to expand other areas of your game is just not professional.
Everyone describes the game as having a great and engrossing intro, which then degenerates into bugs and long stretches of repetitive combat (which breaks the symmetry of the RPG system). That indicates a lack of planning and an unrealistic initial scope.
Maybe their publisher screwed up what would've been an otherwise flawless game, maybe 4 RAID arrays died simultaneously and their shining work on the last levels had to be replaced with Halo-esque gameplay, maybe their QA team got into Everquest. We'll never know. But you can't claim that the bugs and the ambitious design had to go hand-in-hand.
I agree, they allocated far less than optimal to QA and more to gameplay(and I haven't seen this "everyone").
The outcome was a FAIR TRADE OFF. I guess I just don't(and never will) get you guys who'd prefer a bugfree average game to a buggy, eventually fixed, great game. So it's not worth arguing anymore I suppose.
Liquidize105
12-06-2005, 04:57 PM
Some of us would look at it like this: They built some okay-good games which had the right ingredients and could've been blockbusters had they worked on day 1.
From the RIP=Troika angle, stability really is the botton of the bottonline.
And others think they may not of had all those ingredients if they spent more time getting it to work on day 1.
From the RIP=Troika angle, stability really is the botton of the bottonline.
Possibly, I don't really think so though, maybe sped of the inevitiable. Their games don't really have mass market appeal. I wonder if they would still be around even if they were perfect on release.
nonchalance
12-06-2005, 05:03 PM
And others think they may not of had all those ingredients if they spent more time getting it to work on day 1.
I disagree.
They needed to hire one or two really good additional QA people, and one more programmer dedicated to bug fixing, and they'd still exist today, and their games would have been no worse off for it.
I disagree.
They needed to hire one or two really good additional QA people, and one more programmer dedicated to bug fixing, and they'd still exist today, and their games would have been no worse off for it.
Can't disagree with that. That's a money thing though. I'd imagine if it was as simple as inviting a few guys to show up and work it would of been done.
nonchalance
12-06-2005, 05:12 PM
Can't disagree with that. That's a money thing though. I'd imagine if it was as simple as inviting a few guys to show up and work it would of been done.
And this is why I point the finger of blame for both Bloodlines' problems and Troika's demise square at Activision. You have to spend money to make money, and if they'd given it an extra couple hundred grand in funding, it could have been a GOTY contender.
Ditto Arcanum.
That kind of ties in with my thoughts on Troika games just not being broadly appealing. If that was the case then Activision would of been trying to keep the budget down and I'm not business savvy enough to comment on that. I try to avoid blaming the publisher for stuff like this, it's just to easy a hole to fall in.
Seems to me RPG's don't sell anymore based on gameplay alone. If they could of gotten away with it Troika would of been better off in the 2d world (in my opinion).
Kelegacy
12-06-2005, 05:31 PM
Best RPG game in the last two years. Never ran into a problem after the first official patch.
But people trying to spark reactions can say what they want. Troika made games that were fun, even if they needed patching, while just about everyone else put out a graphical remake of games from the 90's.
Now there's one less of those few companies that took risks and actually made refreshingly good games(disclaimer: post patch). And people out there cheer that fact and then over hype and parade the clones we've all played before. Take a bow.
Kelegacy hearts Troika, may they rest in peace. Arcanum 2 would have been damn tasty. I've been thinking of Arcanum A LOT these days, for some reason. I might need to reinstall it.
The Iron Weasel
12-06-2005, 05:39 PM
Kelegacy hearts Troika, may they rest in peace. Arcanum 2 would have been damn tasty. I've been thinking of Arcanum A LOT these days, for some reason. I might need to reinstall it.
What was Arcanum about, it looked very different and cool, but I never played it.
Kelegacy
12-06-2005, 05:42 PM
What was Arcanum about, it looked very different and cool, but I never played it.
A fantasy RPG that took place during an Industrial Revolution, with trains and guns, zepplins and crude planes, and all that jazz. Much different than the average RPG setting. The Orcs, Gnomes, Dwarves and Elves all made this interesting, coexisiting in a world that was becoming modernized.
The Iron Weasel
12-06-2005, 05:47 PM
A fantasy RPG that took place during an Industrial Revolution, with trains and guns, zepplins and crude planes, and all that jazz. Much different than the average RPG setting. The Orcs, Gnomes, Dwarves and Elves all made this interesting, coexisiting in a world that was becoming modernized.
Very cool, does it work under XP?
Leaving Hope
12-06-2005, 05:48 PM
Troika faced some problems when Half Life 2 was delayed for over a year. Their game was finished, but they were forced to shelve it until Half Life 2 came out. That can't be healthy for any company.
I've enjoyed all of the Masquerade games. Game of the Year--I don't know. But I think they were interesting and innovative, especially if you liked the genre. I believe we're much worse off when any innovator goes out of business.
Kelegacy
12-06-2005, 05:49 PM
Very cool, does it work under XP?
Not sure, haven't played it for years. Probably back on Win 98. Still, I wouldn't see why it wouldn't.
Pretty sure it works on XP, I think I went back and played it under XP a year ago. Not sure if I had to play games to make it work. I know I got Fallout1 and 2 to work on XP and Arcanum is based on the same engine.
Basically, on top of what Kelegacy said, it played like Fallout on steroids. While it didn't use the SPECIAL skill system it used a custom made one that was very very in depth and cool. SPECIAL and the Arcanum skill models are the top two ever. Not sure what the licensing issues are, but I wish we would see them again.
nonchalance
12-06-2005, 06:12 PM
Very cool, does it work under XP?
Definitely. I reinstalled it to give it another run about a month ago, but then got caught up in running a Dawn of War hex-pbem campaign.
Was an amazingly good game - but do not, under any circumstances, pick the character background that stops you wearing magical items ever.
Seriously, don't.
Very cool, does it work under XP?
It does, my brother still plays it.
edit:
But that wasn't really relevant here. As I understand it, the showstopping bugs in Vampire were in Troika's scripting
Yes. Troika fixed the single game breaking bug in the first patch (wherin the game crashed when you completed a particular objective), and most of the work done in the unofficial ones has been tweaking, fixing scripting issues (I never saw it, but an example is that apparently under the right conditions some characters could appear in a later level, even if you killed her previously) fixing typos, adjustments to quest rewards (some quests didn't give rewards as promised), etc. (look at the release notes)
thecrazyd
12-06-2005, 08:36 PM
Troika faced some problems when Half Life 2 was delayed for over a year. Their game was finished, but they were forced to shelve it until Half Life 2 came out. That can't be healthy for any company.
I've enjoyed all of the Masquerade games. Game of the Year--I don't know. But I think they were interesting and innovative, especially if you liked the genre. I believe we're much worse off when any innovator goes out of business.
Umm... the game was clearly not finished.
The Iron Weasel
12-06-2005, 08:38 PM
Umm... the game was clearly not finished.
Thats the thing that always confused me, why didn't they just polish the fuck outta that thing? :confused:
Chill
12-06-2005, 08:46 PM
Aww, I missed another Vampire patch thread. What are we up to? 3, or maybe 4 threads?
Well, I loved Vampire. Played it to completion a few times and had few issues with it. While certainly not a perfect game, it did enough right to make an amazing game.
Chill
12-06-2005, 08:51 PM
Thats the thing that always confused me, why didn't they just polish the fuck outta that thing? :confused:
As said earlier in the thread, they closed shop right after release. Only if Vampire sold a ton of copies extremely fast would they've been able to stay open, and maybe not even after that. The decision to close was obviously made during the dev cycle for Vampire. The publisher just wanted to release the game to recoup on some of the investment. I guess we could be lucky the game was released at all.
The Iron Weasel
12-06-2005, 08:56 PM
As said earlier in the thread, they closed shop right after release. Only if Vampire sold a ton of copies extremely fast would they've been able to stay open, and maybe not even after that. The decision to close was obviously made during the dev cycle for Vampire. The publisher just wanted to release the game to recoup on some of the investment. I guess we could be lucky the game was released at all.
But they had so much time with the HL2 delays! Why didn't they just optomise and bug fix till they had a really clean working game!?!
Citizen Philip
12-06-2005, 09:15 PM
But they had so much time with the HL2 delays! Why didn't they just optomise and bug fix till they had a really clean working game!?!
Let's assume they had 10 programmers and artists, let's say they worked for $40k with no benefits. Basic math puts that a price tag of close to $130 000 per month, excluding paying for software, hardware, office space, utilties.
If the company had no money, they couldn't afford to do anything with it. Perhaps a number of the employees were contract that left them with a core skeleton crew after the project was over (the year before the game was released). Maybe after the game creation cycle was finished Activision "owned" it and it was official removed from Trokia's systems until release, where it would run through an Activision QA cycle.
Maybe the year long wait for HL2 killed Trokia indirectly.
Who knows. I imagine it had to do with money and time. Not enough of one or the other, or both.
Mr.Zip
12-06-2005, 09:44 PM
Just want to say that I loved Vampire, and had very few problems with it. I don't know who it was earlier in the thread that said it was the best 1st person rpg that they have played since deus ex, but I agree. And Taco, you're the fucking man. Preach on.
The Iron Weasel
12-06-2005, 09:52 PM
Oh I loved the game, its just there were SOOO MANY BUGS. I'm quite happy that the community or ex-troika guys are fixing the game even after the companies unfortunate demise.
thecrazyd
12-06-2005, 10:17 PM
I probably would have liked it if it were possible for a non-combatant character to beat the game.
wow they're still making those patches? good on them.
The Iron Weasel
12-07-2005, 04:17 AM
I probably would have liked it if it were possible for a non-combatant character to beat the game.
Yeah the way the game plays it would be very difficult to beat it not being combat based.
[Jez]
12-07-2005, 05:31 AM
Bloodlines was a damn good game and everyone needs to have a game as a Malk.... 2005 has been such a sucky year for RPGs but the older stuff so I've been playing older games like Bloodlines and Anachronox though most of it... Luckly 2006 has some kickarse games.
Yes, everyone who hasn't played as a Malkavian, reinstall it, and play as one, the amount of changes made for it is amazing.
I can see a game like this taking years to make, the sheer amount of work put in is only really apparent when you play through as several different characters.
I totally agree about the last 3 levels though, it was really annoying that they simply dropped you into a big moster fight, especially after that fucking awesome werewolf bit.
1FSTCAT
12-07-2005, 08:09 AM
Troika built revolutionary games that were much larger in scope than your typical game. As was said, their games had 2 or 3 times the content than their competitions, but their publishers pushed them to equal the competition with their production money and release schedules.
Troika reminds me of Lionhead in many respects. They usually ended up with a revolutionary game that still needed lots of work after publishing, but was usually worth the effort. Fallout, Arcanum and Vampires were all excellent games that I enjoyed far more than many, less buggy, competing products.
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