Vampire: The masquerade patch

[Circlebreaker]

So Troika and Activision did come out with a patch. It doesn't fix anything, especially not the engine related problems, but there's still a lot of bugfixes.

You can get the patch here (http://www.3dgamers.com/games/vampirebloodlines/downloads/), and here's the patch notes:

FIXES IN THE PATCH

- Fixed C++ Runtime error on launch of the game due to older versions of Python interpreter.
- Fixed Invalid dialog responses due to older versions of Python interpreter.
- Fixed problem where keys and keycards may disappear from player’s inventory.
- Fixed problem where binding either Enter or Right Mouse Button to the Use key would cause the inventory window to immediately close after opening. These bindings are now no longer permitted.
- Added “Inventory Full – Items Dropped” message when player receives items beyond the inventory limit and added inspection particles to the dropped items. This addresses the issue with cameras being lost in the “Model Citizen quest.
- Fixed problem where a player would have both the vampire and warform models stuck together when both Fortitude and Protean (level 5) are activated.
- Fixed crash to desktop when the player returns to the boat after rescuing Johansen from the Society of Leopold.
- Fixed problem where the newspaper would report success in the “Model Citizen” quest even though the player had failed it.
- Fixed problem where the player can log on to the Theater computer before receiving the “Tangled Web” quest from Mitnick.
- Fixed problem with haven mailboxes not receiving award for completing the food critic quest. quest.
- Modified E dialog so that it is easier to receive the “Thinned Blood” quest.
- Modified Regent dialog so that he now recognizes completion of the Gargoyle quest.
- Modified Isaac dialog so that he now recognizes completion of the King’s Way and Gargoyle quests.

IMPORTANT NOTES

If you find that you are not accumulating experience points as you complete quests, this is because you have Auto-Level turned on and the game is automatically spending your experience points to improve your abilities and attributes. To disable Auto-Level, access the Character Sheet and click on the Auto-Level toggle button.

Once you acquire a new haven, your Santa Monica haven computer and mailbox will no longer function. Use the computer and mailbox of your new haven instead.

When you are playing a Nosferatu, your grotesque appearance prevents you from using the taxi that appears after you blow up the Sabbat warehouse. Nosferatu characters must travel between game hubs using the hub map found in the sewers.

IMPROVING GAME PERFORMANCE

Most performance problems reported to Activision Customer Support are due to computer systems not meeting the minimum system requirements or not having the latest video and sound card drivers installed.

If these are not the causes of any performance problems you are experiencing, we recommend that you try some or all of the following suggestions.

• Set your desktop to a resolution of 800x600, 32-bit True Color and play the game at that resolution.
• Shut down all background applications.
• Disable any anti-virus software you are running.

• Set the game’s Game Options to their minimum settings. In particular, disable Environmental Effects.

• This game requires a 1400MB swap file. If you are using Windows XP, 98, or ME, make sure that you have “Let Windows Manage My Virtual Memory” enabled, and if you are using Windows 2000, make sure that you have manually set your max swap file size to 1400MB. In addition, make that you actually have enough free space on your hard drive to facilitate the swap file (1400MB). :thumbup:

[Chylde Roland]

Cool, thanks for the info! :thumbup:

I may actually get back to this one over the holidays, since I'm off next week. Ah... who am I kidding? But I will patch it up anyway, because I will get back to it eventually. :):

[Fzoulcmbyl]

I patched it up already, but have not fired it up to check out any improved performance.... I will do that this week though.


Fzoul

[Mr. Natural]

Very happy to see this! Just in time as I will be checking it out christmas day. I guess I won't have to ban troika games after all.
I've been doing a little homework on this game. Be advised folks that this game is a memory hog! You'll be struggling with this game if you don't have at least 1 gig o' memory.

[Circlebreaker]

You'll be struggling with this game if you don't have at least 1 gig o' memory.

I've only got 512 MB of memory and it works reasonably fine actually. There is some stuttering right after the levels have loaded, but only in the 4 hubs, and even then that usually dissapears in a few seconds. Nothing worse than in HL2, in other words.

[Ron]

I have some stuttering problems but only when it rains it seems... I have 2 gigs ram, geforce 6800 gt and a P4-3.4 on XP Pro + SP2 (jsut went from sp1 to sp2). Game runs fine most times other the when it rains. This is pretty much the only game I've had a stutter like this in 8 years that I can think of yet I dont have it with any new game all on max (and max AF and AA). Odd... Hope they release a new patch to fix that eventually.

[Jagndeke]

Good news I guess since I picked up the game for a little Xmas cheer and fun. Thanks for the update.

[Mr. Natural]

I should have been more clear with my statement. A lot of the problems I've read with this game are often related to memory and swap file usage. You can definitely play the game with 512 memory. But more is better.
Activision has done a fair job listing problems and know fixes. (https://activision.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/activision.cfg/php/enduser/std_alp.php?p_sid=za6SsJth&p_lva=&p_li=&p_page=1&p_cv=&p_pv=&p_prods=0&p_cats=&p_hidden_prods=&prod_lvl1=0&p_search_text=bloodlines&p_new_search=1&p_search_type=answers.search_nl&p_sort_by=dflt)
Hopefully the patch will reduce the need for folks to do trouble shooting.

[Jagndeke]

Since I picked up the game and will be loading it up this weekend, I've been reading about some of the issues noted by the early players. Especially about broken quests.

Well, seems there's one particular user named Dan Upright who created one heck of a user patch that fixed many of the broken quests and some of the game issues. As well, it seems many of the game owners over at PlanetVampire are suggesting that anyone who has picked up the game should first install Dan's patch and then install the official patch. It seems they believe you'll get the benefits of both worlds. So that's what I'm going to go ahead and do when I get the game loaded up in the next day or two.

For anyone who's interested in doing the same, you can find Dan Upright's patch (http://www.planetvampire.com/bloodlines/files/patches/) over at PlanetVampire by clicking on the link.

[siythe]

I've got a problem but i'm not sure if this is helped by the patch or not.

I just got this game it installed and played first time without any problems but when I try to get back into it now the computer just reboots, any one got any ideas?

[Jagndeke]

Post your system specs. That'll help drill down to the problem. Some basic questions...

1. Video drivers udpated?
2. Sound drivers updated?
3. Playing with all apps closed in the background?
4. A/V disabled?

[Gaim Mastr]

Thanks for the news & link on the unofficial patch, Jag !! :thumbup:


When it comes to RPGs, broken quests are more irritating than the occasional crash to desktop.

[Jagndeke]

Just an FYI... I loaded up the game and first ran the unofficial patch and then the official patch. The game seems to run fine but I've only been playing it for a little bit.

And just so no one else makes the same mistake I did and wastes a bunch of time, the unofficial patch must be put in the game's main directory before it is run. I ran it several times without doing so and couldn't figure out why the heck it wouldn't load up (it's an .exe file). :rolleyes:

[Bruenor]

Thanks to all for the info. :thumbup:

Just got the game for Christmas, woot!

[siythe]

1. Video drivers udpated?
2. Sound drivers updated?

Its a fresh out the box version of this one.
http://www.tiny.com/packages.php?prodid=12845

not sure about the drivers but i havent updated any since i got it.

3. Playing with all apps closed in the background?
4. A/V disabled?

yes to both, cheers for the help by the way.

[Tom Servo]

Hmm, I picked it out for christmas, and it's sitting here unopened. With 512 RAM and a Radeon 9000, I'm not even sure it'll be worth running, maybe I'll exchange it for WoW.

[Jagndeke]

Its a fresh out the box version of this one.
http://www.tiny.com/packages.php?prodid=12845

not sure about the drivers but i havent updated any since i got it.



yes to both, cheers for the help by the way.

The sound driver is most likely okay as it is onboard sound.

Check the video driver version. You may want to get the latest driver from Nvidia and update it. Vid drivers can make a large difference, especially with the type of problem you are having.

Make sure to uninstall your current driver before installing the new driver. If you are not sure how to install the driver, do a google search for detonator driver install / uninstall or something like that. There used to be a thread here as well that discussed this so you might want to try searching these forums too.

Also, check the tweaks and links in this thread. (http://forums.gamers.org/showthread.php?t=4050) One of the links takes you to the tech help forum at PlanetVampire which is also a good place to have a look around.

Also, check to see if your DirectX is the latest version.

Good luck. :thumbup:

[siythe]

I've had this thing for 4 days and already I miss my playstation. :mad:

Ok the drivers are updated as is the direct X (game still doesnt work but that planet vampire thread looks helpful) but now I have a RUNDLL error thats saying...

C:\Windowa\system32\NvMcTray.dll
mising entry:NvTaskba(the last chracters a square)

Please tell me I didnt just break something important? :scared:

Sorry to be a pain about this but like I said I'm used to the nice simple console way of doing things. Thaks again for the info.

[Jagndeke]

C:\Windowa\system32\NvMcTray.dll
mising entry:NvTaskba(the last chracters a square)

This refers to the driver you just installed. Specifically it is referring to the Nvidia taskbar function I think.

It suggests to me that something went wrong with the driver install. Let me ask you this...

1. Did you do a complete uninstall of the current driver.
2. Did you turn off any A/V when installing the new driver.

You might also want to post the error message in a new thread in the Computer Hardware and Software (http://forums.gamers.org/forumdisplay.php?f=11) forum if you're not sure either how the error was caused or how to fix it.

Sounds like you've been a console gamer for the most part and PC gaming is something new to you. While it can be frustrating from time to time dealing with conflicts and gaming errors I think you'll find that PC gaming will eventually become much more gratifying. Overall the gaming is better, the graphics are better, the user mods are awesome and you can't beat online MP in PC gaming. If you stick with it, you'll eventually learn a ton of stuff about your PC system too. How it works, how you can make it go faster and essentially what makes it tick from top to bottom.

Hopefully you'll stick with it because you'll find it very gratifying in the long run. And you'll find a great group of helpful people here at 3D Gamer Forum who'll be happy to walk you through just about any problem you run into.

Good luck! :thumbup:

[siythe]

1. Did you do a complete uninstall of the current driver.
2. Did you turn off any A/V when installing the new driver.

I uninstalled th old drivers using the control panel/remove software. I dont know a more complete way than that.

Can you confirm what you mean by A/V as I'm not sure I'm thinking of the right thing.

[Jagndeke]

A/V is intivirus. A/V running in the background while installing drivers can sometimes interefere with the installation and cause an error.

[siythe]

Doh!

That is most deffinatley on now i'll have to figure out how to turn that off without uninstalling the whole thing.

*sigh*

thanks once again.

[Jagndeke]

There should be an A/V icon in the task tray right hand bottom corner of your desktop. Right click it and select disable. Then uninstall your drivers. Reboot. Disable A/V. Install new drivers.

It might even be best if you install the new drivers in "Safe" mode. Also, if you continue to have problems, you need to get driver cleaner (a free program) that completely removes all traces of your old driver. Sometimes just "uninstalling" doesn't get rid of all remnants of the old driver. So...

1. Disable A/V.
2. Uninstall driver.
3. Reboot.
4. Disable A/V.
5. Install driver.
6. Reboot machine and voila!

or if you need to do a deep clean to get rid of the current driver...

1. Boot into safe mode (usually F5 key during boot sequence but check your manual)
2. Uninstall driver while in safe mode. Doing so in Safe Mode makes a difference sometimes.
3. Run driver cleaner (do a google search for free program).
4. Disconnect internet connection if cable or DSL. Sometimes XP will try to update itself off of the internet. (Always answer "no" or "cancel" to any attempts by XP to update the driver itself at start up. You want to install the driver yourself)
5. Reboot.
6. Disable A/V.
7. Install driver.
8. Reboot.

[Gotanypop]

Ignore. ^he beat me to it LOL.

[siythe]

Great stuff, the new vidieo driver did work so I've been a bit busy playing the game but I'll give that a go.

Well I will as soon as I work out how to get into this bloody morgue.