[Funktion]

Originally Posted by stuboy

I assume a masquerade violation is letting someone see you're a vampire?

I think I will probably play it with 1.2 and then try 1.4 if I play it again.

Not only. In the case I mentioned it's more a case of *****SLIGHT SPOILERS***** letting someone go (instead of killing him) just because he promises he's not going to kill again (without going into much detail that person killed people and attracted way to much attention; you know what's the punishment for that? ) *****END OF SPOILERS*****

[Aj_]

Originally Posted by Funktion

First of all like I mentioned 1.2 is fine, I played it and finished it more than 5 times, as did my friends, without any big problems (the only problems I experienced were with 1.0, one was the crash everyone knows of (everyone crashed when jumping to the boat... ), the other was I got stuck in an elevator and couldn't get out).

Depending which paths you take, what clan you are, what quests you do, what sex you are etc...
Also fixed lots of bugs that aren't show stopping but are anoying. Spelling mistakes, dialogue trees that are broken, glitches, and quests continuing after you've failed them.

The changes don't change the plot, they're only meant to fix the unintentional behaviour. If you can play through the whole game with 1.2 that's great, but it's very likely that you'll run into bugs that the unofficial patch fixes.

[Funktion]

Originally Posted by Aj_

The changes don't change the plot, they're only meant to fix the unintentional behaviour.

They don't change the overall plot, but they are NOT only meant to fix "unintentional behavior". The author of the patch changed the game, he was not just fixing things.
The CD quest if only for the Nosferatu. He changed it so that everyone can do it. Is that changing "unintentional behavior"? On 1.7 he, quote: "Replaced some male hunters at the Leopold Society with female ones". Unintentional behavior?
And things like "Re-branded Uzi, Mac 10, Glock 17c, Ithaca and both Remingtons guns", "Awarded 1 xp for getting Imalia's magazine to compensate money loss", "Lowered award for rescueing Ash from the Society of Leopold to 1 xp", "Adjusted knockback ranges for McLusky, SWAT rifle and the shotguns", "Provided 1 humanity point for not telling Hannah that Paul is dead", just looking at the last two patches, bug fixes? And these are the minor examples, and they do change the items/weapons/rewards, ...

[Aj_]

Not sure how much say Dan had with the patches after 1.3, but that's exactly why I recommended 1.4. The way I read it, there were some unused things in the script that suggested the quest was made for more than just one clan. WHether this was cut by creative means, or time restraint I don't know.

[Crunchy in milk]

Is there a website that keeps track of the unofficial patches and what they do? (I trawled the thread and didn't spot one immediately)

[RLacey]

Originally Posted by Crunchy in milk

Is there a website that keeps track of the unofficial patches and what they do? (I trawled the thread and didn't spot one immediately)

The authors seem to post information on the Planet Vampire Forums, and you can also find links at the Wikipedia entry.

[Crunchy in milk]

Originally Posted by RLacey

The authors seem to post information on the Planet Vampire Forums, and you can also find links at the Wikipedia entry.

Cheers!

[samIamsad]

Originally Posted by Aj_

It takes a powerful PC to run properly, over the required specs. It's not the best use of the Source engine there will ever be.

Could you please elaborate on that a bit? This looks like a damn fine game to me.

[squarejawhero]

It performs like a dog.

[samIamsad]

Schaferhund or Yorkshire Terrier?

[Aj_]

Originally Posted by samIamsad

Could you please elaborate on that a bit? This looks like a damn fine game to me.

It doesn't run well, there are places that are better than others, but unless you have twice the minimum requirements then there is no guarantee it'll run at all. There are console tweaks you can do, but they involve sacrificing pedestrians, I could help you with those if you want. This is half because Valve screwed them, with a version of Source that wasn't nearly as good plus made them wait until HL2 was released, and Activision, that didn't let them touch the game while they were waiting for HL2 to be released, and then were reluctant to pay for patches to be made.

The graphics aren't on the same level as HL2, and some of the areas are sparing on detail, it's not consistant, one part can be "WOW" and another can be as bland as you can get. The physics aren't the same as HL2, there isn't much use of it, it's also pretty buggy. There are graphical and animation glitches here and there. The game's pretty buggy all round, the unofficial patch fixes a lot of bugs.

[samIamsad]

Thanks! So.... it's running like silk on an Athlon2200+GF4 ti machine? Perfect!

If not: By the time I might or might not buy that game, I'm likely going to have at least another graphics card anyway.

[Aj_]

I had to tweak it to get it running at all on a AMD64 3000+, 9600XT, with 1GB of RAM. Your PC can run it, that's all I can promise. It requires some power to handle all the AI, your CPU is up to the task. The game eats RAM like there is no tommorrow, it seems to have lots of memory leaks, so you might want to quit and restart the game from time to time if you're playing for long periods. The only other game I've played that was as bad is Lineage 2.

[samIamsad]

Jesus. On the other hand, there's also Gothic 1+2, both of which I haven't played yet. These and many, many, MANY more.

[Aj_]

Bloodlines is one of my favourite games, and it has that something that few games do, it's worth a go, one of the best games ever if you like RPGs, character interaction, story, and dark humour. It's cheap and good enough to give it a chance.

[samIamsad]

Fucking finally got me a copy of this yesterday (along with a new DVD drive that lets me play the game, definitely the last damn money I've spent on this rig, still the same specs I posted above btw.), and wooh, it's you know...

On the one side, one of the more recent quests that required you to visit this haunted house was pretty neat, although not quite up to The Cradle™, for instance. On the other side, it can perform pretty choppy at least on my machine (outside areas in particular), the city areas feel kind of restricted and... undercooked, and the level of polish is definitely not up to the standard of say, a Blizzard game. But what is? Another area where this is noticeable is the uneven volume of the voices, occasionally. One time somebody's talking kinda quiet-ish and makes you turn up the volume of your speakers, the other it's really LOUD. No German voice overs, btw. This game was never dubbed, so I'm essentially playing the same thing as you all did.

Too bad that Troika aren't around anymore, I would have liked to see their ideas developed further, definitely gonna buy Arcanum at some point or other as well. Anyway, I'm definitely looking forward to continue playing this. No patches installed so far, I'll probably do that on a subsequent run, as I can very well foresee me playing this game at least one more time. Currently I'm Relek, Nosferatu. Yesterday I approached a woman inside the Asylum club and she just started to scream...

[MdaG]

Bloodlines is a good game. Considering the price today it's a safe buy.

[Spiwak]

Originally Posted by MdaG

Bloodlines is a great game.

Fixed. So much potential squandered by bad dealings. Troika could have been the next awesome RPG developer, but I guess BioWare and Obsidian are certainly capable. Probably won't be seeing much dark humor in RPGs in the coming years, though.

[samIamsad]

Originally Posted by spiwak

Troika could have been the next awesome RPG developer

Cool article, by the way.

Right now I've no idea where this game is going, actually. Up to now it's kind of like: Do this for her, then do that for them and after you're done come back and do whatever for who else. As the game does a good job of making me feel like one of these scarred Nosferatu creatues, I've no reason to complain though.

[Spiwak]

That is an interesting article. Maybe one day Troika will return wiser and more experienced.

But yea, you're gonna feel like that for most of the game. Kind of the idea, actually. You know very little about what's happening but are constantly at the beck and call of all the quarrelling vampire factions. After Santa Monica you start to get the big picture, but the pervailing idea throughout the entire game is that you (and most every other individual vampire) are just a pawn in grander power schemes. A rather subtle political theme.

Uh the more I think about it the more I HAVE to play this game again as soon as possible. I really wish it would work on the Macbook. I can get Half-Life 2 to play quite well, actually, but this game just crashes when I launch it; installs fine, though, anyways.