Vampire: Bloodlines

[Sky]

I'd say I got more scare factor out of the Hotel than the Cradle. I dunno, the cradle never really did anything for me, and I'm a fan of eerie environements. The Hotel had a lot more Resident Evil "jump" scares (alright with the poltergeist vases already), but it also had a lot more geniune creepy effects, like the occasionally visible ghosts and whispers and whatnot.

As for the gothiness, whatever. The music is great, I can hear where some of it was 'stolen' from, like the Manson in the Anarch's bar. Good quality stuff for knock-off music, maybe even better than if they had gone with original music, because the knock-off stuff is fresh, not tired.

A bit buggy, but nothing that's made me backtrack through a few save points or anything. The worst two I've found are buggy doors, requiring a reload (you can save right there, just needs to reload the level's objects), and the sound bug. Sound bug stops all audio, requires a full reboot of the machine, happens about once every lots of hours, three times since playing the game. Not too bad because they aren't total gamebreakers beyond just having to reboot. Bad because with all the extra time Troika should have had with the HL2 delays, but apparently didn't get, they should have been stomped out (along with a few typoes farther along in the game).

[Tebonas]

Ah, thought the sound bug was machine specific to my rig. Glad it aint.

Just finished (damn is that game short) and started replaying it as Malkavian.
Really neat twist how they give hints about the plot in dialogue options with Malkavian characters and visual hints as well (at least I think my Brujah didn't see any message in red on that blackboard). Nice way to show that insight the insane Malks are supposed to have.

Ok, I just think that replayability almost doubled my play time.

[Alluvian]

The game is fun but littered with little visual bugs.  Opening cutscene has some people walking away from camera and they were totally unanimated, just sliding along the floor (could only see upper torso) then a few cuts later they were walking and animated... um... if you have the animation for them walking why wasn't it in place?  Reeks of being thrown together 20 minutes before the gold was stamped.

Muzzle flash on some guns in cutscenes occur INSIDE the gun, looks awful.  Stuff like that.

Facial textures and animations are downright hideous.  Every NPC looks awful, and then just gets worse when they start to talk.

Voice acting is good for 80% of the npcs and horrifically bad for 20%.

Halflife2 and EQ2 both have consistently better voice acting.  Halflife 2 has GREAT facial animations, textures, and models in comparison to this.  I dread talking to people because they universally look terrible.  And my wife always looks over at those times and makes fun of how they messed up the facial bone structure and/or the animations.

Overall it is a good game, but it is awkward.  Seems to be the hallmark of Troika.  They really need the video game equivalent of a good editor.  Let it go to some other dev house for polish.  Troika seems incapable of making a polished game.  They don't seem detail oriented at all.

I like the game, should have good replay.  The game should have / could have been a lot better though.

[Sky]

Really neat twist how they give hints about the plot in dialogue options with Malkavian characters and visual hints as well (at least I think my Brujah didn't see any message in red on that blackboard). Nice way to show that insight the insane Malks are supposed to have.

Malkavians start with +2 inspection, iirc.

[geldonyetich]

Halflife2 and EQ2 both have consistently better voice acting. Halflife 2 has GREAT facial animations, textures, and models in comparison to this. I dread talking to people because they universally look terrible. And my wife always looks over at those times and makes fun of how they messed up the facial bone structure and/or the animations.

It's not too fair to say that Half-Life 2 did things better than VTM: Bloodlines.   Of course they did, for some very good reasons:

1. Valve, who was working on Half-Life 2, was the lead organization involved in creating the Source engine, where Troika was basically learning how to use and modify somebody else's engine to make Bloodlines

2. Half-Life 2 had a over a billion dollars invested in it's production, where Bloodlines was probably a seven figure game at most.

Getting faces and expressions to look as good as Half-Life 2 involves a whole lot more than simply using the source engine.

Granted, I'm not excusing Troika entirely.   Voice acting has nothing to do with the engine, and they could have taken a little time to figure out why the muzzle flash is wrong at times.     Also, the game needs a patch, badly.

[Shockeye]

2. Half-Life 2 had a over a billion dollars invested in it's production, where Bloodlines was probably a seven figure game at most.

Are you being sarcastic or do you have numbers to back that up?

[schild]

He made it up. I'd put money on the entire thing - including remaking HL1: Source, CS: Source, DoD: Source, the source Engine, and the Havok engine at under $100M. Hell. PC Games just don't sell well enough to have more money than that spent on production.

[sidereal]

Newell said $60m, but I can't find a link.

[geldonyetich]

Well, I wasn't trying to make it up.  I read it somewhere on the net, and yes it is an extraordinary amount of money to plug into a computer game's development.   Plus, I have a wonderful habit of recalling incorrectly about these things.   Lets see if I can google some sources...

"Gabe assures us that, "Basically, we took every dollar we made on Half-Life and put it into Half-Life 2," and considering that Half-Life has now sold over eight million copies, that's one hell of a development budget if true."

Bah, after 30 minutes of searching I haven't foudn any real hard figures.  But I agree, 1 billion does seem like a bit much (though Microsoft spends over 7 times that much on R&D every year).   One thing that is clear is that HL2 had a very, very big development budget.  The biggest in computer game history.   So, we're probably looking somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 million.   If I really wanted to try to cover my butt here, I'd say I'm also including development of steam and distribution in all that.

[Shockeye]

Newell said $60m, but I can't find a link.

The closest thing I can find is here.

Newell also had to keep his team focused on the task at hand: finishing Half-Life 2, a game that was now costing Valve more than $1 million a month to develop.

[schild]

Anything more than Everquest 2 would surprise me. Shock me, in fact. Fucking game has no story. They only had to focus on the gameplay.

[geldonyetich]

Well, it's not the gameplay that costs the big bucks, it's the content.   The level of detail you see in Half Life 2 (especially inside of the citadel) shows that they must have really spent a great deal of time and money developing that.    (Granted, the thing we'll probably ultimately be buying Half-Life 3 over is the mod support.)

[schild]

Geldon, HL2 does not LOOK like it cost more than Doom 3. Hi-res textures aren't that hard to produce. I'm rather certain you're pulling this all out of your ass and aren't quite sure where the money went to.

[Ironwood]

aren't quite sure where the money went to.

Hats.


Just to clear that up.

We were invited over to dinner once, but declined.

[geldonyetich]

I'd be surprised if Doom 3 ran even more than Half-Life 2 did.  But yes, without any concrete sources sufficiently vulnerable to my google-fu, I'm definately throwing guesses here.  Is there something wrong with making guesses at this point?

So yes, when I say that a lot of Half Life 2's development budget went to the content, that is a rough estimation.   Those Combine body moving cranes didn't animate themselves.    However, how much money went to content alone is nothing I'm intending to quote specific figures on.

[Shockeye]

But yes, without any concrete sources sufficiently vulnerable to my google-fu, I'm definately throwing guesses here.  Is there something wrong with making guesses at this point?

Your google-fu sucks and for that reason do not make stupid guesses. 60 seconds of google gave me the the link and quote I provided previous. If you had tried even that hard you would've been at a more reasonable figure than $1 billion.
Thank you, drive through.

[geldonyetich]

Hmm, if I am humbled in my lacking of google-fu, would the proper thing to do be commiting Seppuku with a keyboard or to simply return to the dojo of google to prostate myself before my sensei in disgrace?

Nah, you probably just lucked out in keyword selection.   The google Samurai remains untainted.

But yes, I guess one billion dollars was a bit out of line, even though I "thought I read it somewhere", it was ten to twenty times as much as the game actually cost by anything we've been able to determine.  Still, that's a pretty damn big budget - can't blow a tenth of a billion on every game.   Relatively speaking, I wasn't that far off the mark.

[Rodent]

Fucking game has no story. They only had to focus on the gameplay.

Story can't cost that much... Hell, Interplay let us have Planescape Torment ( Their last act as a great producer ).

[Big Gulp]

But yes, I guess one billion dollars was a bit out of line

That's like saying Rosie O'Donnel is a bit dykey.

[Roac]

"Gabe assures us that, "Basically, we took every dollar we made on Half-Life and put it into Half-Life 2," and considering that Half-Life has now sold over eight million copies, that's one hell of a development budget if true."

If they sold 8 million copies at $30 apiece (accounting for early release sales and late release sales, with different price points), you're looking at $240M.  Considering that developers make somewhere around 20% of total sales, that leaves them with around $50M.  Course, that's just napkin math, but doesn't give you anything close to $1B.  You'd need 20M in sales, at $50 per, and with 100% returns, to make that.

[kaid]

I would say that making faces as well done as in hl2 is difficult. The vampire game though has a lot of really stupid lack of detail issues though that mar an otherwise really neat looking game.

Just some silly things that with even a small bit of extra work could be made to look much better. As alluvian mentioned in some cut sceens people slide their upper bodies animate but they just slide across the floor and their lower bodies do not animate.

Muzzle flashes INSIDE the guns.

There were some other things I saw as well. they are by no means game breakers but man its kinda silly to stumble over such trivial things which could have made what looks to be an excellent game even better.

Most of my biggest gripes should not have jacked up their budget at all it is all stuff that should have been corrected very early in the graphics/bug pass.  They are easily repeatable and very noticable if you are looking for them at all.


kaid

[Sky]

And the typos. C'mon, didn't anyone playtest the game once? That's all it'd have taken to find the dozens of mispellings I've stumbled across in conversations and email. Good game, though, really enjoying it (not done yet, I may be the slowest gamer ever, heh).

[Xilren's Twin]

And the typos. C'mon, didn't anyone playtest the game once? That's all it'd have taken to find the dozens of mispellings I've stumbled across in conversations and email. Good game, though, really enjoying it (not done yet, I may be the slowest gamer ever, heh).

I'd procrastinate against you for that title sir!  Well, actually it's not so much slowness as simple lack of gaming time, but i am ony now headed to the museum of natural history.  Started as a Gangrel, didn't like it the disciplines by the time i finished Santa Monica (warehouse Sabbat vamp fights were much tougher than they should have been with this character), so I restarted as a Brujah pumping Celerity and combat as been cake thus far.

Really liked listening to the tapes of the crazy bastard Malkavian primogen in his mansion.  Reminded me of listening to logs in System shock...

Fun game, despite the overall lack of polish and some bugginess.

Xilren

[Samwise]

My eyes!  Zee goggles do nothing!

Apart from the heinous visual bugs, it's a great game so far.

[Fabricated]

I've seen a shitload of typos and model bugs so far, but oddly I don't care, despite being a complete graphics whore.

Then again, I thought Doom 3 fucking sucked, so I'm not all that consistent.

[Samwise]

It's the flickering that really drives me up the wall.  Talk about immersion breaking.

That and the time I got stuck inside a door.  Good thing I had saved just before that.

[Megrim]

So anyway, i encountered my first bug last night. The game, of course, having taken note of the fact that i'v not yet had any problems, decided to screw me in the most royal of fashions possible.

Minor spoilearage warning thing:

Having just carved my way through the Society of Leopold with my Malk (arguing with stop signs is <3) and "rescued" the archaeologist, the game CTDs during the load times after the escape in the boat. No matter what i do, or how far back i load (within reason).

Has anyone had this problem, and more importantly, does anyone know of a way to fix it?

[Ironwood]

The boards were full of solutions for that one - they mostly involved cheating with the console...

Check the whitewolf boards first.

[Abel]

Doh and I registred just to fess up an answer. Anyhow here is the fix if you're to lazy to search :

Run the game in -console mode ("C:\Theexefilesomewhere" -console) :

Load up your game and open up console with ² key (on Euro keyboard btw, but should be the same I think).

Type :
SaveJohansen()
changelevel2 la_hub_1 taxi_landmark
or if you're a Nosferatu : changelevel2 la_hub_1 sewer_map_landmark


Troika is working on a patch currently and I believe the community already produced a patch of themselves too.

[Megrim]

Holy.. that was fast. Thank you very much!

[Ironwood]

Sorry dude.  And welcome.

[Abel]

Hehe np, hope the workaround worked for Megrim.

Great game, horrible bugs.

Don't worry btw, this bug is perfectly normal : many (if not most) players seem to be running into this gamestopper.

[Megrim]

Hrmm, it would appear that while the fix does infact get you though the bug, it does so at the expense of one's inventory menu as well as a perpetual cutscene loop in the following dialog with Beckett.

Maybe if i load back far enough...

 - meg

[Otis]

I read somewhere that if you experience issues with your inventory after doing this, you are to load the save and try the solution again, this time closer to the boat (right next to it, if you can manage -- just don't hop on it or you'll trigger the bug that will crash you).

I also ran into this problem, but the fix worked out fine for me.

[Abel]

Look here for the "unofficial" patch which fixes a lot of the bugs :

http://www.forumplanet.com/planetvampire/topic.asp?fid=9643&tid=1549886


Like I said an official patch is in the works, likely not compatible with the unofficial patch though.