With that aside, It’s 2025: You want to play Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, a game notorious for releasing with many technical problems and a whole host of cut content. What do you do? You go and grab Wesp5’s Unofficial Patch of course!
This legendary modder joins me today to chat through their history of working on this project, so why don’t we just sink our teeth in!
It’s great to chat with you today, Wesp5, thanks for joining me. Why don’t you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about yourself?
It's a great honor for me to be part of the interview series. My alias is Wesp5, but my real name is Dr. Werner Spahl and I work at the University of Munich as an analytical chemist.
First of all, how did you get into gaming, and then modding after that?
I got into gaming as a teenager with the ZX Spectrum and later the Atari ST home computers. At the time I mostly played text adventures, but already on the ST my brother and myself improved the multiplayer shooter Midimaze to create Midimaze Plus, which basically was my first mod.
After moving to the PC I discovered Doom, Half-Life and many other FPS which became my favorite kind of games and so I continued modding these. The most prominent mods I created during that period are the Theme Doom Patch and Xen-Warrior for Half-Life.
"Discipline" casting animation restored
You dove right into your modding journey with an entire patch for Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines. What made you choose that game?
When I first played Bloodlines I basically only did this because it used the Source engine like Half-Life 2. After Strife, it was the first FPS/RPG hybrid and really surpassed all my expectations regarding the atmosphere and especially the writing, which isn't a strong part of most FPS.
Sadly I got stuck due to the buggy state it was released in and even the Unofficial Patch at the time didn't help. I contacted its creator and he told me how to fix my issue, but said he wouldn't continue working on the patch and gave me permission to do it instead. So basically Bloodlines chose me, because it is the best game I have ever played and because it was so buggy, that I had to start modding it myself to even be able to finish it at all.
The best game you've ever played? That's high praise! What makes it the best game you've ever played?
Bloodlines had two big moments for me which made it unique. As I wrote I had finished Doom, Strife, Half-Life and Half-Life 2 when I first played Bloodlines, but the twist...
Spoiler:
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about the sisters just blew me away!
I had never experienced such writing in a game before. And after the ending, I had to laugh out loud because there wasn't just another boss fight coming and the whole story suddenly made sense, from the tutorial to the final cut scene. I love it when people plan their stories ahead and don't mess up the important ending.
The "Public Library", which was previously cut content
Your unofficial patch is the most downloaded mod for Vampire: The Masquerade, congratulations! When you were designing it, did you expect the reception to be so positive?
At first I made the patch more or less just for myself, but the more I found unused or unfinished content I started to restore it, because this is a real interest of mine. I already restored some stuff in my Half-Life mods and while many people really appreciated it, others wanted a more vanilla experience so I split the patch into a basic and a plus version to end an ugly conflict with other modders.
Nowadays the reception to my patch is really positive, but it wasn't all the time, because what is a bug for somebody can be a feature for somebody else.
Unlike some more modern games, Bloodlines doesn’t have any official modding tools. What did your process look like for creating the unofficial patch?
Bloodlines never had an official SDK and the Unofficial SDK came very late in the development of the patch. Luckily Troika had designed all the RPG elements using simple text and run-time-compiling Python files, so much could already be done with a text editor.
Additionally some cool coders created small apps like the VPKTool, that made editing the maps themselves possible. Once the Unofficial SDK was released by two Russian coders, we started to create the lost levels themselves and fixing other issues became much easier.
Of all the features you’ve added with this patch, do you have a favourite? Any that caused you any significant issues in development?
My favorite part of the patch is the restoration of the library quest, for which Burgermeister built the first ever new Bloodlines map and even Brian Mitsoda gave me all the info he still remembered about it.
I also like the several shortcuts that I integrated into the game when Tim Cain himself confessed that some parts, like the warrens, were just too long. Playing some original missions as a hunter as a proof of concept of the cut multiplayer part was also a lot of work that I am proud of, as is the free roam modus after the game has ended.
Sword of the Sheriff, added in the Plus+ Patch
Well, that's quite incredible! How did you meet with Brian? What did that process look like in getting in touch and chatting about Bloodlines?
When we started to restore whole maps, like the public library, I just reached out to Brian via email and he was nice enough to answer my questions. Although he didn't remember much as the whole quest was cut early on.
Another thing that should be mentioned is that I had email contact with Rik Schaffer, the composer of Bloodlines, as well and he offered me many unused musical pieces to be included in the patch, because he just wanted the world to hear them. And lately, after Tim Cain opened his YouTube channel, I was able to get answers from him there and on Reddit regarding the planned expansion packs for Bloodlines. Sadly he doesn't have notes for them anymore.
This mod must have been a massive undertaking, what did your workflow look like for the development of the mod?
I never really had a workflow, this is all just a hobby for me that I do on the side. I basically read all the Bloodlines boards and look for bug reports.
Once something is posted, I try to fix it if I can. The restoration work was a little more planned, like I would extract all the game files and search for models or graphics or info about unused content and then restore it to places where it makes sense.
And for the unfinished maps, I would scan the internet for alpha and beta screenshots and videos, to see how things might have looked early on.
Shin Gunto sword restored
Do you have any plans for future developments?
Regarding Bloodlines, I really hope that the current release candidate will be the final patch. Even though I have thought this many times before, it might be true after almost 20 years of patching.
Still I am helping EntenSchreck with the Bloodlines Prelude mod, which is a prequel to the main game, and once it is out of early access, we will upload it here too. I also made other Unofficial Patches, for the Deep Shadows classics Boiling Point, White Gold and The Precursors, and for standalone games like The Dark Mod and The Babylon Project.
Perhaps I've misunderstood, but does that mean you've been working on this mod for over 20 years!?
Yes, I have worked on the patch for almost 20 years now. Bloodlines was released 2004 and after Dan made the first patch versions up to 1.2, I continued from 2005 on. This sounds like much, but I only do it on the side. I just fix things other players report, so weeks might go on with nothing to be done at all. Also, the latest things I fixed are so minor that most players will probably never notice it, but as the game is a fan favorite, there are many others out there who love it by heart and want it to be as perfect as possible!
For those who also want to get involved in the Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines modding community, do you have any advice or general tips?
For people who want to mod Bloodlines I recommend visiting the reborn Planet Vampire site, where all the Bloodlines and Redemption modders meet. And I suggest that you have a lot of patience and accept that you will need to work with tools that are limited and with an old engine that can't be modified and with many strange things that nobody understands yet.
Finally, are there any shout-outs you’d like to make?
I would like to thank all the people that helped me create the patch, which are too many to list here. Also to the Bloodlines community which is quite friendly today especially when considering that it consists of people who like to play as horrible monsters that need to drink to even stay undead. And of course to sites like Nexus Mods which support modding.
Thank you once again to Wesp5 for joining me today and for sharing his journey with us! Are you still playing Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines? Or are you going to check it out now (I know I am!)?
Remember, if there's anyone you'd love for us to interview, then make sure to send SlugGirl a DM. See you around!
16 comments
Ding, ding, ding! Correct DrSharky70!
Upon completion of a quest, he'll say (emphasis mine):
There was an article on Rock Paper Shotgun talking about how the Unofficial Patch was still going (at that point in time) ten years strong, and I knew it had to be something truly special to inspire such an enduring devotion.
Cheers, Wesp! 🍻
Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines mention, that's really something
It's also worth noting that the game was created to work on 32-bit operating systems, but not 64 bit systems. So for the most part, the unofficial patch also makes it playable on any OS above Windows XP 32-bit. Otherwise, we'd have lost the ability to play this game. That said, I'm sure others figured that out and would have been able to fix it, but Wesp5 has held the torch on this effort for 20 years.
To anyone even remotely interested in the game and its dark history: I highly recommend watching The Death and Rebirth of Vampire: Bloodlines by Retrohistories on YouTube. Hell, let me just post it here. It's a long-ish watch, but absolutely worth it.