If everything is installed correctly, then Steam isn't needed and should be closed/exited when running VTMB. Launch VTMB directly from the shortcut that this mod installs on the desktop. Therefore, the "failed to find Steam" error should never occur.
If for some reason you feel that you want Steam to be running, then find steam.exe in the root Steam folder path and copy it into the root VTMB folder. However, be aware that if Steam tries to update or verity VTMB it will try to "fix" the modifications made by the UP by replacing them with the original buggy Steam versions. This will destroy your ability to run mods. If you do want Steam running, make sure it is in "offline" mode when running VTMB.
The best solution (and the one I use) is to make a copy of the Steam VTMB root folder and place it somewhere in a directory structure you have created as a user. This bypasses the issues with needing to close Steam as well as bypassing many Windows UAC (user access control) issues created if Steam is allowed to install into the default directory it wants to.
I wanna thank you for the patch, i'm one of those people that uses old PCs to play old games and i wanted something that could improve the OG game without really adding much of anything to 1.2 I have a question for you, i tried this game on multiple old PCs and on a period correct P4 3.0ghz 2gb ram DDR2 and nvidia 6800 GTS the game can barely keep up in terms of performances, the engine seems to not be performing any object\occlusion culling, the game should run at 60fps stable on such a system but it can't keep up in a scene like santa monica pier where the thin bloods are. Would you be able to check into this performance issue and see if it's possible to release a small performance patch for patch 1.2? it would be nice to have the game working nicely on contemporary hardware.
Interesting point, I never had the opportunity to run this on older hardware. I did look into it a bit but have to admit I'm not familiar with the issues that may be involved. For sure it is not well optimized as my system with a RTX 3060 can't do 60FPS on the thin blood beach.
I did mess around with some settings, like removing rain, but that only increased FPS by about 3 frames. I'll do some more reading and poking around to see if I can find anything useful.
Thanks for the info. I sort of knew that face culling was done at a model level due to looking at/using the $nocull material shader parameter. Which I try to fix models properly instead of using $nocull as a quick fix to model face/texture issues.
From what I've seen I think the issue might be poor Visibility Optimization with the way the levels were made. Although I'm not sure what can be done since we don't have the tools to compile maps "properly". I'm using properly to mean with the features and functions Troika maps originally had. I'm only guessing because when I just look in a direction the fps tanks, turning and looking in a different direction will often have a big impact on fps.
I'm playing the game with this patch because I don't like the arbitrary changes Wesp made to the game (even in the basic patch, not just the plus) and in the area with the ghouls around the fire on the beach near the astrolite area I can see a visual glitch, sort of like a dude floating in the air but in a ''stuttering'' way, is this normal? In the sense that this bug was in the original game and you decided to leave it there for ''fidelity'' or something?
Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure, I would need more specific information to know. I did just load that area before going to the beach house and Copper is floating off the ground a bit and if the player bumps into him he can stutter a bit as he falls to the ground in his final position but that is only for a fraction of a second. Other than that, I've never noticed anything odd... but I probably wouldn't because I'm not really looking for those types of bugs at this point in the patch development. At this point my primary focus is on the functional aspects of the game and ensuring the game operates properly and in a way that Troika coded it.
The more superficial aspects of the game such as sound glitches, texture issues, etc I will fix if I run into them in testing but I'm not otherwise actively looking for them. If someone, like yourself, does report one of those issues, I do also try to fix it if it is something that is explained so I can reproduce and understand the issue and it meets the mod definition for what is a bug and what is not.
The exception to that rule is for characters like Beckett or Jezebel where the impression from the player interacting with them is important to the character and feel of the game. In those cases, I did a lot of work to fix the texture and model issues with Jezebel trying to make her look, if not attractive at least not "so" horrible, and Beckett not so goofy. A ton of work on physics models so the player isn't experiencing so many glitches moving around the maps. And such.
I would not leave issues such as you describe in the game for fidelity or historical purposes although there are bugs I have left in the game for historical and/or hilarity reasons. But never anything I feel will affect any functional aspect of the game. On a scale of 1 to 5 where fixing functional bugs is 1, I'm still working on 1 to 1.5 severity issues and superficial issue would be something like a 4 severity. It's not that I don't care about them it's more that they aren't something I've gotten around to yet and wouldn't expect to any time soon.
Ok understood. I quickly tested the game with the UP basic patch that comes with GOG and I have the same visual glitch there; it's probably something related to my integrated videocard, I'm playing on a pretty old laptop, not a big deal either way. Kudos for the patch btw, this game needed a truly bug-fixing oriented basic patch. cheers.
By the way I've found another minor thing, when you go to Lacroix to report on the Warehouse quest and toward the end he speaks about the anarchs, he says ''fascist opressor'' at some point, seems to be a typo that should be fixed.
Found another typo ''fanatiscism'' (in that same dialogue there is also a double space issue between words a few lines before that): https://ibb.co/mS6JwBQ
Also another mini-issue I've found, when you deal with the reporter for Pisha one of the walls of the closet he's hiding in has a wrong truncated texture (it has the same texture of the painting on the other side of the wall), seems like it would be an easy fix: https://ibb.co/D9bvNVF
Okay thanks. I'm not sure what I will be doing for the spelling and space, will take some thinking on my part. The charter for the mod, from the README, is to avoid fixing too much unless it can be justified as being important to the function of the game in some way.
When I say close to its original form I mean what I alluded to at the beginning, with the jank, the spelling and punctuation errors, the graphical glitches, etc. All the odd design choices, the difficulty, the lack of hand holding, etc.
The difficulty is that everyone will have their own definition and tolerance for what is important and justified. I do go on in the README to try and explain with examples my definition and logic behind my choices. It is a tough thing to fix things without changing the character and feel of the original game. But your reports are valuable information regardless because a month, or a year, from now I might change my definition and opinion on what should or should not be done.
The texture issue I probably won't change but not for the same reason. If it were easy to fix I would, but again it is a complicated issue... for me. To fix it properly the map needs to be recompiled, and we do not have a compiler that will recompile a map and retain the fidelity of what Troika produced. We do have a tool that will recompile a map into a useful form that on a superficial level looks and works ok. As long as a player isn't interested in the more complex details that Troika put into the game, this is fine. However, my patch is really dedicated to preserving for posterity exactly those types of complex details that have been wiped out in the UP. Which is why my patch and the UP are so opposite. The UP is mostly about superficial changes, even at the expense of altering, or completely removing, functional parts of the original game, and yes as you said even in UP Basic. Which is fine and I'm fine with it too when I want to play that kind of a mod. But there was no one working on a patch focused on trying to preserve the more complex aspects in the original game, which is want I care most about.
Anyway, after that long story... if it were a game breaking bug and the only way to properly fix it was to recompile the map then I would be forced to do that. But I would not recompile a map to fix a minor texture bug. I could fix it in other more kludge ways and if were a serious bug I would, but there are hundreds of these types of issues I am aware of, but I did miss seeing this one, so it becomes a question of opening Pandora's box at some point. And we are full circle with how to fix things without changing the character of the game - and how much is too much.
To go on a bit further, for full disclosure. There "are" some recompiled maps in my mod because I did those almost in the first weeks of starting work on VTMB modding. By the time I realized doing this wasn't a good practice, it was rather too late to go back in time and start over. Even if I were to go back, I couldn't make those changes without recompiling the map in any case. There are also a few maps that I recompiled early on, where I did go back and reverse those changes to bring the original Troika map back and work out different solutions to issues when that was a feasible option.
Ok got you. By the way I get a disclaimer sometimes that my stealth is broken, what does it mean? I don't have a stealthy character but I have noticed that enemies rarely spot me when I'm crouched even though I have no points in Stealth, is that what's ''broken''? I assume it was an issue in the original game as well?
There is a bug in the original game where the stealth your character has is more than is shown on the character sheet. In my patch it detects this bug and notifies the player when this happens, giving them the option to go back and replay the last part of the game to correct the issue before they get too far without knowing that their character save has become corrupted. It is the reason players say the stealth is so broken, they are playing on horribly corrupted saves, at least if watching streamers play is any indication.
Why it's a hard decision? Honestly the spelling errors bug me and take me out of the game same as a bug would. I have encountered a couple more but didn't take note so I don't even remember where I saw them. Imo even an ''essential'' patch should fix them same as with game-breaking bugs, you are not messing with Troika's vision by fixing typos they had no time to fix themselves, I don't see how it's any different than fixing bugs.
Not to create/add new ones but Dan created a tool that lets us make limited changes using existing animations. For example, I used Dan's tool to add a swinging animation to the gong in Ming's reception area - https://youtu.be/CdVfFKZLbi8.
hey, Mike. I found out about your channel through Something Compass, and decided to give this mod a try tonight. So far, so good! I'm still in santa monica, but I found two things you might be interested in:
1. I skipped the tutorial "sheriff pwning three sabbat" cutscene, and the gate behind him was open when I started the tutorial. I snuck behind him, and finished the job lol 2. my ventrue isn't having any side effects from drinking rat blood. Not sure if that's how 1.2 was, but thought I'd mention it.
Thanks for the mod. Looking forward to the rest of my playthrough. Peace edit: I started a new game and it seems to be normal. weird update: finished a playthrough, and saw very few bugs! couple of guys clipped on top of barrels in the hallowbrook, and the tremere there glitched so I had to noclip through the door, but otherwise very smooth. GGWP!
Thanks for the feedback, you are correct, the Ventrue drinking tainted blood in the wild is controlled by a random chance to react badly, and in general it seems to be a pretty low chance. Therefore, one time you may think it is working and another broken if your concept is that a Ventrue should always react badly. However, in my patch there are quest specific instances where the Ventrue will react badly 100% of the time.
Also correct in the gate issue in the tutorial, in fact that is one of the things I highlighted and explained in the Dee Dee playthrough of the SMP v0.8 on my YouTube channel. In general, I don't believe in trying to limit/restrict players in an RPG single player game. Meaning the button to skip cutscenes will skip any and every cutscene and the player is responsible for the result. If I "know" skipping at a particular point "will" break the game, then I do try to capture that and prevent it. In the tutorial case it is known to me the gate will remain open but since it doesn't really "break" anything I don't care. In this way the creative control is always in the players hands and they are free to do some really creative and interesting things with the skip button. The flip side is that I can't capture every instance that might produce bad results, but again I would rather err on the side of giving the player too much power than too little... too little IMO of course!
I'm not sure about the guys clipping on the top of barrels but to be fair it isn't something I would look for or care about until someone pointed it out. In general, I'm trying to focus on mechanical and functional issues as a priority over graphical or superficial issues at this point and there are still a mountain of those to work on, heck I'm still in alpha dev stage :) The issue with the Tremere not triggering would be something I would be very concerned with if it were something consistently repeatable and the conditions to create it could be explained. However, as you seem to know, and I appreciate, the game can randomly glitch out which as a result of trying to run it on modern OS/machines and not a function of a mod defect. As I've tested the Hallowbrook probably hundreds of times, I suspect it might be a onetime game glitch or something very specific to clan/build, killing or saving Heather, or... something other specific I just never tried/tested.
roger that. speaking of Heather, I was able to save her life at the start but she didn't show up at the ventrue tower in that save. I'll let you know if that happens in my next playthrough. thanks again for such a clean patch! o7
Thanks for the feedback. Yes, that is the way it is in the original game and the point of this patch trying to stay with the original experience of the game except where there is objective in-game evidence that something is "broken". Changing something like this falls outside of my definition for what is a bug. From the README "I'm not making any evaluation or judgement of the original game design. I'm not concerned if it is good or bad, silly or outdated, etc."
I'm trying to not change things unless there is objective in-game evidence for the change. Is this rain transition illogical? Yes. But looking at the code I don't see any convincing evidence that it is not working as they coded it. Was this because they ran out of time, or didn't know how to make it work, or ... I don't know and those types of speculation fall outside of the bounds of in-game evidence, and outside of the bounds of what I think is the definition for a bug fix patch. Of course, there will always be grey areas and disagreements of what constitutes sufficient in-game evidence. Even myself I agonize over some issues and flip back and forth from day to day as things aren't always clear cut or easy to unravel. And sometimes I just do get things wrong.
Trying to explain what it looks like Troika did from looking at the code. They made a sound for rain echoing off concrete that they used in places with large concrete/asphalt surfaces. But they didn't make/have a sound for rain on wet sand, so they made a short transition gurgling water sound for when player transitions from city to pier. Does this transition sound work very well? No, I don't think so, and maybe if they had more time this is something they would change but that falls into the realm of modding/reimaging the game and outside of patching the game as it exists. Meaning it isn't something that is "broken", it looks to me like it is working as intended, but maybe just not a great implementation.
There is a visible rain, and no sound. Thats a bug. You can go into the reasons for a bug, but that is certaintly not an artistic decision. Also, I think that the "default" rain sound is fine as is, it sound generic enough
Hey, I believe I found a bug. I am playing as a Nosferatu. I am in Downtown and I want to go back to Santa Monica but I can't interact with the map in the sewer that I am supposed to use to travel.
They can be copied and pasted into the console just as they appear above then press the Enter key to execute them. Sorry for the inconvenience and if you have any problems using those commands let me know.
Wow, I've been watching this mod page and the development progress on your YouTube channel, waiting for the next update since last summer - thanks for the pleasant surprise! I saw you comment under one of your videos that you were disheartened by the lack of downloads for this mod, so I'd just like to show my appreciation for your work as someone who was also looking for a bit more of a 'purist' approach towards patching up and playing this wonderful game <3.
Could I be a pain and ask for some examples of what changes/additions enabling the SMP Extras brings? I couldn't really find a concise list after looking through the included documentation. Thanks!
Yea if you haven't watched it already, in the video at ~3:05 I talk about the Extras, Although the part about Romero's zombie quest isn't part of the Extras anymore since I have fixed that quest properly now.
One of my favorites is on your first visit to the Santa Monica pier/beach area Rosa will walk up to meet the character instead of running, because that whole running thing looks so silly to me. If you use the SMP_ExtrasON(1) command, then close and restart the game all the fire hydrants will be replaced by an actually period correct, proportionally correct, and functionally correct hydrant... well as best as my 3d modeling talents could achieve anyway.
With the Extras ON, and if Pisha is your friend, and you explore dialog sufficiently, there is an option to ask her to wash her face. Notice I said you can ask, it's up to her to decide yes or no. Also, if you have severed arms you would like to donate to her, you can just drop them on the floor and leave them for her.
Just lots of game details that I particularly like, although some of them are quite complex and full features. For example, with Extras ON when the game says come back later for your reward, you actually do need to continue on playing and come back later. The old go out the door, spin around, and go back in thing won't work anymore.
Thanks! They do sound intriguing, I might have to do a playthrough in the future with the Extras enabled, just to see what's different.
One last thing from me, have you ever thought about taking a look at the histories that would have been available during character creation, maybe as part of the SMP Extras? I know they're not technically a part of the 1.2 experience as Troika disabled them before release, but they've always been one of the biggest missed opportunities of the game for me as they would have added a lot of depth to character creation, and it's a feature that was really great back in Arcanum.
I used to just use Wesp's edited histories file from the Unofficial Patch, but wasn't a fan of some of the changes he had made to them. I'm not sure how utterly broken or salvageable they are, but a touch up of the vanilla histories could be interesting imo.
For the Undisciplined Caitiff mod I made use of histories to realize the mod so I'm familiar with them.
Histories couldn't be used as part of the Extras because a requirement for the Extras is that they can be turned on and off during a playthrough as often as the player wishes.
They couldn't be part of the patch because Troika excluded them for quality and content reasons fairly early in development and not "because they didn't have time".
I don't know precisely everything the UP has changed in the histories, but from my own work on the Undisciplined Caitiff mod and a brief look at the UP Plus histories a while ago, I'm fairly confident in saying that everyone ended up in the same place.
Troika abandoned histories because the functions they wanted to use didn't work in the game engine version they had. The UP changed a bunch of stuff for the same reason, not on a whim but because what Troika intended just doesn't work. And I discovered that most of the utility I wanted to harness from histories for my UC mod just didn't work. Which is how I have some sense of what Troika wanted but couldn't realize, and what the UP changed and why.
The only "proper" thing to do is fix the functions in the game engine so that Troika's vision for what they wanted could be realized. Even that is problematic in that their work was abandoned so early in development that a huge amount of blind guessing and just plain making up stuff would still be required, which the UP has done in addition to the functional changes. In a realistic world of time, money, and resources Troika back shelved this same as I have.
However, I have given the player a philosophically different but IMO more powerful and open-ended option. I have rewritten the tutorial to be discipline independent. Upon reaching the tutorial, the player can use the console to create/recreate/RP a "history" for their character. It isn't limited to a set list; it is open ended based on a player's creativity. The tutorial can be completed regardless of what character the player creates, it even recognizes that they have created a custom character and comments on it.
If they want to give their character 6 disciplines, or 2, or none, doesn't matter. They can reorder, boost, or curtail anything they want. Although the curtail bit relies on the player. Meaning if their imagined "history" limits some skill to 3 dots then it is as simple as them not putting more than 3 into it.
I do realize that there are advantages and weaknesses regardless of what choices I make and it's impossible to please everyone. Personally, looking into TraitEffects000 file the options look exciting. But playing a UP Plus and looking at the histories available to me I've never found one interesting. Consequently, I've never played with one.
OTOH a Toreador with zero humanity and who's only social skill is Intimidate... now that is a playthrough! Ventrue who can only invest in ranged combat skills but isn't allowed to ever purchase ammo. A Ventrue who can't use any disciplines, nor any healing items outside natural regeneration and combat feeding on humans. A Brujah who isn't allowed to talk to any NPC outside Anarchs and those required to advance the main quest ... personal bias, personal opinion, everyone will have their own.
Yeah, you're right about the histories, it's been a while since I last played through the game and I forgot just how broken they were - it's probably best they stay on the cutting room floor. I knew I should have reworded the part about including them in the SMP Extras. I was aware the Extras relied on toggling their functionality using the dedicated command and so histories couldn't be included in this, I just wasn't sure how else to word it. Apologies for that.
If I could just ask about the changes to the Dominate discipline and unlocking the dialogue options for clans other than Ventrue, was this Troika's original intention, a change to accommodate players using the console to edit their disciplines, or something else?
If I'm remembering correctly, Wesp unlocked the first tier of Dominate dialogue options for Tremere in his Plus Patch, tying the checks to Thaumaturgy because he claimed there was some kind of hard-coded engine limitation.
As someone who enjoys a Tremere playthrough, I remember being annoyed that I couldn't dominate characters through dialogue, but I put it down to giving Ventrue a bit of differentiation, so it was a surprise seeing the changelog and suddenly having the ability to use dominate in conversations.
I'm not adverse to working on the histories and doing something with them someday. Although I don't have a roadmap for that, I think there may be thousands of hours of things to work on ahead of that.
It's tough to say if Troika intended Dominate to be Ventrue only. What can't be disputed is that in the original dialog files there are broadly two types of checks: {Dominate 1 and IsClan(pc,"Ventrue"} and simply {Dominate 1}. My story however is rather simple, looks like Troika wanted some dialog to be Ventrue specific and some to be generic. So that is what I implemented in the patch, I fixed the existing condition checks. I didn't change, add, or reimagine anything.
If I did change or miss something it wasn't a plan, simply a mistake on my part. Yes, there were game engine issues associated with fixing those dialog options. From a strictly playing perspective, implementation details probably don't matter though.
Hi Mike, firstly, I've been enjoying keeping up with your recent YouTube videos and the discourse they've been creating in the comments!
I've been quickly running through the game to refamiliarise myself with it and I believe I may have found a similar issue to the flickering blood on the Elizabeth Dane, but this time present in the Ocean House Hotel. It's in the basement after you crash through the stairs - if you're stood by the elevator with the 'Power Status' box opposite it, there are two pipes directly above you that have some textures that look like they're enjoying some kind of rave.
I'm not sure if there's some sort of overlapping that's causing it, if it's a lighting issue or if it's just an issue on my end - I thought I'd report it just in case as it stood out to me. Feel free to add it to the to-do list underneath the Tremere's hair ;)
Edit: To add on to this, I've also found some magic floating debris in the laundry room. I've uploaded an image here.
Edit 2: The issue with the pipes isn't isolated to just that spot. I've noticed it a couple of times when wandering around the basement.
Edit 3: Just run the warehouse quest a few times. Do you know what causes the transparency of some textures to break? I started to encounter it with the blood decals as seen in the image and then the feeding meter also had the same problem, appearing with a black box around it. I don't think I've ever seen it before but I'm guessing it's an engine bug, similar to the memory leak that causes random objects to get replaced as restarting the game appeared to fix it. To be a further pain, could you also explain how the bonus experience you get for not killing anyone during that quest works? Because the UP is almost synonymous with the game at this point, a lot of the information online is often based from it. For example, the wiki states that if no one notices you, you get an extra 2XP. I've looked at the Python code for the warehouse from the UP and the Plus patch does indeed give you an extra 2XP (6 in total) if no one detects you, which is different from what I can see both your patch and 1.2 do, which is award 4XP if you don't kill anyone (I think that's what 'Explosive04' represents - the Plus patch awards 'Explosive06'. Please correct me if I'm wrong.) My memory is a little hazy so I apologise for not being able to remember, but I tried running through a couple times, stealthily and by killing everyone, making sure 'the G.Warehouse_Kills' variable was 0 for the pacifist run, but received 4XP when talking to Beckett regardless.
I did look into the issue with the Tremere hair. Initially I looked at the existing hair and I didn't see anything horribly wrong. The more I looked at it the less I saw wrong. But when you said it was fixed in the UP, I looked at what they did and realized the issue isn't with the texture.
The concept is that she has a black ribbon that wraps completely around her hair just above her ears. The ribbon is compressing her hair above it on the crown of her head. The natural effect of this is to create a slightly darker perceived hair color where that hair is compressed. If you view the crown of her hair over various conditions, it does a credible job of actually reflecting that IMO. In some lighting and at some angles the darkening is slight and at others it is heavy.
The black ribbon is a complement to the black glasses and the overall effect is easily my favorite female model in the game. In the timestamp you noted in the video yes, this darkening effect is probably overdone but the lighting and textures in this game will never measure up to that kind of scrutiny. Could it be improved? Sure, the ribbon itself is kind of janky because of the low poly models, but that isn't your issue. Regardless it's on the list and you have a solution you are happy with.
The floating debris is my mistake I created when I edited the map. Which is quite painful, but such is life.
I don't know the issue with the transparency failures except it isn't anything to do with the game. I think it is something in the video driver. It didn't start appearing until DX11/12 started to become mainstream. I have a RTX 3060 and never have the issue, thankfully. But I've also never let the drivers update since I installed the card using the CD that came in the box.
When I see streamers have the issue, I try to ask what video card they have and if they are credible sources it happens with both AMD and Nvidia cards, so I don't think it is a hardware issue. It isn't a memory leak, sometimes starting/restarting the game will actually create the issue. Everyone in chat says it's a memory leak and restarting the game fixes it. But I've seen streamers restart their games two or three times until if finally went away, as well as have the issue when first starting the stream. Eventually restarting the game will fix it, but simply closing the game and restarting isn't a guaranteed fix. The probability that one close/open cycle will fix it is fairly high, which is I guess why most players think it is a fix. There is probably a clue in there as well but I don't know what it means at the present moment.
You should be looking at the XP when you first load into the warehouse map compared to the XP when you arrive back in SM after completing the mission. In Official v1.2, UP Basic, and SMP the player is awarded 2 XP bonus when they successfully plant the bomb if there are no kills. If you want to know what Explosive04/06 are you need to open vdata\system\experience_table.txt and look them up there.
Your observations about the Tremere's hair are incredibly interesting - it's a great testament to Troika's design that new things can still be discovered/theorised after all this time. I'll be sure to have a closer look the next time I open the game.
It's good to hear that the transparency issues aren't a problem with the game. I also have an RTX 3060 (I've got a 3060Ti though), so maybe I was just a little unlucky. I think the UP documentation mentions that to fix it, you need to force the game to use your onboard GPU over any integrated one you might have, but as I don't have a CPU with integrated graphics capabilities, this obviously hasn't fixed the issue.
As for the warehouse experience thing, you're quite right, I ran through it again and the game awards you that bonus XP immediately after you place the Astrolite - I'm not sure how I missed it. I did one playthrough using the Plus patch many years ago and for whatever reason, it's taken over my memory when it comes to remembering how the game works (especially with skill book/occult item locations). The Plus patch awards you that extra XP once you enter the cutscene with Beckett and that's what I had been looking out for. The mind is a strange thing.
Hey, man. I commented before on one of your videos to the Caitiff mod and here to say again that I really love the work you do here. From now on, if a new player would start their first Bloodlines playthrough, I would always recommend to first to do it with your SMP, then with UP, and then with QCM. And I saw you feel a bit discouraged by the fact that this mod has only few downloads, well I wouldn't feel that way. You're competing not only with the quality but with the habit and a mass consumer mindset, with UP being out there for so long and it becoming basically a part of the game in everyone's head by this moment. It might take a while before your patch gets the right amount of attention (A proper spotlight by some youtubers might be in order), but don't ever think your work is unappreciated :)
Thank you I do appreciate that. When I logged on earlier, I was reading the message about AI content and ran across this comment, "bro nobody cares about art, we want good fun mods". On my latest YT video, I commented on how a film that won two film festival awards received 72% one star review scores on Prime Video so seeing that comment here seems timely. Timely and a bit sad for me, but regardless I'll try to do what I feel is the best work I can produce.
This guy might say he doesn't care about the cook, but when he actually will have to eat burgers generated by an AI, trust me, he'll be the first to call a manager ;)
71 comments
If for some reason you feel that you want Steam to be running, then find steam.exe in the root Steam folder path and copy it into the root VTMB folder. However, be aware that if Steam tries to update or verity VTMB it will try to "fix" the modifications made by the UP by replacing them with the original buggy Steam versions. This will destroy your ability to run mods. If you do want Steam running, make sure it is in "offline" mode when running VTMB.
The best solution (and the one I use) is to make a copy of the Steam VTMB root folder and place it somewhere in a directory structure you have created as a user. This bypasses the issues with needing to close Steam as well as bypassing many Windows UAC (user access control) issues created if Steam is allowed to install into the default directory it wants to.
I have a question for you, i tried this game on multiple old PCs and on a period correct P4 3.0ghz 2gb ram DDR2 and nvidia 6800 GTS the game can barely keep up in terms of performances, the engine seems to not be performing any object\occlusion culling, the game should run at 60fps stable on such a system but it can't keep up in a scene like santa monica pier where the thin bloods are.
Would you be able to check into this performance issue and see if it's possible to release a small performance patch for patch 1.2? it would be nice to have the game working nicely on contemporary hardware.
I did mess around with some settings, like removing rain, but that only increased FPS by about 3 frames. I'll do some more reading and poking around to see if I can find anything useful.
From what I've seen I think the issue might be poor Visibility Optimization with the way the levels were made. Although I'm not sure what can be done since we don't have the tools to compile maps "properly". I'm using properly to mean with the features and functions Troika maps originally had. I'm only guessing because when I just look in a direction the fps tanks, turning and looking in a different direction will often have a big impact on fps.
The more superficial aspects of the game such as sound glitches, texture issues, etc I will fix if I run into them in testing but I'm not otherwise actively looking for them. If someone, like yourself, does report one of those issues, I do also try to fix it if it is something that is explained so I can reproduce and understand the issue and it meets the mod definition for what is a bug and what is not.
The exception to that rule is for characters like Beckett or Jezebel where the impression from the player interacting with them is important to the character and feel of the game. In those cases, I did a lot of work to fix the texture and model issues with Jezebel trying to make her look, if not attractive at least not "so" horrible, and Beckett not so goofy. A ton of work on physics models so the player isn't experiencing so many glitches moving around the maps. And such.
I would not leave issues such as you describe in the game for fidelity or historical purposes although there are bugs I have left in the game for historical and/or hilarity reasons. But never anything I feel will affect any functional aspect of the game. On a scale of 1 to 5 where fixing functional bugs is 1, I'm still working on 1 to 1.5 severity issues and superficial issue would be something like a 4 severity. It's not that I don't care about them it's more that they aren't something I've gotten around to yet and wouldn't expect to any time soon.
Also another mini-issue I've found, when you deal with the reporter for Pisha one of the walls of the closet he's hiding in has a wrong truncated texture (it has the same texture of the painting on the other side of the wall), seems like it would be an easy fix: https://ibb.co/D9bvNVF
The difficulty is that everyone will have their own definition and tolerance for what is important and justified. I do go on in the README to try and explain with examples my definition and logic behind my choices. It is a tough thing to fix things without changing the character and feel of the original game. But your reports are valuable information regardless because a month, or a year, from now I might change my definition and opinion on what should or should not be done.
The texture issue I probably won't change but not for the same reason. If it were easy to fix I would, but again it is a complicated issue... for me. To fix it properly the map needs to be recompiled, and we do not have a compiler that will recompile a map and retain the fidelity of what Troika produced. We do have a tool that will recompile a map into a useful form that on a superficial level looks and works ok. As long as a player isn't interested in the more complex details that Troika put into the game, this is fine. However, my patch is really dedicated to preserving for posterity exactly those types of complex details that have been wiped out in the UP. Which is why my patch and the UP are so opposite. The UP is mostly about superficial changes, even at the expense of altering, or completely removing, functional parts of the original game, and yes as you said even in UP Basic. Which is fine and I'm fine with it too when I want to play that kind of a mod. But there was no one working on a patch focused on trying to preserve the more complex aspects in the original game, which is want I care most about.
Anyway, after that long story... if it were a game breaking bug and the only way to properly fix it was to recompile the map then I would be forced to do that. But I would not recompile a map to fix a minor texture bug. I could fix it in other more kludge ways and if were a serious bug I would, but there are hundreds of these types of issues I am aware of, but I did miss seeing this one, so it becomes a question of opening Pandora's box at some point. And we are full circle with how to fix things without changing the character of the game - and how much is too much.
To go on a bit further, for full disclosure. There "are" some recompiled maps in my mod because I did those almost in the first weeks of starting work on VTMB modding. By the time I realized doing this wasn't a good practice, it was rather too late to go back in time and start over. Even if I were to go back, I couldn't make those changes without recompiling the map in any case. There are also a few maps that I recompiled early on, where I did go back and reverse those changes to bring the original Troika map back and work out different solutions to issues when that was a feasible option.
I made a video explaining the bug, how it occurs and how to detect it: VTMB: Development progress and new information on avoiding a game breaking character stealth bug.
p.s. about the spellings I've almost decided to change those spellings, man it is a hard decision to make! :)
Why it's a hard decision? Honestly the spelling errors bug me and take me out of the game same as a bug would. I have encountered a couple more but didn't take note so I don't even remember where I saw them. Imo even an ''essential'' patch should fix them same as with game-breaking bugs, you are not messing with Troika's vision by fixing typos they had no time to fix themselves, I don't see how it's any different than fixing bugs.
1. I skipped the tutorial "sheriff pwning three sabbat" cutscene, and the gate behind him was open when I started the tutorial. I snuck behind him, and finished the job lol
2. my ventrue isn't having any side effects from drinking rat blood. Not sure if that's how 1.2 was, but thought I'd mention it.
Thanks for the mod. Looking forward to the rest of my playthrough. Peace
edit: I started a new game and it seems to be normal. weird
update: finished a playthrough, and saw very few bugs! couple of guys clipped on top of barrels in the hallowbrook, and the tremere there glitched so I had to noclip through the door, but otherwise very smooth. GGWP!
Also correct in the gate issue in the tutorial, in fact that is one of the things I highlighted and explained in the Dee Dee playthrough of the SMP v0.8 on my YouTube channel. In general, I don't believe in trying to limit/restrict players in an RPG single player game. Meaning the button to skip cutscenes will skip any and every cutscene and the player is responsible for the result. If I "know" skipping at a particular point "will" break the game, then I do try to capture that and prevent it. In the tutorial case it is known to me the gate will remain open but since it doesn't really "break" anything I don't care. In this way the creative control is always in the players hands and they are free to do some really creative and interesting things with the skip button. The flip side is that I can't capture every instance that might produce bad results, but again I would rather err on the side of giving the player too much power than too little... too little IMO of course!
I'm not sure about the guys clipping on the top of barrels but to be fair it isn't something I would look for or care about until someone pointed it out. In general, I'm trying to focus on mechanical and functional issues as a priority over graphical or superficial issues at this point and there are still a mountain of those to work on, heck I'm still in alpha dev stage :) The issue with the Tremere not triggering would be something I would be very concerned with if it were something consistently repeatable and the conditions to create it could be explained. However, as you seem to know, and I appreciate, the game can randomly glitch out which as a result of trying to run it on modern OS/machines and not a function of a mod defect. As I've tested the Hallowbrook probably hundreds of times, I suspect it might be a onetime game glitch or something very specific to clan/build, killing or saving Heather, or... something other specific I just never tried/tested.
I'm trying to not change things unless there is objective in-game evidence for the change. Is this rain transition illogical? Yes. But looking at the code I don't see any convincing evidence that it is not working as they coded it. Was this because they ran out of time, or didn't know how to make it work, or ... I don't know and those types of speculation fall outside of the bounds of in-game evidence, and outside of the bounds of what I think is the definition for a bug fix patch. Of course, there will always be grey areas and disagreements of what constitutes sufficient in-game evidence. Even myself I agonize over some issues and flip back and forth from day to day as things aren't always clear cut or easy to unravel. And sometimes I just do get things wrong.
Trying to explain what it looks like Troika did from looking at the code. They made a sound for rain echoing off concrete that they used in places with large concrete/asphalt surfaces. But they didn't make/have a sound for rain on wet sand, so they made a short transition gurgling water sound for when player transitions from city to pier. Does this transition sound work very well? No, I don't think so, and maybe if they had more time this is something they would change but that falls into the realm of modding/reimaging the game and outside of patching the game as it exists. Meaning it isn't something that is "broken", it looks to me like it is working as intended, but maybe just not a great implementation.
__main__.Find("sewer_map").Unlock()
__main__.Find("sewer_map_apt").Unlock()
They can be copied and pasted into the console just as they appear above then press the Enter key to execute them. Sorry for the inconvenience and if you have any problems using those commands let me know.
One of my favorites is on your first visit to the Santa Monica pier/beach area Rosa will walk up to meet the character instead of running, because that whole running thing looks so silly to me. If you use the SMP_ExtrasON(1) command, then close and restart the game all the fire hydrants will be replaced by an actually period correct, proportionally correct, and functionally correct hydrant... well as best as my 3d modeling talents could achieve anyway.
With the Extras ON, and if Pisha is your friend, and you explore dialog sufficiently, there is an option to ask her to wash her face. Notice I said you can ask, it's up to her to decide yes or no. Also, if you have severed arms you would like to donate to her, you can just drop them on the floor and leave them for her.
Just lots of game details that I particularly like, although some of them are quite complex and full features. For example, with Extras ON when the game says come back later for your reward, you actually do need to continue on playing and come back later. The old go out the door, spin around, and go back in thing won't work anymore.
One last thing from me, have you ever thought about taking a look at the histories that would have been available during character creation, maybe as part of the SMP Extras? I know they're not technically a part of the 1.2 experience as Troika disabled them before release, but they've always been one of the biggest missed opportunities of the game for me as they would have added a lot of depth to character creation, and it's a feature that was really great back in Arcanum.
I used to just use Wesp's edited histories file from the Unofficial Patch, but wasn't a fan of some of the changes he had made to them. I'm not sure how utterly broken or salvageable they are, but a touch up of the vanilla histories could be interesting imo.
Histories couldn't be used as part of the Extras because a requirement for the Extras is that they can be turned on and off during a playthrough as often as the player wishes.
They couldn't be part of the patch because Troika excluded them for quality and content reasons fairly early in development and not "because they didn't have time".
I don't know precisely everything the UP has changed in the histories, but from my own work on the Undisciplined Caitiff mod and a brief look at the UP Plus histories a while ago, I'm fairly confident in saying that everyone ended up in the same place.
Troika abandoned histories because the functions they wanted to use didn't work in the game engine version they had. The UP changed a bunch of stuff for the same reason, not on a whim but because what Troika intended just doesn't work. And I discovered that most of the utility I wanted to harness from histories for my UC mod just didn't work. Which is how I have some sense of what Troika wanted but couldn't realize, and what the UP changed and why.
The only "proper" thing to do is fix the functions in the game engine so that Troika's vision for what they wanted could be realized. Even that is problematic in that their work was abandoned so early in development that a huge amount of blind guessing and just plain making up stuff would still be required, which the UP has done in addition to the functional changes. In a realistic world of time, money, and resources Troika back shelved this same as I have.
However, I have given the player a philosophically different but IMO more powerful and open-ended option. I have rewritten the tutorial to be discipline independent. Upon reaching the tutorial, the player can use the console to create/recreate/RP a "history" for their character. It isn't limited to a set list; it is open ended based on a player's creativity. The tutorial can be completed regardless of what character the player creates, it even recognizes that they have created a custom character and comments on it.
If they want to give their character 6 disciplines, or 2, or none, doesn't matter. They can reorder, boost, or curtail anything they want. Although the curtail bit relies on the player. Meaning if their imagined "history" limits some skill to 3 dots then it is as simple as them not putting more than 3 into it.
I do realize that there are advantages and weaknesses regardless of what choices I make and it's impossible to please everyone. Personally, looking into TraitEffects000 file the options look exciting. But playing a UP Plus and looking at the histories available to me I've never found one interesting. Consequently, I've never played with one.
OTOH a Toreador with zero humanity and who's only social skill is Intimidate... now that is a playthrough! Ventrue who can only invest in ranged combat skills but isn't allowed to ever purchase ammo. A Ventrue who can't use any disciplines, nor any healing items outside natural regeneration and combat feeding on humans. A Brujah who isn't allowed to talk to any NPC outside Anarchs and those required to advance the main quest ... personal bias, personal opinion, everyone will have their own.
I knew I should have reworded the part about including them in the SMP Extras. I was aware the Extras relied on toggling their functionality using the dedicated command and so histories couldn't be included in this, I just wasn't sure how else to word it. Apologies for that.
If I could just ask about the changes to the Dominate discipline and unlocking the dialogue options for clans other than Ventrue, was this Troika's original intention, a change to accommodate players using the console to edit their disciplines, or something else?
If I'm remembering correctly, Wesp unlocked the first tier of Dominate dialogue options for Tremere in his Plus Patch, tying the checks to Thaumaturgy because he claimed there was some kind of hard-coded engine limitation.
As someone who enjoys a Tremere playthrough, I remember being annoyed that I couldn't dominate characters through dialogue, but I put it down to giving Ventrue a bit of differentiation, so it was a surprise seeing the changelog and suddenly having the ability to use dominate in conversations.
It's tough to say if Troika intended Dominate to be Ventrue only. What can't be disputed is that in the original dialog files there are broadly two types of checks: {Dominate 1 and IsClan(pc,"Ventrue"} and simply {Dominate 1}. My story however is rather simple, looks like Troika wanted some dialog to be Ventrue specific and some to be generic. So that is what I implemented in the patch, I fixed the existing condition checks. I didn't change, add, or reimagine anything.
If I did change or miss something it wasn't a plan, simply a mistake on my part. Yes, there were game engine issues associated with fixing those dialog options. From a strictly playing perspective, implementation details probably don't matter though.
I've been quickly running through the game to refamiliarise myself with it and I believe I may have found a similar issue to the flickering blood on the Elizabeth Dane, but this time present in the Ocean House Hotel. It's in the basement after you crash through the stairs - if you're stood by the elevator with the 'Power Status' box opposite it, there are two pipes directly above you that have some textures that look like they're enjoying some kind of rave.
I'm not sure if there's some sort of overlapping that's causing it, if it's a lighting issue or if it's just an issue on my end - I thought I'd report it just in case as it stood out to me. Feel free to add it to the to-do list underneath the Tremere's hair ;)
Edit: To add on to this, I've also found some magic floating debris in the laundry room. I've uploaded an image here.
Edit 2: The issue with the pipes isn't isolated to just that spot. I've noticed it a couple of times when wandering around the basement.
Edit 3: Just run the warehouse quest a few times. Do you know what causes the transparency of some textures to break? I started to encounter it with the blood decals as seen in the image and then the feeding meter also had the same problem, appearing with a black box around it. I don't think I've ever seen it before but I'm guessing it's an engine bug, similar to the memory leak that causes random objects to get replaced as restarting the game appeared to fix it.
To be a further pain, could you also explain how the bonus experience you get for not killing anyone during that quest works? Because the UP is almost synonymous with the game at this point, a lot of the information online is often based from it. For example, the wiki states that if no one notices you, you get an extra 2XP. I've looked at the Python code for the warehouse from the UP and the Plus patch does indeed give you an extra 2XP (6 in total) if no one detects you, which is different from what I can see both your patch and 1.2 do, which is award 4XP if you don't kill anyone (I think that's what 'Explosive04' represents - the Plus patch awards 'Explosive06'. Please correct me if I'm wrong.)
My memory is a little hazy so I apologise for not being able to remember, but I tried running through a couple times, stealthily and by killing everyone, making sure 'the G.Warehouse_Kills' variable was 0 for the pacifist run, but received 4XP when talking to Beckett regardless.
I did look into the issue with the Tremere hair. Initially I looked at the existing hair and I didn't see anything horribly wrong. The more I looked at it the less I saw wrong. But when you said it was fixed in the UP, I looked at what they did and realized the issue isn't with the texture.
The concept is that she has a black ribbon that wraps completely around her hair just above her ears. The ribbon is compressing her hair above it on the crown of her head. The natural effect of this is to create a slightly darker perceived hair color where that hair is compressed. If you view the crown of her hair over various conditions, it does a credible job of actually reflecting that IMO. In some lighting and at some angles the darkening is slight and at others it is heavy.
The black ribbon is a complement to the black glasses and the overall effect is easily my favorite female model in the game. In the timestamp you noted in the video yes, this darkening effect is probably overdone but the lighting and textures in this game will never measure up to that kind of scrutiny. Could it be improved? Sure, the ribbon itself is kind of janky because of the low poly models, but that isn't your issue. Regardless it's on the list and you have a solution you are happy with.
The floating debris is my mistake I created when I edited the map. Which is quite painful, but such is life.
I don't know the issue with the transparency failures except it isn't anything to do with the game. I think it is something in the video driver. It didn't start appearing until DX11/12 started to become mainstream. I have a RTX 3060 and never have the issue, thankfully. But I've also never let the drivers update since I installed the card using the CD that came in the box.
When I see streamers have the issue, I try to ask what video card they have and if they are credible sources it happens with both AMD and Nvidia cards, so I don't think it is a hardware issue. It isn't a memory leak, sometimes starting/restarting the game will actually create the issue. Everyone in chat says it's a memory leak and restarting the game fixes it. But I've seen streamers restart their games two or three times until if finally went away, as well as have the issue when first starting the stream. Eventually restarting the game will fix it, but simply closing the game and restarting isn't a guaranteed fix. The probability that one close/open cycle will fix it is fairly high, which is I guess why most players think it is a fix. There is probably a clue in there as well but I don't know what it means at the present moment.
You should be looking at the XP when you first load into the warehouse map compared to the XP when you arrive back in SM after completing the mission. In Official v1.2, UP Basic, and SMP the player is awarded 2 XP bonus when they successfully plant the bomb if there are no kills. If you want to know what Explosive04/06 are you need to open vdata\system\experience_table.txt and look them up there.
Your observations about the Tremere's hair are incredibly interesting - it's a great testament to Troika's design that new things can still be discovered/theorised after all this time. I'll be sure to have a closer look the next time I open the game.
It's good to hear that the transparency issues aren't a problem with the game. I also have an RTX 3060 (I've got a 3060Ti though), so maybe I was just a little unlucky. I think the UP documentation mentions that to fix it, you need to force the game to use your onboard GPU over any integrated one you might have, but as I don't have a CPU with integrated graphics capabilities, this obviously hasn't fixed the issue.
As for the warehouse experience thing, you're quite right, I ran through it again and the game awards you that bonus XP immediately after you place the Astrolite - I'm not sure how I missed it. I did one playthrough using the Plus patch many years ago and for whatever reason, it's taken over my memory when it comes to remembering how the game works (especially with skill book/occult item locations). The Plus patch awards you that extra XP once you enter the cutscene with Beckett and that's what I had been looking out for. The mind is a strange thing.
I commented before on one of your videos to the Caitiff mod and here to say again that I really love the work you do here.
From now on, if a new player would start their first Bloodlines playthrough, I would always recommend to first to do it with your SMP, then with UP, and then with QCM.
And I saw you feel a bit discouraged by the fact that this mod has only few downloads, well I wouldn't feel that way. You're competing not only with the quality but with the habit and a mass consumer mindset, with UP being out there for so long and it becoming basically a part of the game in everyone's head by this moment. It might take a while before your patch gets the right amount of attention (A proper spotlight by some youtubers might be in order), but don't ever think your work is unappreciated :)