Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines Resurgence

[Mkilbride]

A Source Engine game that is really in-depth, story is good, atmosphere is some of the best(as often Source Engine games are), and the combat is basically free style, do what you want.

There is so much to do.

The game begins with the creation of a male or female vampire character of one of seven Camarilla clans. Players can choose to manually pick the clan their character will join and their character's stats, or they can answer a series of questions to be assigned stats. Once a character has been created, the introductory sequence begins with an in-game cinematic of a lascivious vampire Sire 'Embracing' the player's character; draining the character of blood, and beginning the player's transformation into a vampire. Shortly after the Embrace, both the player and his or her Sire are captured by the Los Angeles Camarilla for what is revealed to have been an unauthorized act, violating the organization's strict rules on vampire creation. The player's Sire is executed at the order of the Prince, Sebastian LaCroix, who is the leader of the Camarilla in Los Angeles. The player is spared a similar fate when Nines Rodriguez, a brujah who was in the audience as a representative of the Anarch community, jumps up and calls out the Prince, who then relents.

It's the darker side of Vampires, screw that Twilight ****, this brings you back to when Vampires were dark, cool, brooding, and not some teeny boppers wet-dream.

[video=youtube;9sXfywgjK6k]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sXfywgjK6k[/video]

Despite what the video shows, it's not mindless combat most of the time. Lots of talking, choices, ect.

People say BioWare is good at this sort of thing, but I think this is better than the majority of their games, honestly. It immerses me more than most games will. Play it late at night...Surround sound...really puts you into it.
Infact, one of the places you visit in the game is so scary I kept jumping out of my chair, it won an award for Gamespots "Scariest level design" years after it's release.

It never got the attention it deserved, it's ratings are rather low, but it enjoys a small, dedicated group of gamers like myself to it. The original one was good to, more of a Diablo styled game, but this just trumps it.
Troika went bankrupt far to soon, they had real talent here, they crafted the best Vampire universe next to Legacy of Kain.

All the usual stuff is here, influencing, mind control, ect. You also can't go killing anyone you want, as Vampire society has "the Masquerade" so that humanity as a whole never brings down full attention on Vampires, as no matter how tough they are, couldn't survive that. So you actually lose the game if you lose all your "Humanity"

Several different types of Vampries you can be, and gameplay changes based upon it, the skills you are given, quests, and even the way people talk to you.

There is also a custom patch which fixes hundreds of bugs, and re-adds tons of cut content:

Unofficial Patch - Latest(Fixes many bugs, and restores content(optional))

http://www.patches-scrolls.de/vampire_bloodlines.php

170MB. Fixes grammar errors, spelling errors, ect, too, dedicated, like I said. Also tons of custom models, weapons, you can find at Moddb for it.

http://www.moddb.com/games/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines/mods
http://www.moddb.com/games/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines/addons

There is also a way in the console to put it to surround sound to get rid of an echo effect, listed here, for 5.1 Surround Sound, that is:


snd_surround "1"

Bam, put it in console like any Source game.


Overall, I really love this game, and noticing no thread, figured I'd make one, as I think it deserves one, and that plenty of people could find enjoyment out of it.
This is a top tier RPG, it ranks up there with the best of them. You will not be disappointed by this, I can say that with all certainty, if you like RPGs, you'll like this.

Future of Troika employees

After the shutdown ex-Troika staff has been picked up by the following companies:

Company founder

* Tim Cain – Joined Carbine Studios in 2005 as programming director. Was promoted to design director in late 2008.[9]
* Leonard Boyarsky – Took a year off due to burnout syndrome, then joined Blizzard Entertainment to work on Diablo 3.
* Jason D. Anderson – Left the gaming industry to sell real estate. In September 2008 he joined Interplay Entertainment to work on an unannounced MMORPG.[10] In March 2009 he quit Interplay and joined inXile Entertainment as creative director in a new RPG project.[11]

Team leader

On Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines:

* Brian Mitsoda – Lead writer (also character designer).[12] Joined Obsidian Entertainment, worked on Alpha Protocol. Left Obsidian to open his own development studio DoubleBear Productions in June 2009.[13]
* Chad Moore – Lead character modeler. Joined Sony Computer Entertainment motion capture department, work includes Star Wars Galaxies: Jump to Lightspeed, God of War and Killzone.[14]
* Andrew Meggs – Lead programmer. Joined Mythic Entertainment to work on Warhammer Online.
* Brock Heinz – Lead scripter. Joined Obsidian Entertainment as programmer on Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer.[15] Left Obsidian in early 2009, is now working at Turtle Rock Studios.

On The Temple of Elemental Evil:

* Michael McCarthy – Lead artist. Worked for Double Fine Productions on Brütal Legend and for Radical Entertainment on Prototype.[16]

Others

* Dennis Taylor (programmer), T. J. Perillo (designer). Joined 7 Studios to work on the PS2 game The Sopranos: Road to Respect.
* Jesse Reynolds (programmer). Joined Obsidian Entertainment worked on Neverwinter Nights 2.
* Christopher Glenn (artist). Joined SuperVillain Studios

Alot of Ex-employees went on to do amazing things, including working on Diablo 3. The real issue was that they released the same day as Half-Life 2...and they wanted to release in the summer of 2005, with no block-busters releasing, and giving them more time to polish the game.

Wanna guess who pushed em? Activision. =/

snd_mixahead 0.35
snd_surround 1
snd_gain 2.2
snd_gain_max 1.58
dsp_on 1
dsp_spatial 73
dsp_stereo 1
dsp_dist_max 9999
hisound 1

footstep_pc_vol 0.31
// footstep_npc_use_templates 0

volume "0.930000"

Surround sound fix

Put this in your user.cfg file(or edit the settings already there), save, and then right click on it and make it "Read Only", hit apply, and go in-game. You cannot change any controls like this though, until you make it non-read only.

The reason for read only is the game automatically over-writes the new lines with the old ones, unless it's read only, then it can't change them. Doing this made the sound give proper Surround Sound, at least, for me, so I suggest anyone who thought the sound did not sound "just right", check this out. I used it, and I have a 5.1 setup, worked wonders.

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Bloodlines Revival

http://www.moddb.com/mods/bloodlines-revival

It's got it's own Moddb page.

http://www.bloodlinesresurgence.com/

Demo is out - Early demo, no gameplay, exploring maps only.

The Bloodlines Revival Project is a community effort to update the original Vampire Bloodlines game, bringing it to the current Source engine. To achieve this, a dedicated team of hobbyists are working on converting the original content into the new engine. This has the following benefits:

* Fixing all of the bugs still found in the original games (the original developers were only able to release one patch - it's up to us!)

* Among these bugs were slowdowns, bad framerates, quest issues, graphical problems/glitches, and a serious control issue present for most people that locks up all controls for several moments periodically.

* To bring the fans of the game an SDK to work with

* This allows fans to make their own Bloodlines content - maps, textures, quests, npcs - anything and everything

The first demo was released today, here is a video showcasing how the port to the new Engine is doing:

[video=youtube;4__vK1eCHXs]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4__vK1eCHXs[/video]

 

[Spunky]

Still one of my all-time favorite games. Jack alone makes the game worth buying.

 

[Mkilbride]

I love Jack, especially the ending /cough

And I'm happy about it being remade into the latest Source Engine, so we can be done with the crappy errors, various bugs, allow it to be modded, and the graphics enhanced. Really, the version it uses? Is PRE-Half-Life 2, it is not even Source Engine 1, it is like Source Engine 0.7

The Dev team for Revival Mod found they could fix like 90% of the errors JUST by going to a full / latest Source version...so yeah.

 

[Deathshot]

Does this mean I can finally be a Vampire Pimp/Hooker?

 

[Mkilbride]

If you want to be, you can actually get this female "Ghoul" who you can tell to get a job as a hooker. She brings in like 200$ every couple of hours or so.