Revisiting VtM: Bloodlines

[Wesp5]

So, that reporter dude in Downtown, Milligan. You find him hiding in his closet and you get a couple of dialog options to get rid of him. And guess what, the cutscene hangs up. Don't remember it being broken in vanilla.

Yeah, I know about that, but I have no idea why it sometimes happens and sometimes it doesn't. If you read around the internet you will notice that it does not happen to everybody, so please explain to me how to fix a bug that doesn't happen always and never to me?

I've played the game at release and I don't remember fucking vanilla being this broken.

Oh really? Just play the original game as it is available from Steam several times and then come back and give me an apology!

You're an insane individual, Werner Spahl, who keeps on breaking things just so that you can fix them later and get some internet cool points for that.

Why would I do that? I'm busy restoring stuff which is much more fun, the bug fixing is a tedious business and you should pretty much know how hard it is!

P.S.: I have taken a look at the Skyeline map file now and compared everything connected to Milligan with the original map as I keep the original entity lists in the Patch_Extras folder for reference reasons. I never changed anything there so this bug must have been present in the original game too! This isn't even the worst of it in that map: If you play long sessions in one go, models in your haven will be swapped with random other models, like everything becomes doorknobs or something completely unexplainable! Never happened to me too, but to lots of other people and again I have no idea how to fix this...

P.P.S.: I moved the point where Milligan appears a bit in the hope this might fix the issue. I can't really say because it always works fine on my system anyway, but at least it won't be so obvious that he is being teleported there !

 

[gaussgunner]

If you play long sessions in one go, models in your haven will be swapped with random other models, like everything becomes doorknobs or something completely unexplainable!

Yeah, it gets a little flaky after 1-2 hours. Sounds like typical squirrelly C++ pointer bugs. C++ is notoriously bug prone. This is to be expected given that the game was built on Source engine alpha and rushed out on a deadline. There's basically nothing you can do about those issues.

On the other hand, you can trigger C++ bugs by modding scripts. I'm guessing Troika had a bunch of hybrid C++/script stuff they didn't have time to finish and debug, so they just commented out those parts of the script and left the half-assed C++ in. Then you came along and restored that stuff... you may have unleashed some C++ demons. May have. I've only been playing 9.6 so I have nothing to compare against.

It's not bad at all though. I've played much buggier games. This is totally playable. The only bugs I've encountered are general glitches after playing for 2+ hours, and a GPU overload in that sewer level when the catwalk collapses and you're underwater with electric arcs all over the place - solved by lowering resolution to 800x600. 2004 games don't look so good at 1920x1080 anyway.

 

[Wesp5]

I'm guessing Troika had a bunch of hybrid C++/script stuff they didn't have time to finish and debug, so they just commented out those parts of the script and left the half-assed C++ in. Then you came along and restored that stuff... you may have unleashed some C++ demons.

I never touched any C++ stuff, I only changed Python scripts and most of the restoring is done directly in the maps using Source engine entities...

 

[agris]

I'm guessing Troika had a bunch of hybrid C++/script stuff they didn't have time to finish and debug, so they just commented out those parts of the script and left the half-assed C++ in. Then you came along and restored that stuff... you may have unleashed some C++ demons.

I never touched any C++ stuff, I only changed Python scripts and most of the restoring is done directly in the maps using Source engine entities...

That doesn't change how certain functions/routines are implemented in the underlying engine. Some combination of events/geometry/random other stuff could lead to a bug at the source-code (C++ level), despite all your work in the editor being tip-top and with immaculate python scripts.

 

[gaussgunner]

I never touched any C++ stuff, I only changed Python scripts and most of the restoring is done directly in the maps using Source engine entities...

I know. You can expose bugs in the C++ code by doing that.
Where did the newer versions of Vampire.exe and vampire.dll come from? File sizes are way different so obviously recompiled, not hex edited. (Possibly both )

I finally hit a game-breaking script bug (in 9.6). Can't move after entering the Giovanni sarcophagus room. Someone reported 3 weeks ago on gamefaqs.
I'm comparing your giovanni.py vs original in kdiff3... you didn't change foundSarcophagusRoom. You did mess with a story state & quest state. Maybe I'm doing something you didn't expect.. I'm playing my first run as a Gangrel badass. I didn't have an invitation, I didn't kill everyone outside, I just went around back.
There was also one dude (Bruno Giovanni?) in the piano room who froze on the stairs but wouldn't die.
I'll try replaying this quest with the original giovanni.py. Could be a bug in the C++.

9.7 crashes right after character creation.

Oh well, nevermind finishing the game, I just restarted 9.6 as a Malk hottie... holy shit what a difference

 

[Wesp5]

Where did the newer versions of Vampire.exe and vampire.dll come from?

These were done by several people over the years, check the readme...

Maybe I'm doing something you didn't expect..

Yes, this was my fault and it is fixed in 9.7. I swap the Chang brothers when first entering the crypt so the plus versions drop their weapons which the basic ones don't and forgot to set a done-that-variable. So if you enter this map, then go back up before meeting the brothers and return, the swap would happen again and basically remove them which breaks the scene...

9.7 crashes right after character creation.

That's weird. When exactly does this happen?

 

[Bester]

Looks like Drog was right after all.

 

[gaussgunner]

Yes, this was my fault and it is fixed in 9.7. I swap the Chang brothers when first entering the crypt so the plus versions drop their weapons which the basic ones don't and forgot to set a done-that-variable. So if you enter this map, then go back up before meeting the brothers and return, the swap would happen again and basically remove them which breaks the scene...

Oh I see, G.Chang_Swap in python/vamputil.py. I'll look at those vars and try to sort it out. Will let you know if I find some other problem.

Heh, I'm already getting a feel for this heap of spaghetti code. I'm not surprised it's so glitchy and hard to debug. Par for the course in game scripting...

9.7 crashes right after character creation.

That's weird. When exactly does this happen?

Right after I hit accept, on the intro cutscene load screen, with the progress bar at < 1%.
With 9.7 Plus patch.

Can't even get 9.7 to run at all in WINE today. Might have to reinstall.. maybe try WINE 2.0.

 

[gaussgunner]

Looks like Drog was right after all.

Drog, what a coincidence(?). Before I read any of this, I installed the game, did the 20 questions thing to choose a clan, got Gangrel, gave him the first name that popped into my head... "sup Drog?"

He is right. I can see that Wesp5 fixed some sloppy python coding, which is nice, but he's made so many unnecessary changes. It's fucked up that GOG is distributing some of them. If they would just worry about compatibility with WINE and Win7-8-10 that would be fucking great.....

Can't blame him for not wanting to make the leap from modder to developer though. It's a pain in the ass neck.

 

[Wesp5]

I can see that Wesp5 fixed some sloppy python coding, which is nice, but he's made so many unnecessary changes.

That bug was not due to some unnecessary change, but due to a restoration of a new weapon for the plus patch! The problem with that is that Bloodlines' number of weapons is hard-coded and I sometimes need to use some really dirty tricks to achieve what I want. Of course I'm not perfect so occasionally adding a new feature like this breaks something else if people do something unexpected...

It's fucked up that GOG is distributing some of them.

The GOG version only contains the basic patch which does not contain anything like this!

If they would just worry about compatibility with WINE and Win7-8-10 that would be fucking great...

The full UP includes a script to use with WINE which is in the Patch_Extras/Player Mods folder. I don't know how GOG handles WINE support, but I might make them aware of this once they update to 9.7!

 

[laclongquan]

 

[Azrael the cat]

You're an insane individual, Werner Spahl, who keeps on breaking things just so that you can fix them later and get some internet cool points for that.

Why would I do that? I'm busy restoring stuff which is much more fun, the bug fixing is a tedious business and you should pretty much know how hard it is!

Wesp, don't get me wrong - I love your patches, and am totally on your side when it comes to doing more.

But I'm only 60% sure that you don't have a pile of dead bodies in your basement of people you've murdered and dismembered, only to painstakingly glue them back into position, dressing them up in newly sewed clothes of the same style they were wearing when they died, and spending the time when you aren't modding moving them around like dolls and whispering to them about how much better you're making them.

 

[SCO]

Just ignore this forum for patch communication Wesp. This is basically the price of having a lax moderation policy (though it really is better than the usual mod abusing powers for garbage and fanboyism... here the mods are too busy abusing power to punish real scumbags, not people that prefer to be honest). Call 'x thing in z fandom' garbage in a random forum? Get banned because of 'bashing'. Call it that here? Mods are too busy playing hack-a-mole with the 30 thousanth iteration of Chefe or similar drama queens attracted by lax moderation.


BTW Drog, i think you 'always best model' hack might have introduced a bit of instability when running bloodlines on wine. See a few directx8 locking bugs i hadn't before. Not worth it to do something about if it doesn't happen on windows, probably just some wine out of memory SNAFU.

edit: actually, this is another crash, the other one presented a message box complaining specifically about directx locking. Seems like that error doesn't dump.

Spoiler

* * * Vampire Crash Data Log, Generated From Exe Built On: Oct 6 2004 * * *
vampire caused an Access Violation (0xc0000005)
in module vphysics.dll at 0023:2603271d.
Read from location 00000000 caused an access violation.
Context:
EDI: 0x00000000 ESI: 0x0032d6c8 EAX: 0x0032d5fc
EBX: 0x0032d6f0 ECX: 0x00000000 EDX: 0x1e8f99b0
EIP: 0x2603271d EBP: 0x0032d6b4 SegCs: 0x00000023
EFlags: 0x00210206 ESP: 0x0032d598 SegSs: 0x0000002b
Bytes at CS:EIP:
8b 01 8b f9 83 e7 0c 8b 32 25 ff ff 00 00 8b bf
-----[ SysInfo ]-----
Error occurred at 2/6/2017 04:01:56.
2 processor(s), type 586.
44% memory in use.
2048 MBytes physical memory.
2048 MBytes physical memory free.
0 MBytes paging file.
3962 MBytes paging file free.
2048 MBytes user address space.
2048 MBytes user address space free.
-----[ StackTrace ]-----
0x5EC39010 : <unknown symbol> in <unknown module>
0xBFEA161E : <unknown symbol> in <unknown module>
0x4F044E04 : <unknown symbol> in <unknown module>
-----[ ScopeTrace ]-----
SCOPE_TRACE data, stack depth = 6
05. PhysFrame ()
04. CPhysicsHook::FrameUpdatePostEntityThink ()
03. CServerGameDLL::GameFrame ()
02. RunListenServer ()
01. CEngineAPI::Run ()
00. LauncherMain ()

 

[Wesp5]

But I'm only 60% sure that you don't have a pile of dead bodies in your basement of people you've murdered and dismembered, only to painstakingly glue them back into position, dressing them up in newly sewed clothes of the same style they were wearing when they died, and spending the time when you aren't modding moving them around like dolls and whispering to them about how much better you're making them.

I don't exactly get what you are implying by this, but if you think I change stuff only to release a new patch, that isn't true! But sometimes things become possible that weren't before so I change things over and over, that can indeed happen. As an example, let's take the Chang Brothers. Originally none dropped his weapon, which is still so in the basic patch, but annoyed me as this is an immersion breaker for me. So some time ago I managed to change the Blade Brother model myself so he was able to drop his sword. I could do nothing about the Claw Brothers as I know too little about modeling to create his claws as a weapon. Then Lenuska came along and helped me, so I could finally have him drop his weapon too! As this must not happen in the basic patch, I swapped the brother entities themselves and this was were the bug described here sneaked into the patch. It's already fixed, but things like this can happen!

 

[gaussgunner]

That bug was not due to some unnecessary change, but due to a restoration of a new weapon for the plus patch! The problem with that is that Bloodlines' number of weapons is hard-coded and I sometimes need to use some really dirty tricks to achieve what I want. Of course I'm not perfect so occasionally adding a new feature like this breaks something else if people do something unexpected...

lol. "Define unnecessary". IMHO you should keep basic & plus separate. Plus could be an *extension* of Basic, but if it's "necessary" to tweak Basic to achieve what you want in Plus, better to "fork" it. Know what I mean? Then you don't have worry about breaking Basic when you're working on Plus. It shouldn't be too hard to copy bugfixes back & forth if you keep the common parts pretty consistent (put your heavy mods at the bottom of scripts, or in included files). If. IF. haha.

Are you familiar with Git? Meld, kdiff3, or winmerge? They would come in handy...

The GOG version only contains the basic patch which does not contain anything like this!

The full UP includes a script to use with WINE which is in the Patch_Extras/Player Mods folder. I don't know how GOG handles WINE support, but I might make them aware of this once they update to 9.7!

GOG doesn't seem to support WINE at all for any game. Usually it just works though.
They include the original Vampire dir and some 1.2 exe/dll's, and Unofficial_Patch. I'm guessing that includes all Plus content.
There's no Patch_Extras and I don't see the WINE script elsewhere. I had probs with it anyway.
I just use the launcher icon.

I think the launcher (.lnk file) changes a setting to use Unofficial_Patch. It defaults to Vampire if I just run "wine vampire.exe" after a fresh install.. causing lots of inexplicable crashes. After I run the launcher once, I can do "wine vampire.exe -console" etc and it's fine... I think. I'd like to figure out what's going on and make a simpler WINE script that doesn't try to do so much.

Just ignore this forum for patch communication Wesp. This is basically the price of having a lax moderation policy

Bah. This is one of the few forums frequented by gamers, modders, and developers. As a dev I'd like to help out a little with 'historic preservation' when I happen to be playing games like this but I probably wouldn't bother if I had to sign into a VTM or modders forum.

 

[ghostdog]

Huh ? AFAIK The basic patch and the plus patch are separate. A change in the plus patch doesn't affect the basic patch. It's only the other way around. Are you sure you haven't installed the plus patch?

 

[gaussgunner]

Huh ? AFAIK The basic patch and the plus patch are separate. A change in the plus patch doesn't affect the basic patch. It's only the other way around. Are you sure you haven't installed the plus patch?

No, the Unofficial Patch includes Basic and Plus versions. In the patch installer you can leave out the Plus stuff and extras. But the python code is all intermingled. Look at Unofficial_Patch/python/vamputil.py in a text editor. There's a conditional, like "if basic do this, if plus do that". Either way, it sets up a bunch of game state that affects all the level scripts and shit. It's all intertwined.

The GOG version includes UP 9.6 and has no options to add or remove Plus. I think it's just configured to run the Basic version.

 

[Wesp5]

Look at Unofficial_Patch/python/vamputil.py in a text editor. There's a conditional, like "if basic do this, if plus do that". Either way, it sets up a bunch of game state that affects all the level scripts and shit. It's all intertwined.

Indeed, it's basically just one variable (G.Patch_Plus) that does all the switching except for over 500 files where this isn't possible. And you probably know that the Unofficial Patch started out as the plus version because Dan Upright already included an unused weapon in his first release! I contiued in that spirit and it was only much later that some purists forced me to include a basic version with only bug fixes. At that time it was much easier to manage this using Python scripts than maintain two seperate patches for which I have to do all fixes twice.

The GOG version includes UP 9.6 and has no options to add or remove Plus. I think it's just configured to run the Basic version.

Yes, the GOG version only includes the basic patch. To get the plus version or the extras you need to get the full patch from The Patches Scrolls! Which was part of the deal so that this site which mirrored the patch when nobody else cared could keep the exclusive rights...

 

[Jazz_]

Speaking of UP micro-issues. Today I replayed the Hotel level and again I noticed some arbitrary changes with the UP...the ghost in vanilla disappears as soon as you see him, in UP you can take a good look at him and he just stays there, he disappears after quite a lot, why would you change that Wesp5? makes no sense whatsoever. I mean the whole point of the ghost disappearing as soon as you see him is to make you go ''what the fuck was that?'', now all the ''mistery'' is gone due to this arbitrary change. What was the rationale?

 

[Wesp5]

Today I replayed the Hotel level and again I noticed some arbitrary changes with the UP...the ghost in vanilla disappears as soon as you see him...

Not exactly. If we are talking about the ghost of the father in the lobby, it originally disappeared after a fixed very short time, regardless of whether you saw him or not. So I didn't saw the ghost down the right side at all when I played and the other one looked like a graphical glitch to me as quickly as it disappeared. I have reduced the delay to only 1 second more that in the original now for the next 9.7 beta...

 

[Bester]

"It didn't suit me personally so I made it casul for everyone". Thanks Wesp.

 

[Wesp5]

"It didn't suit me personally so I made it casul for everyone". Thanks Wesp.

Oh, I wasn't the only one missing the ghosts! I bet the original poster never saw the father ghost appearance on the right side either, as he only talked abouit "the ghost". But yes, a lot of changes in the Unofficial Patch are personal, especially regarding the restorations in the plus version. I often don't know what Troika intended to do with unused stuff, so I restored it how I would have liked to have it...

 

[Bester]

Oh, I wasn't the only one missing the ghosts!

I think Troika at least had some internal testing to see how many people would see the ghost vs. how many would miss it, and made a call based on statistics. Also to take into account the fact that missing the ghost is not as bad as seeing the ghost for a long period of time.
You on the other hand just dismiss everyone who sees the ghost before you do, and tell them to gtfo.

 

[Jazz_]

Oh, I wasn't the only one missing the ghosts! I bet the original poster never saw the ghost appearance on the right side either, as he only talked abouit "the ghost". But yes, a lot of changes in the Unofficial Patch are personal, especially regarding the restorations in the plus version. I often don't know what Troika intended to do with unused stuff, so I restored it how I would have liked to have it...

This is not a ''restoration'', this is just you messing with Troika vision. And yes I was talking about the ghost on the right side, I have always spotted it when playing vanilla, but if someone missed it so what? They'll see it in another playthrough or they will just miss it, it doesn't warrant making it worse so that everyone could see the ghost standing there like he's waiting to take the bus or something. I think you have a bad case of ''more is always better'' and that makes you go for very questionable and arbitrary modding decisions.

 

[Wesp5]

I think Troika at least had some internal testing to see how many people would see the ghost vs. how many would miss it, and made a call based on statistics.

If you know about the unfinished state the game was released in including the fact that they never even tested a Nosferatu playthrough at all, I really doubt this. Still you both have a point and I have already reacted to this! There are probably a lot of early decisions I made in the patch that I wouldn't do again today. So list them here and I can think about whether to change them. Oh, and yes, I admit that with Bloodlines I have a "more is always better" syndrom, otherwise I wouldn't have done all the restorations in the first place !