Game News Bloodlines Revival Project

[Overweight Manatee]

I don't see any point to this at all:

Improved performance - the game is 6 god damn years old, and its on the source engine to boot which means it wasn't pushing the envelope when it was released. If you can't run it by now then GTFO. My BACKUP computer is woefully outdated by now and yet it still gets triple digit FPS.

Improved graphics - They aren't going to update anything meaningful like make new textures or models. All thats going to happen is newer, more eye-gouging forms of bloom. Why should I care?

Bugs - Already fixed by wesp.

The only thing I see being of use is the SDK support, but lets be honest. The game's time has gone. We almost certainly won't see anything outside of nude mods and FF7 swords.

 

[KalosKagathos]

Improved performance - the game is 6 god damn years old, and its on the source engine to boot which means it wasn't pushing the envelope when it was released.

It was. The game's on the horribly unoptimized pre-HL2 version of the Source engine.

EDIT: In fact, the whole point of the project is to port it to a proper version of the engine.

 

[deuxhero]

Can't Activision/Blizzard throw a legal hissy fit over this?

I recall something similar happening when someone tried to convert morrowind into the oblivion engine.

Well unlike TeS Bloodlines isn't a uber mutli million buck property. I know the failed attempt to port Deus Ex to a newer version of the Unreal Engine required copying files from the Deus Ex directory, perhaps something like that could work (You can make mods require ownership of any Source Engine game to run, so that stops Valve from bitching, though all they did to Black Mesa was tell them to drop "source" from the name).

 

[Tails]

Honestly I don't give a slightest damn about better graphic (thought it is nice I admit it), more I'm interested in SDK and the possibility of fixing many bugs about which Wesp sadly can't do much. I hope they will/are working with him on this.

And damn, Bloodlines Main Theme never stop being awesome.

 

[Konjad]

The game's time has gone. We almost certainly won't see anything outside of nude mods and FF7 swords.

No. GTFO and play FO3 because it's NEWW and IT'S TIME IS NOW because ITS NEEEEWWWW.

 

[denizsi]

Well, by all means, let us make a quick Bloodlines Add-on write up. New quests, new environments. What would you like to see?

I want more mystery adventure, dicksmoker hotel manager meets snuff film house with more music club segments. Actually, a whole series of quests revolving around music clubs and chicks would be perfect.

I'm not familiar with HL2 SDK, but if it isn't too bothersome, I may give it a try for one simple short quest.

 

[Gragt]

Define "decently". On my old XP 3200+/6800GT machine with wesp's patch it was sub-20 FPS in Hollywood.

It was on a P4 whatever (I really don't remember it) and with a GeForce4 Ti 4600 and the lowest framerate was around 20 FPS in places like Hollywood. I didn't exactly benchmark it but the whole game could be played comfortably on that computer.

 

[Havoc]

Comparision screenshots would be nice... I can't see a diffrence in graphics.

You're not gonna see much (if any) difference. Updating the engine should not yield obvious graphics improvements, unless someone actually takes the time to work on the visual assets separately. The main benefit of the engine update would be improved performance.

Sooo... what's the point for the long locations presentation? Wouldn't it better to show couple of screenshots and not show off like "Hey look, gais! We took VtM:B to another level! LOLZ!"

Don't get me wrong... I'm not declining the mod(?)... I'm declining the purpose of the graphic presentation video.

 

[Lothers]

It ran very smooth on my old Athlon XP 2,4, 6600GT, so I don't know what you're talking about.

 

[ghostdog]

With a few tweaks the game can run just fine on an Athlon XP 1700+ with a mediocre graphics card of the era and 1GB of ram, without loosing significant graphical quality.

 

[zool]

Well, by all means, let us make a quick Bloodlines Add-on write up. New quests, new environments. What would you like to see?

I want more mystery adventure, dicksmoker hotel manager meets snuff film house with more music club segments. Actually, a whole series of quests revolving around music clubs and chicks would be perfect.

I'm not familiar with HL2 SDK, but if it isn't too bothersome, I may give it a try for one simple short quest.

For that, there already is the Clan Quest Mod.

It comes with a neat installer which allows you to select a handful of other mods (Camarilla Edition mod, Arsenal mod, ...) to be installed along the CQM if you which so. It also integrates all of Wesp's patch fixes up to 6.5.

Current version is CQM 1.2.1, but CQM 2.0 is on its way. As far as I can tell from the videos and screenshots, it is high-quality but I haven't had a chance to fully test it yet.

 

[CrimsonAngel]

I hope this works out and over all the pure fact that it will be open source together with proper mod tolls makes me get a raging nerd boner for this.

 

[Grunker]

If some cool modder makes good extra content I will care, but new graphix? meh.

My thoughts exactly. But editor for Bloodlines and people actually using it? That would be pretty sweet. Besides Wesp's patch and maybe the P&P-mod, no Bloodines mod is worth it.

Game is on my top 5 list - anything that improves it get my vote.

 

[I.C. Wiener]

I can't see a difference at all in the video except the surfaces looked really, really reflective in the quick-e-mart. But whatever, I don't know how big or how intelligent the bloodlines modding community is, but if they (the fans) can do for VTMB what they did for Oblivion, they might... improve it slightly.

I can't really imagine it getting much better since the last 15 versions of wesp's patch have been undoing or changing things he already messed with. The best we can hope for is more weapons/disciplines/maps/quests without voice acting and maybe a bigger overworld. There's really not that much that can be done to 'fix' it without a bunch of new content to fill in that last 1/3 of the game.

 

[Petrell]

I'm more curious how they're going to implement VMtB game mechanics in the newer source engine without source code access. The whole project is rather pointless if all they do is move VMtB assests to more modern source engine and keep HL game mechanics now is there?

 

[Curois]

In B4 Vaporware

 

[Shannow]

The issues were engine related due to the early version of Source Bloodlines was built on. No patches fix them, we just now have the hardware to brute force performance out of it.

I managed to get it to play very decently on a 2004/05 computer last year with wesp's patch installed.

And it played smoother for me on my old rig before my Radeon 9800 pro crashed and burned and was replaced with a Radeon 9600. After which it became unplayable. On my current core 2 duo 6600, 8800 GTS it was playable but had the control freezes which the unofficial patches did not fix. Some manual fiddling with the exe alleviated but did not remove the problem.
It depends on your rig, but the issues are not (always?*) removed by the patches.
While I have no interest in playing Bloodlines again, a smooth game experience would have been awesome when I did.

Improved performance - the game is 6 god damn years old, and its on the source engine to boot which means it wasn't pushing the envelope when it was released. If you can't run it by now then GTFO. My BACKUP computer is woefully outdated by now and yet it still gets triple digit FPS.

See above, dumbfuck (and I say that with sympathy).

*Did you actually encounter the controll-freezes or do you think that is the same as "lag"/bad framerates?

 

[Burning Bridges]

-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.

I bet a tenner that the port will have more bugs than the original code. Reverse engineering to squash out bugs makes very little sense imo.

Otherwise, if it puts forth new content, why not.

 

[Bloodeyes]

If some cool modder makes good extra content I will care, but new graphix? meh.

Pretty much where I stand on this. Bloodlines already has good grafix, surely they could be doing something better with their time.

 

[Konjad]

I thought the most important thing in this is SDK, yet all of you talk about graphic all the time...