Revisiting VtM: Bloodlines

[Old One]

The way they react depends on their disposition which is negatively or positively affected by your dialog choices.

Which means your answers in all the dialogs with them before the final confrontation. Bloodlines is a game were earlier choices do matter sometimes !

How confident are you this is 100% true? Like I said, just created two characters with all skills maxed, played both games in parallel, answered all the questions in the same way (as much as you can answer the same way with a Malkavian and a Brujah), and got a different outcome.

Spoiler

Both characters:
freed Lily, but made her mad by asking for money
found a replacement for Lily
did not piss off Big Cal
used every Seduction line with Jeanette
sucked up to Therese and didn't piss her off
refused to give the amulet to Jeanette
slashed the paintings and stole the cash box
gave the amulet to Therese

Brujah character: Therese furious (she called my character a worthless bag of something-or-other), impossible to save both sisters. Persuasion lines don't even appear.
Malkavian: "normal" dialogue lines making it easy to save both using Persuasion.

 

[Old One]

If someone has other suggestions, they are well-accepted.

I've been using ReShade to make the game a bit darker, or rather, to make the shadows deeper and the lights a tiny bit brighter. I've been tweaking it for a couple of weeks now, and slight changes make a big difference.

That's entirely optional though, and not something you need to worry about at this stage.

 

[Wesp5]

How confident are you this is 100% true?

Absolutely. There is no clan check in the Tourette dialogue file, you can see this yourself! You must have used some other answers...

 

[Old One]

How confident are you this is 100% true?

Absolutely. There is no clan check in the Tourette dialogue file, you can see this yourself! You must have used some other answers...

Hmm...well, I'm not going to check again. I'm burned out now. You can get to that point in the story pretty quick if you speedrun, but it's still time consuming.

Anyway, assuming what you're saying is true, then a substantially different outcome to the situation depends on one or two not-substantially-different dialogue lines. Interesting.

 

[madrigal]

Hmm...well, I'm not going to check again. I'm burned out now. You can get to that point in the story pretty quick if you speedrun, but it's still time consuming.

If you type G.Therese_Seduce and G.Jeanette_Seduce in the console it will tell you current level and which sister you failed to butter up properly.

 

[Old One]

If you type G.Therese_Seduce and G.Jeanette_Seduce in the console it will tell you current level and which sister you failed to butter up properly.

I'll try that, but I can tell you it's Therese without even looking. I assume it won't tell me the exact line that caused the change in outcome.

In any case, it was cool to see her so angry. The whole conversation has a much, much darker tone.

 

[madrigal]

For Therese you just have to be obedient and don't say anything to piss her off. There are one or two sarcastic lines that you have to avoid.

 

[xcessive303]

Im going to start my first play through, just purchased through GoG. I see its patched upto 9.6 Basic, I am going to take everyone's advice and go with basic only patch.

Does anyone know which 9.6 patch it is? Is it worth updating to 9.7 beta or will gog auto-update to 9.7?

 

[makiavelli747]

I assume it won't tell me the exact line that caused the change in outcome.

Just open the fucking dialogue txt file!

 

[Wesp5]

Does anyone know which 9.6 patch it is? Is it worth updating to 9.7 beta or will gog auto-update to 9.7?

GOG will update to 9.7 once that is final. Until that you are good with 9.6 basic, the difference isn't that big...

 

[wwsd]

I already started replaying this back in April, but I never got much further with it than Santa Monica back then. Now I've picked it up again and I'm just about to go to Chinatown. With a Malk, of course. I'd never actually seen Wesp's sewer shortcut before. I felt like a filthy casual using it, but it sure is nice not having to bother with that level. Also never seen the added/restored Malkavian maze and library stuff before. Time well spent all in all.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

Ugh, why does GOG tend to pre-patch their games with unofficial patches and fixes thus leaving you screwed when the next best patch comes out.

Wesp5, is the Steam version worth the 20 bucks they're asking for it? How is it different from the original retail version? I'd assume it's just retail + 1.2 patch + Steam wrapper instead of SafeDisc. Am I right? Any pros/cons in using the Steam version over retail?

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

I played through the Steam version and it was fine. That said, I don't remember if I downloaded any extra patches or anything.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

Okay, I went ahead and installed my retail version. The damn thing didn't run at all on Windows 10 without installing the unofficial patch lol.

I see you fixed the HUD stretch and added native widescreen support, that's p awesome.

A couple more questions:

- What's the best way to get anti-aliasing? There doesn't seem to be a cvar for it, so I just forced 8x FSAA in my Nvidia Control Panel. It's okay, but fonts look a bit weird. Not blurred, but squished a bit?
- Is there a way to disable LOD models? It's very noticeable nowadays, like you take a few steps away from an NPC and their model is starting to lose polygons rapidly, it's just so jarring. I suggest you disable them by default in your patch, like they did in Half-Life 2: Update.

 

[Wesp5]

Okay, I went ahead and installed my retail version. The damn thing didn't run at all on Windows 10 without installing the unofficial patch lol.

Yes, the UP fixes the removed SafeDisk support of all modern Windows versions. As you asked about the Steam release, that won't run without my patch either, so you could just keep your retail game. Valve didn't add anything, so it's not worth to by the game again...

- What's the best way to get anti-aliasing?

I use the SweetFX shader suite which is included with the UP in the Patch_Extras/Player Mods folder. It improves the graphics overall, but I mainly use it for the AA.

- Is there a way to disable LOD models?

Not that I know. If you could explain to me how to do it, I would disable them myself! Sadly the console command doesn't work.

 

[agris]

You guys might be interested in this DX wrapper- it takes older DX games and renders them using DX11 / DX10 HW rendering, which gives it control of AA and LOD settings on a system-driver level, among others. http://dege.freeweb.hu/

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

IIRC, VtMB uses True Type fonts, and for whatever reason they get messed up by anti-aliasing. Wish we could fix this.

As for LOD, yeah, I've tried the console commands (e.g. in Half-Life 2 "r_lod 0" is enough to disable it), they don't do anything. But still, it should be possible to hijack the function that reads LOD and disable it. Source Engine is very well documented, shouldn't be too difficult to find that part of code in a debugger. I might as well just look into it myself.

 

[Wesp5]

Source Engine is very well documented, shouldn't be too difficult to find that part of code in a debugger. I might as well just look into it myself.

That would be cool! I'm not a coder myself so everything inside the dlls or exe was made by other people, I'm lucky enough to understand a bit of Python .

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

Best RPG ever. (I probably posted this already a few pages back. )

 

[Old One]

What's the best way to get anti-aliasing?

I used ReShade to add a little more to my game. Even with 8x from my card there were still a few jaggies in places. My test case was to stand in the alley by the clinic in Santa Monica and look toward the blood bank door. The lamp above the door is diagonal, and I added more AA until the jaggies from the light went away. Overall the game world looks a tad bit blurry, but it's almost entirely smooth. I prefer it that way. The NPC faces looks much better close up anyway.

I also used it to make the shadows a little darker, FWIW. You can achieve a significant improvement with only slight modifications from two or three shaders.

 

[Wesp5]

What's the best way to get anti-aliasing?

I used ReShade to add a little more to my game.

Just to make it clear, this is the same shader suite that I called SweetFX and which is included with the UP...

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

Source Engine is very well documented, shouldn't be too difficult to find that part of code in a debugger. I might as well just look into it myself.

That would be cool! I'm not a coder myself so everything inside the dlls or exe was made by other people, I'm lucky enough to understand a bit of Python .

OK, I've fixed it.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

Here's another bug report for Wesp5.

You can trick one of the thin bloods by the beach into buying some stuff off you for crazy money. Well I did that and sold him 3 blood packs straight away, and after that my only dialog option was "I don't have a valid reply". If I try to talk to him again I still get this error. And his quest is still active in my log.

EDIT: I'm playing a malk and I think I first used a red dialog option and then a blue one, and then I was able to sell him 3 packs of "unicorn blood" for $360 and he said that it was enough for the procedure. The quest however is still active and "I don't have a valid reply".

 

[Wesp5]

OK, I've fixed it.

Wow, that was quick ! Many thanks, I'll include it in the next beta and will credit you as Drog Black Tooth in the readme.

As for the thin blood problem, I think there are some bad conditions in line 164 of copper.dlg. Just remove G.Copper_Uni == 2 and G.Copper_Stake == 0 from there and this should be fixed!

 

[Old One]

Just to make it clear, this is the same shader suite that I called SweetFX and which is included with the UP...

Yes.

Although I grabbed the newest version from the ReShade site.