Community VtmB patch controversy quelled and patch reboot

[dagorkan]

I just reached Downtown with Wesp's mod v3.5. No problems so far. Had sex with Jeanette actually without wanting to, before even doing her Slasherpiece quest - just by choosing seduction as the final dialog option. Also managed to reconcile her with her 'sister', apparently that made her disappear. Big deal.

One thing I didn't like was that I got the revolver from the very beginning of the game, in the tutorial. Somehow I don't think that's right, even though I don't use it (I rarely hit and it does less damage than my fists).

Another possible bug: I get humanity loss from stealth-kill/feeding cops and thugs in combat areas. Specifically: in the Santa Monica hospital upstairs and in the final Santa Monica quest (blow up the warehouse). Game says I can kill people in combat, so why does killing them while replenishing my blood make any difference?

But I noticed that if I just partially feed on them and finish them off with normal combat I don't lose humanity.

 

[Wesp5]

Changing the armor stats to prevent an exploit that can be done almost effortlessly via the console is probably one of the changes that DU finds so abhorrent.

I don't think its as easy for the average player to cheat via the console as you think, but I tested that even with the changed stats this exploit makes still sense, so I will leave the armor stats like they were.

 

[Wesp5]

One thing I didn't like was that I got the revolver from the very beginning of the game, in the tutorial. Somehow I don't think that's right, even though I don't use it (I rarely hit and it does less damage than my fists).

That was another issue that got changed multiple times in the patch. The problem is that a) although Jack claims that he will want his .38 back there is no dialogue whatsoever when it suddenly disappears and b) you could take the .38s from the thugs in the warehouse and I don't believe Jack would take those away from you too. Some people even manage to get them after the other one disappears.

Another possible bug: I get humanity loss from stealth-kill/feeding cops and thugs in combat areas. Specifically: in the Santa Monica hospital upstairs and in the final Santa Monica quest (blow up the warehouse). Game says I can kill people in combat, so why does killing them while replenishing my blood make any difference?

That's exactly like it's said in the printed manual and as Jack points out in the tutorial: If you kill an innocent you will loose humanity. If you kill in self-defense it's okay. He actually says: "The only way to fight the Beast is to keep touch with your Humanity, and don't go hungry. It's a fine line."

 

[Wesp5]

The weapon progress thing is about the fact that Wesp moved a crossbow because you already had better weapons when you found it.

That wasn't the main reason, I moved the crossbows up ahead because they were almost completely useless by the time they got introduced in the original game.

Troika themselves put in experience points for completed quests, to avoid having gamers sneak through an area, get the experience from doing it quietly, and then go back into the area and kill everything, getting the experience from killing the enemies.

That is a bad example as there is no opportunity for this in Bloodlines but I got your point and thought the issue over. I found similar situations in the fights with Mercurio and Pisha for which you indeed get no xp so I took these as indication and will remove the additional xp for killing Bruno in 3.6. I also searched the quest logs for successful missions without any xp gain and found some so I will remove the xp for skipping the tutorial as well!

And my last point isn't repeating my first point, it adds the fact that, even though he has knows nothing about the works of the PnP, he uses consistency with it to argue that the weapons should be named like they are in the PnP, but doesn't care that the Ra blade is in a good place.

That's not really true. I changed the weapon names to be consistent with the models, the PnP connection was made aware to me afterwards only. As was the background of the Ra blade and I acted accordingly. Bloodlines is a very complex game and not all changes are obvious or easy to do...

 

[dagorkan]

One thing I didn't like was that I got the revolver from the very beginning of the game, in the tutorial. Somehow I don't think that's right, even though I don't use it (I rarely hit and it does less damage than my fists).

That was another issue that got changed multiple times in the patch. The problem is that a) although Jack claims that he will want his .38 back there is no dialogue whatsoever when it suddenly disappears and b) you could take the .38s from the thugs in the warehouse and I don't believe Jack would take those away from you too. Some people even manage to get them after the other one disappears.

[/quote]

Sure, but it unbalances the game I think... well not really since the .38 is so crappy. My advice: make it guns powerful but more difficult to get. A gun should be a worthwhile weapon.

edit: I think the gun I kept was the one that fell from the thug.

Another possible bug: I get humanity loss from stealth-kill/feeding cops and thugs in combat areas. Specifically: in the Santa Monica hospital upstairs and in the final Santa Monica quest (blow up the warehouse). Game says I can kill people in combat, so why does killing them while replenishing my blood make any difference?

That's exactly like it's said in the printed manual and as Jack points out in the tutorial: If you kill an innocent you will loose humanity. If you kill in self-defense it's okay. He actually says: "The only way to fight the Beast is to keep touch with your Humanity, and don't go hungry. It's a fine line."

Yeah but I'm not using it to feed the 'beast', I'm using it as a weapon. I was not hungry and the guy was going to die anyway, I needed to get past him and he's not an innocent, he's a thug with orders to kill on sight. If he saw me a split second before I bit him it would be 'self-defence'. Equally I could just cut his throat and let the blood seep into the ground and then lick it up (obviously it's not possible in-game).

I realize it's not a problem with your mod but with the original game and White Wolf's PnP if that's where the mechanic comes from.

I can understand losing humanity for killing the hospital guard who is innocent, doing his job and killing him just to get some werewolf blood for your boss is obviously wrong. Killing a thug working for the evil Sabbat should be different.

 

[Wesp5]

Killing a thug working for the evil Sabbat should be different.

Exactly. And I didn't change that. You didn't accidentally drain the bum who warms himself near the warehouse? That is the only one costing humanity on the map...

 

[dagorkan]

Yeah that's right. I didn't try draining the others afterward because I didn't want to lose more humanity.

 

[Wesp5]

Yeah that's right. I didn't try draining the others afterward because I didn't want to lose more humanity.

Now you can !

 

[Zero Credibility]

I think the probability that they got one file wrong is higher than that they got three files wrong. Still the consensus here seems to be that Bloodlines is too easy already so I will just mention the issue in the 'not fixed' area of the readme. After all it seems as if you can only trick your way to 6/5 and not higher anyway...

Sounds like the best course of action in this situation. Did you perhaps find out why is it not possible to sell armors?

That is a bad example as there is no opportunity for this in Bloodlines but I got your point and thought the issue over. I found similar situations in the fights with Mercurio and Pisha for which you indeed get no xp so I took these as indication and will remove the additional xp for killing Bruno in 3.6. I also searched the quest logs for successful missions without any xp gain and found some so I will remove the xp for skipping the tutorial as well!

I think these are very good changes. I also have a question about that extra xp reward for blowing up the Sabbat warehouse without killing anybody. Did you consider changing the conditions of the reward from not killing anybody while placing the explosives to not being detected while doing so and escaping? I feel the reward would make more sense this way.

 

[Wesp5]

Sounds like the best course of action in this situation. Did you perhaps find out why is it not possible to sell armors?

No, both is probably connected to their item group called "armor". If I change that to e.g. "powerup" they can be stashed correctly but the icons will appear in the normal item slot and not the armor slot.

Did you consider changing the conditions of the reward from not killing anybody while placing the explosives to not being detected while doing so and escaping? I feel the reward would make more sense this way.

I already did that at the time it was first suggested. If nothing else important comes up expect the 3.6 patch to be released tomorrow !

 

[Zero Credibility]

If nothing else important comes up expect the 3.6 patch to be released tomorrow !

I won't be able to download it immediately (my internet connection sucks), but I'll be sure to pick it up later. Good work!

 

[Wesp5]

Hi everyone! I just made the unofficial patch 3.6 available to www.3dgamers.com
and it will be available from there and other places afterwards soon.
The changelog looks like this:

v3.6 22.05.2007
----
Added config and commands for multiplayer support, thanks to Exulx.
Made Trip sell bat and tire iron from start and added basic patch.
Restored lines of Andrei, Gary, Trip, Mercurio and for two endings.
Made serial killer react to violence and Bertram react to attacks.
Changed warehouse bonus xp to stealth and corrected magazine sizes.
Raised condition for Jeanette encounter and removed connected bug.
Made getting secret informations from Knox and Johansen consistent.
Swapped passive durations and security items between Ox and haven.
Delayed body armor until bloodhunt and repaired npctemplate* error.
Moved flamethrower to last Society level and Ra blade near Andrei.
Removed xp for Bruno and tutorial skipping and Empire clerk change.

Fixed player shown alive at wrong endings and restored warform hop.
Repaired Boris, Kerri, Mercurio, Heather and newscaster dialogues.
Fixed lockpicking and pickup sounds and some NPCs not staying dead.
Adjusted Heather's last clothes, more props and minor text issues.
Repaired Blood Strike, Salvo and Purge working sometimes not right.
Fixed two wrong auras in Santa Monica clinic and endgame taxi bug.
Restored Desert Eagle ammo model and fixed other inventory details.
Swapped several female hunters that were talking with male voices.
Fixed Domination, replica katana and Empire hotel lockpicking bugs.
Corrected conditions for Vandal, Trip and Mercurio during endgame.
Replaced broken female fire axe texture, thanks to Offkorn and Doe.

Besides providing multiplayer support thanks to Exulx, this patch
also includes a more basic version with the following features:

Basic Patch:
------------
Extracting the vampire folder in BASIC over the regular vampire
folder will revert some of the more controversial patch changes:

+ No bonus xp for freeing Ash from the Leopold Society, letting
Julius go, leaving Zhao alive or getting Imalia's magazine.
+ No humanity changes with Copper, Imalia, Ash, Julius, Killer,
Wong Ho, Hannah, Jeannette, Tourette and the charity money.
+ Books are available again from Trip (but the duplicates will
stay in the other levels to ease the double usage exploit).
+ Occult items and blood are available again from Tseng (with
Galdjum instead of Fae Charm because of the Isaac issue).
+ CD quest restored to Nosferatu and second Imalia quest removed.
+ Larry quest condition restored and Jeanette encounter removed.
+ All weapon names and firing stats restored to originals.
+ All three restored occult items removed from the game.
+ Ox gives money as reward and Venus her original cut.
+ Conditions for Christopher and Johansen restored.
+ No SWAT rifle and armor buyable from Mercurio.
+ No crossbows buyable from Slater and Tseng.

Compared to the bug-fixes-only patch made without permission and
giving proper credit out of patch 3.3, the basic patch includes:

+ Most enemies will drop their weapons on death.
+ All illogical spawning and respawning is removed.
+ Some enemies and all cops will carry different weapons.
+ Many dialogue lines, models and encounters have been restored.

 

[Wesp5]

Hi everyone! I just made the unofficial patch 3.6 available to www.3dgamers.com
and it will be available from there and other places afterwards soon.

Okay, 3dgamers is a little bit slow right now so in the meantime you can get the patch from Planet Vampire: www.planetvampire.com/files/vtmbup36.zip

 

[Deacdo]

*sighs* I bought the game a while back but haven't played it much because I can't figure out what patches/mods/whatever to use.

 

[Roqua]

Hi everyone! I just made the unofficial patch 3.6 available to www.3dgamers.com
and it will be available from there and other places afterwards soon.

Okay, 3dgamers is a little bit slow right now so in the meantime you can get the patch from Planet Vampire: www.planetvampire.com/files/vtmbup36.zip

Looks nice, thank for all the hard work you put into the patch. The last time I played the backgrounds weren't in the patch yet so I'll have to play it soon and see all the new shit you added.

 

[Wesp5]

*sighs* I bought the game a while back but haven't played it much because I can't figure out what patches/mods/whatever to use.

It has probably been said here before. For the most original experience play the game with the official 1.2 patch only or the basic version of the just released 3.6 patch. If you like to experience unused new stuff and can accept some minor tweaking of the game world try the normal 3.6 patch version.

 

[Cerise]

One thing I didn't like was that I got the revolver from the very beginning of the game, in the tutorial. Somehow I don't think that's right, even though I don't use it (I rarely hit and it does less damage than my fists).

That was another issue that got changed multiple times in the patch. The problem is that a) although Jack claims that he will want his .38 back there is no dialogue whatsoever when it suddenly disappears and b) you could take the .38s from the thugs in the warehouse and I don't believe Jack would take those away from you too. Some people even manage to get them after the other one disappears.

Sure, but it unbalances the game I think... well not really since the .38 is so crappy. My advice: make it guns powerful but more difficult to get. A gun should be a worthwhile weapon.

edit: I think the gun I kept was the one that fell from the thug.

Since you can get and keep a tutorial .38 with an official game, "unbalanced" tastes... wrong.

I could see "conflicts with dialog" or something like that. But not "unbalanced".