vampire: bloodlines

[saintjo]

i always wanted to play this game and it was finally on clearance at best buy this week for 24 bucks. so i picked it up.
the only problem is when i click to start the game it shows the splash screen, then just disappears. anyone have this problem with this game or another?
i have way more than the system requirements
3 ghz p4 multithreaded
1028 mb dual channel ram
plenty of hd space (i even bumped up my paging file to 1.5 gig)
128 mb geforce video card
sound card is skimpy, one that is attached to the motherboard. but it is directx 9 compatible.
any ideas? the support pages are no help.

[Raven Hawk]

i always wanted to play this game and it was finally on clearance at best buy this week for 24 bucks. so i picked it up.
the only problem is when i click to start the game it shows the splash screen, then just disappears. anyone have this problem with this game or another?
i have way more than the system requirements
3 ghz p4 multithreaded
1028 mb dual channel ram
plenty of hd space (i even bumped up my paging file to 1.5 gig)
128 mb geforce video card
sound card is skimpy, one that is attached to the motherboard. but it is directx 9 compatible.
any ideas? the support pages are no help.
I had a similar problem when trying to run the game and I'm trying to remember how I fixed it. I think that you may need to go into your video card settings and override the frame-rate settings. I'll give you more info when I get home to my gaming computer tonight.

[saintjo]

now that does remind me. my video card is over-clocked to around 400mhz if i remember correctly. maybe that could be the issue. it works fine under games like doom 3 and far cry though.
thanks for the help ravenhawk. let me know what you find out.

[Raven Hawk]

saintjo,

Try overriding your video card settings on the screen refresh rate. When I had this problem, I overrode the settings and set the screen refresh rate to 60 hertz and that solved my problem. I hope that it works for you.

[saintjo]

changed the refresh rate down to 60. that didnt help
i researched some articles and found one where it mentions having debugging software on your computer can mess it up. i am a software developer, so i uninstalled all of my compilers and development software. and that still didnt help.
i reinstalled last night and reapplied the patch, but it was late and i havent tested it since then. hopefully it will work tonight with the reinstall. otherwise i think i am going to give up and sell the game on ebay. either that or trade for a different game with someone on here if they want.

[the_meanstrosity]

saintjo,

Welcome to some frustrated gaming. I purchased Bloodlines and I'll admit, it's a fun game. But there are quite a few bugs. Make sure you've patched the game since there were a lot of bugs on the first release. I'll also add a forum link that helped me troubleshoot a lot of the bugs.

If you have MS Windows, you may want to try Alt-Tab if you ever think the game has frozen. For some reason if you Alt-Tab, go back to Windows, and then Alt-Tab again back to the game after a few seconds the game will slowly unfreeze. This is especially true for any of the movie clips that begin stuttering.



hxxp://www.forumplanet.com/planetvampire/forum.asp?fid=9643

[Eaglesfan27]

My wife tells me that it plays well on our new desktop, and she thinks it is a great game. However, there is no reason that this game should require a very top of the line computer to enjoy it. There is some sloppy/buggy programming that requires it to have an excessive amount of RAM. Also, there is an unofficial 1.4 patch that she highly recommends.

[saintjo]

I fixed it!!!!

thanks for the link eaglesfan. i had actually been looking on there for help with no luck. but i gave it another shot. finally after about an hour of reading old threads from months ago i found on about copying all the dlls from the bin dir to the dir with the exe and it works!!!!!
you dont know how happy i am right now.
thanks a ton for everyones help. i appreciate it.

[Raven Hawk]

Enjoy the game, it's a fun story line. :)

[hukarez]

I better get this game re-installed on my computer again. Had a crash awhile ago, and got to a stage where I had to decide whether or not to contest the Prince, or something else....erg. Can't quite recall...or maybe it was the whole Kuei-Jin chapter that I just finished...hm.

In any case, thanks to this thread -- I'm re-installing! http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/%7Efof/forums/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[hukarez]

Also, there is an unofficial 1.4 patch that she highly recommends. Hey Eaglesfan27, I was doing a couple of searches (it's been awhile since I played this game), and I came across some boards talking about the patches. I'm a bit confused -- it seems there's an Official v1.2 patch available at the Activision site, and then there's a v1.2 patch that was done by Dan Upright (I'm assuming, one of the developers of the game itself). Then, I hear about the unofficial v1.4 patch...is there a particular order to have these installed, by chance? Say, the official v1.2 patch, then this 'Dan Upright v1.2' patch, and then this unofficial v1.4 patch?

EDIT: Scratch that. Finally found this vtmpbup14.txt file that explains everything!

[Galaril]

I see this game just had a few unoffical patches released I woner if it is worht getting now?

[the_meanstrosity]

I played the game following the unofficial patches and there were still bugs. It's a good game though, but you do have to understand that there will be occassional glitches/crashes. I would definitely recommend this game to play, but I warn you that you'll probably have to research some of the bugs you'll run into so you can get past them. I did complete the game though.

I see this game just had a few unoffical patches released I woner if it is worht getting now?

[Galaril]

I played the game following the unofficial patches and there were still bugs. It's a good game though, but you do have to understand that there will be occassional glitches/crashes. I would definitely recommend this game to play, but I warn you that you'll probably have to research some of the bugs you'll run into so you can get past them. I did complete the game though.

Thanks.

[Peregrine]

This is a fantastic game, I found essentially no bugs and I've played through it twice. Definitely pick it up.