TRUE VTMB PATCH ver. 5.04AT -- RELEASED

[Cheemoney]

yeah, i got mine from gamespot because i had no idea this site was back up.  you're right, people are mean.  people on gamespot were talking smack about you.

[Tessera]

  people on gamespot were talking smack about you.

Nah, only one person did... for our patch thread, at least. We had that post removed.

I have no idea what they say on the forums over there, and it doesn't matter.
Their ignorance bores me.  All that matters to us is the fact that it's already
a popular download. Hopefully, it will stay that way.

That's one of the most amusing things to me about all of this stuff. Lots of people attack
my nude mods, for example... and yet those are the mods that have been downloaded
literally thousands of times from this site. People have attacked our Gallery, for having "too
much nudity in it." And yet if you look at the statistics over on the Gallery (any user can
look them up), then you'll find that the most popular and highest rated pics are all nudes.

And they attack the True Patch -- and meanwhile, on sites where it competes directly with
Wesp's mods, our patch gets downloaded 2-to-1 over his stuff during the same time period.

Lots of childish people like to talk shit. I just keep looking at the numbers, and then I smile.
We made this patch to give the players an alternate choice -- not to start a flame war.


EDIT to add: we're up to 208 downloads from GameSpot now. Our patch hasn't been on that
site for much longer than four days. Downloads from tessmage.com are up to 123. Very nice.

[Arandie]

I have no idea what they say on the forums over there, and it doesn't matter.

There was one attack, but I defeated the poster's arguments with one fell swoop...

[steeal]

I wonder how many of the DLs are from the link at http://www.gamebanshee.com/vampirebloodlines/.

They linked to Gamespot...it really doesn't matter as long as people are getting it 

[Tessera]

Go, team..!!!

Hee hee... nice work, everyone.

[Cheemoney]

yeah, that's how i found out.  i had lost all hope when you temporarily shut down the site.  i went onto game banshee to see how to get myself unstuck from a certain point in the game.  saw the patch news, then got all excited and downloaded it.  you know, i didn't even look up how to get myself out of the place i was stuck.  dammit.

[KyleM]

I heard about the new patch and the temporary site shutdown at gamevixen....glad to see that the site is back up and running again, and thanks for releasing a new patch.

KyleM

[Acrimonious]

Hmmm..actually I left with all the ammo, when I picked up my first .38 from the guard in the clinic my Ammo was maxed out.

Okaaaaay... then that *is* a problem. Thank you for the report.
Jack should take all the ammo when he takes back the gun.
That's the first (potential) 5.04AT bug report that we've received.

I'll check with Acrimonious about it. Right now, he seems to be taking
a well-deserved break. If this turns out to be a legitimate bug, then
we'll fix it and issue an immediate hotfix. Fortunately, it's nothing critical,
but I don't want ANY bugs to be in this version if we can help it.

It's a bug in the engine.  Any time you drop, sell, or otherwise lose a ranged weapon, the next time you pick it up, all the ammo you collected for it is still in your inventory.  As far as I know, there's no function to remove just ammo from a player's inventory, either.

I'll take a look at that ammo chest in the tutorial later and see what's up.

So, I took a look at the .38 ammo box next to Jack.  There's a script attached to it that fires when a player touches the chest and refills the chest with ammo.   This was clearly done intentionally by Troika.  I considered this for a while, and I think I know why it was done.  The tutorial doesn't let you proceed until you've shot one of the bottles with the .38.  It is conceivable, however unlikely, that a new player might miss every shot and need more ammo to get the job done, or that they would wander arouna and waste all their ammo shooting at other things. 

While this is certainly exploitable, I'm not sure this is something we should necessarily "fix."  Input?

[jorgamesh]

Great work with the patch

more mirrors

http://www.vgpro.com/file/true_vtmb_504atzip

http://files.filefront.com/True+VTMB+Patch+v504AT/;8707319;/fileinfo.html

[steeal]

It is conceivable, however unlikely, that a new player might miss every shot and need more ammo to get the job done, or that they would wander around and waste all their ammo shooting at other things. 

Um...I have done that a few times...(every time).

I don't think it needs a fix.

[Tessera]

The tutorial doesn't let you proceed until you've shot one of the bottles with the .38.  It is conceivable, however unlikely, that a new player might miss every shot and need more ammo to get the job done, or that they would wander arouna and waste all their ammo shooting at other things. 

While this is certainly exploitable, I'm not sure this is something we should necessarily "fix."  Input?

Agreed. If we changed it, then it is remotely possible that a new player could end up getting stuck during the tutorial and unable to proceed.

I vote to leave it as-is. They must have done it this way as a "safety valve" of sorts.


Also, many thanks to our newcomers and we welcome you to tessmage.com 

[Tessera]

Wanna see what Wesp does in his free time..? Check this out...

Wesp has been maliciously editing the VTMB Wikipedia entry for our patch. This is a deliberate act of sabotage on Wesp's part, and it is the second time that he has done this. I have just corrected it, and I will also post a copy of this down in the Patches forum (so that unregistered Guests can see it, too). I want people to be aware of just how rotten Wesp has been behaving, ever since we released our latest version...


First, this is what the Wiki said, before I fixed it. Here is the subtle sabotage committed by Wesp:

Unofficial Patches
Two lines of unofficial patches currently exist: the first "unofficial" patches were started by Dan Upright and then continued by Werner Spahl and, among others, the Planet Vampire community. This patch contains not just quest, text, sound and level based fixes, but also restores content not present in the 1.2 version (it was hidden in the game files on the CDs). These include two additional character sequences, four occult items, one quest item, one discipline, one weapon, character and object models, of dialogues and sounds, and rudimentary multiplayer support. Gameplay is also changed in parts of the game for consistency reasons. A "basic" version is included with this patch which does contain most of the restored content, but not as many changes to the original gameplay. The latest release is version 4.2,[3] released on September 19, 2007.

An alternate line of patches ("True VTMB Patch") was started by Acrimonious and Tessera on the tessmage.com forums, with assistance by several forum members. It was intended to be a "true" patch for the many bugs in version 1.2, containing only simple fixes while containing less of the balancing gameplay changes or restoring of content found in the original unofficial patch (this was before the creation of the afformentioned "basic" version of the unofficial patch). The last release of this "True" patch was version 5.04AT, released October 1, 2007, and can be found at Gamespot [1]. Note: There had been controversy over the claim that 4.04AT and 5.04AT had included fixes taken from Werner Spahl's patches, something that was strongly disputed, and disproved[citation needed], by Tessera and other members of the "True Patch" team.


And now, the same entry -- after I fixed it. Here is the way it should have read:

Unofficial Patches
Two lines of unofficial patches currently exist: the first "unofficial" patches were started by Dan Upright and then continued by Werner Spahl and, among others, the Planet Vampire community. This patch contains not just quest, text, sound and level based fixes, but also restores content not present in the 1.2 version (it was hidden in the game files on the CDs). These include two additional character sequences, four occult items, one quest item, one discipline, one weapon, character and object models, of dialogues and sounds, and rudimentary multiplayer support. Gameplay is also changed in parts of the game for consistency reasons. A "basic" version is included with this patch which does contain most of the restored content, but not as many changes to the original gameplay (although it does still contain quite a few). The latest release is version 4.2,[3] released on September 19, 2007.

An alternate line of patches ("True VTMB Patch") was started by Acrimonious and Tessera on the tessmage.com forums, with assistance by several forum members (who beta tested each True Patch, prior to its release). It was intended to be a "true" patch for the many bugs in version 1.2, and thus it features quite a few important repairs and restorations, while containing none of the arbitrary and subjective gameplay changes found in the original "unofficial" patch. The latest release of the "True Patch" is version 5.04AT, released October 1, 2007, and it can be found at Gamespot [1]. Players can also download a copy from the official Tessmage.com website, as well as from several other prominent gaming sites.


I tucked a little reminder into the top part about Wesp's mods. Obviously, Wesp is behaving like a brat again, and I think the VTMB community needs to take a good, long, hard look at WHY he is doing these things. From where I'm sitting, it looks to me like he feels threatened. Otherwise, why would he bother doing this crap..? This kid has exactly ZERO integrity at this point, people. If seeing shit like this bugs you as much as it should, then feel free to tell Wesp to cut the crap and behave himself. I feel like we're dealing with a 10-year-old having a tantrum here. Notice that the folks who administer the WIki asked for a citation at one point, because they could not find any evidence of what Wesp was trying to claim. That's because there isn't any, but I don't think Wesp cares anymore. He's simply gone off the deep end at last. If he keeps it up with this kind of sabotage, then I suppose I'll have to lodge a formal complaint against him with the owners of that site.

[Cheemoney]

yeah, the whole ammo box thing makes sense.  when i first ran through with my toreador, i tried bypassing the whole shooting bottles part.  it wouldn't let me pass and it took me a few shots to even shoot one down.

[CornPlanter]

Thank you guys for this path Bloodlines is probably my favourite cRPG but it costs me just too much nerves to play it with just 1.2, leave alone unpatched. Now I finished it three times with 4.04AT and I'm going to play it again with 5.04AT.

[Red_Machine]

Hey, I just noticed something you may want to look into, Tess.

In a conversation with Ming-Xaio, Lilith said "You are not aslo of Caine?"  Maybe a typo you missed?

Chris

[Tessera]

Arrrgh.... yah, probably one of many that we've missed.

We've fixed several hundred dialogue and subtitle errors
at this point, but I have no doubt that there are lots more.
It's a mess. You can see evidence all over the dialogue
files that the Troika team were falling asleep at the wheel
from overwork, when they typed out most of that stuff.

I guess we'll just add this onto our "to do" list. Thanks.

[Liver]

I just started to play VTMB with the True 5.04AT Patch. I play a female Tremere and if i wear the Heavy Leather Armor (bought in Chinatown) it gaves only -1 to dexterity and not -2. And now I was at Zhao's Warehouse to shout the Tong and there was a bottle (against pain) on the table but because I could not take it I thought my inventory was full and so i drop the Brother's Salvage Card (Santa Monica Scrapyard). But I could not take the bootle because I had 10/10 and so I add the Card back to the inventory. After that (add the card, reequip with amunition) a get the quest "A Carneval of Death" back in the Active List of Santa Monica (a try to do the quest again but the door is lock (at the Scrapyard in the House).

I retry it but nothing happen ("A Carneval of Death" quest is still in the completed quest area, I could not make it happen again).


Thanks for the patch and retextured models (beautiful).


P.S. Sorry, if you can not understand everything (bad english).

[Tessera]

The armor is working as intended by Troika. It was not changed. We'll take another look at it, to make sure.


As for the Carnival of Death anomaly that you are reporting, we will look into that also. Thanks.