Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines for $5

[JustAnEngineer]

Steam has Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines for $5
http://store.steampowered.com/app/2600/

This is a great role-playing game. It was very buggy when first released in 2004, but the patches eventually fixed it. Unfortunately the bugs in the initial release hurt sales a bunch and Troika is no longer around.

[paulWTAMU]

does not work with windows 7 At least not for me.

[David]

All three of Troikas games are great. Unfortunately every single one was released buggy as hell.

Arcanum and Temple of Elemental Evil(their two other games) are both on gog.com for $5.99.

[JustAnEngineer]

I might have had this running under 64-bit Vista (previously installed under XP from the DVD). I haven't tried it under Windows 7 yet.

Oddly enough, I've found that compatibility of some old games may depend on your graphics card. MechCommander 2 was inconsistently-compatible under Windows 7 64-bit with a GeForce GTX460, but with AMD Radeon graphics, it has run perfectly every time.

[travbrad]

Oddly enough, I've found that compatibility of some old games may depend on your graphics card.?

Yep, certain older games seem to work better with certain cards probably because of drivers. Bloodlines didn't run on my HD4830 with Win7 64-bit, but it works with my GTX460. I just had to set it to XP compatibility mode.

The thing I liked about the game is it was actually challenging. One boss fight in particular is really difficult, but fun.

[destroy.all.monsters]

Make sure that if you are going to get the steam version that the unofficial patches work for it.

Or wait for dotemu to have a sale on the same game (zero drm, super friendly and responsive customer service - even more so than Gog.com to whom they supply many of their games).

[JustAnEngineer]

I downloaded the Steam version. It seems to have a problem with systems that have more than 3 GiB of memory. Steam forum discussion says that you can copy the files from the bin directory in the latest unofficial patch to fix it.

P.S.: I've tried that, and it works.

[destroy.all.monsters]

That's certainly good news. Your information should help a good number of folks.

I'll be supporting dotemu when their version goes on sale.

[lethal]

I installed the unofficial patch, but none of the intro videos played normally (just black with the audio) and the resolution menu only offers 3 options:

800x600
1024x768
1280x1024

Anyone got a fix for either of those?

[JustAnEngineer]

I didn't see the intro splash videos either but the game played fine at 1600x1200 for me.

With the resolution patcher, you can add any of your desired resolutions. It's now playing fine at 2560x1600.

Edit: Just use the ResPatch program in the Extras directory from the unoffical patch. It will let you set custom resolutions and aspect ratios.

[steelcity_ballin]

A few things you should know:

There are community made patches (7.6 is the latest).
There are community resolution patchers that allow for widescreen (I'm on 1920)
There is a known issue with over 3.5 gigs of ram on 64bit, there are some work around that don't seem to work for me so the textures look crappy.

I am on win7 64bit pro, the widescreen works but I've crashed once for unknown reasons. It is viable.

[steelcity_ballin]

I downloaded the Steam version. It seems to have a problem with systems that have more than 3 GiB of memory. Steam forum discussion says that you can copy the files from the bin directory in the latest unofficial patch to fix it.

P.S.: I've tried that, and it works.

I used that patch a day ago when i first got it, It didn't fix any texture issues I had. At 1920 the textures look terrible, totally muddled.

[JustAnEngineer]

No need to download the resolution patcher. ResPatch is included in the "Extras" folder with the unofficial patch.

[steelcity_ballin]

My textures look great after a reboot but no matter what I do the game crashes as soon as I leave the apartment for the first time. I googled the error and tried everything that was recommended including reinstallations, downloads + disabling updates + patching, moving files around, various patches - nada. Was among my favorite games ever.

[travbrad]

Just out of curiosity which graphics card do you have? I've tried this game on 2 different PCs with AMD/ATi graphics and it didn't work properly. Only the PC with the Nvidia card seems to work. It's a bit ironic because I seem to remember this game running much better on ATi cards when it came out.

[BlackStar]

My cousin recently finished this game on a 4850 and I finished it on a 6310. Both Ati cards on Win7 64bit with >4GB RAM.

The unofficial patch was all that we needed to get the game to run. Of course, we were using the original CD version, rather than the Steam one, but I doubt this makes any difference.

[travbrad]

My cousin recently finished this game on a 4850 and I finished it on a 6310. Both Ati cards on Win7 64bit with >4GB RAM.

The unofficial patch was all that we needed to get the game to run. Of course, we were using the original CD version, rather than the Steam one, but I doubt this makes any difference.

Hmm there goes that theory then.