Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

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Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

Developers
	Troika Games
Publishers
	Activision
Engines
	Source
Release dates
Windows	November 16, 2004

Vampire: The Masquerade

Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption	2000
Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines	2004

Key points

Small but active community.

Released in an unfinished and buggy state. As such, installation of either the "Unofficial Patch" or the "True Patch" is highly recommended.

General information

Steam Community Discussions

Steam Users' Forums

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Amazon.com
Direct2Drive
GameStop
Steam

Essential improvements

Patches

• Patch 1.2

This patch is already included in the unofficial patch.

Unofficial Patch

The fan-made Unofficial Patch removes many bugs and adds multiple features like widescreen support. The Unofficial Patch is available in two flavors Basic and Plus:

• The Basic version consists of bugfixes that do not dramatically alter Troika's vision for the game.
• The Plus version makes more significant changes including the reconstruction of cut content and numerous other improvements that go above and beyond what the developers may have intended.

It can be downloaded here (source).

Using Unofficial Patches with Steam version Install the game from Steam as you would any other game. Run the game once. It's fine if it crashes (this is where an install with a 64 bit OS is likely to give a memory error). Right click on the game entry in Steam, go to Properties, and disable Steam Community In-Game and Automatic Updates. Download the latest unofficial patch. Run the executable you've downloaded as an administrator. Choose your installation folder when prompted. You will be asked whether you want the basic or plus patch. You're done. Go ahead and run the game.

True Patch

An alternate to the "Unofficial Patch" is the "True Patch" which aims to only fix bugs and preserve an experience as close as possible to the original game (like most purist patches do). The "True Patch" can be downloaded here. LINK IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK

Skip intro videos

Rename/delete intro videos Go to <path-to-game>\Vampire\media Rename or delete activision.bik, nvidiabloodlogo.bik, troika.bik and whitewolf.bik

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
Windows	<path-to-game>\Vampire\cfg

Save game data location

System	Location
Windows	<path-to-game>\Vampire\save

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
Steam Cloud

Video settings

Graphics option	Option	WSGF	Notes
Widescreen resolution			Supported as of Unofficial Patch 8.9 . Visuals are Stretched unless "Widescreen" is enabled in the video options.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen			See Ultra-widescreen.
Field of view (FOV)		See Field of view (FOV).
Windowed		Run a game with -sw parameter.
Borderless fullscreen windowed		Use Borderless Gaming or similar software.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)		Can be forced through video driver.
Anti-aliasing (AA)		See Anti-aliasing (AA).
Vertical sync (Vsync)		Enabled by default. Can be forced off through video driver.
60 FPS
120+ FPS		No frame rate or refresh rate cap.

Ultra-widescreen

Change the aspect ratio via hex edit Go to the installation folder. Open the Bin folder. Open engine.dll with a hex editor (e.g. HxD). Search for the value 39 8E E3 3F and change it to B8 1E 15 40

Field of view (FOV)

FOV can be altered using the developer console. Default value is 75°.

Changing the Field of View Use the -console command line argument to enable the console. Start up the game, close the console and load up a save. Reopen the console using ~. Input fov # (replace # with your desired FOV). To get rid of the console, type showinventory to bring up the inventory, then close it with Esc. Save your game. The FOV is now altered for this save.

Anti-aliasing (AA)

By default the game does not have anti-aliasing support.

Use SweetFX Download SweetFX. Extract its contents to a folder. Follow the detailed instructions in the readme file to enable SMAA. Enable FXAA/MLAA Open up the Control Panel of your video driver. (i.e. NVIDIA Control Panel or Catalyst Control Center depending on your graphics card.) Select the game profile. Enable FXAA/MLAA. Notes Performance friendly. Might blur the in-game text slightly.

SGSSAA (NVIDIA only) Open Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines driver profile via NVIDIA Inspector. Change Antialiasing compatibility to 0x000000C0 Change Antialiasing - Mode to Override any application setting. Change Antialiasing - Setting to 4x [4x Multisampling] or 8xQ [8x Multisampling]. Change Antialiasing - Transparency Supersampling to 4x Sparse Grid Supersampling or 8x Sparse Grid Supersampling. Apply changes. Notes High quality anti-aliasing. Performance demanding.

Input settings

Keyboard and mouse	Native	Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration		An option for Mouse Filtering. Mouse acceleration not present.
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support		It's possible to enable joystick support via console, but many of the actions (like feeding or crouching) can not be cancelled by pressing the same key, which makes the game unplayable on the controller.

Audio settings

Audio options	Native	Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost

VR support

3D modes	Native	Notes
Native 3D
Nvidia 3D Vision		Use Helix Mod: Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.
TriDef 3D
iZ3D

Issues fixed

Black screen during intros / movies

Black intro screen with sound - no logos Right click on vampire.exe, go to "properties". Flag "disable visual themes" and "disable desktop composition"

Missing Textures

Missing Textures Make sure "Bump Mapping" is checked ON in the game settings. Restart the game

Unable to run, less that 15mb memory available

Unable to run, less that 15mb memory available Install newest version of Unofficial Patch (either Basic or Plus). If this doesn't help, try Application Compatibility fixes

Voices and Sound Effects have low quality surround/echo

Voices and Sound Effects have low quality surround/echo To fix this issue permanently, open <path-to-game>\Vampire\cfg\autoexec.cfg and add the following to it: // [Sound Patch] snd_mixahead 0.35 snd_surround 1 snd_gain 2.2 snd_gain_max 1.58 dsp_on 1 dsp_spatial 73 dsp_stereo 1 dsp_dist_max 9999 hisound 1 footstep_pc_vol 0.31 // footstep_npc_use_templates 0 volume "0.930000"

Input Lag

Input Lag If the controls are hitching and unresponsive, particularly when moving and looking at the same time, change the compatibility of the main executable vampire.exe to Windows 98 mode. If this doesn't help, try running a game in Window or Borderless Fullscreen window mode to disable Vsync. Or simply force Vsync off in your graphic card's control panel.

System requirements

Windows
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	98, ME, 2000, XP
Processor (CPU)	1.2 GHz
System memory (RAM)	348 MB	512 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	4.7 GB
Video card (GPU)	64 MB of VRAM DirectX 9.0c compatible