It happens with most small developers.

You are quite naive.

Unless Atari pays for a patch, and commissions one, they cannot do jack shit.
They cant afford to build one, nor can they legally release it, without Atari's go ahead.

And yet that ALWAYS seems to happen w/ Troika...hmm. What are the odds?





http://tds.nin.com/

"Your tottally missing the point. Its Troika's game, and they have all their code on hand at all times. There are no Atari thugs sitting in their offices making sure they dont work on that code while its waiting to be released. They could have been using this time to develop fixes to all the bugs in their games, they wouldnt have to release said patch until after the game was out. This would allow them to get a head start on the patch and fix what they KNOW is broken. However, they didnt do this at all, and now they blame it all on Atari, or at least all their fans do. "

You are quite naive.

Unless Atari pays for a patch, and commissions one, they cannot do jack shit.
They cant afford to build one, nor can they legally release it, without Atari's go ahead.

As for the drivel about the 3 months of news about new being able to release it, that was all conjecture, rumours, and plain lies.

Your tottally missing the point. Its Troika's game, and they have all their code on hand at all times. There are no Atari thugs sitting in their offices making sure they dont work on that code while its waiting to be released. They could have been using this time to develop fixes to all the bugs in their games, they wouldnt have to release said patch until after the game was out. This would allow them to get a head start on the patch and fix what they KNOW is broken. However, they didnt do this at all, and now they blame it all on Atari, or at least all their fans do.

BTW Atari did not rush it, you must have missed the past 3 months of news about them not being able to release because HL2 had to come out first. They stopped development during this period and didnt do SHIT the entire time, THATS where my animosity towards Troika comes from.


This comment was edited on Dec 10, 17:35.

Firstly, with regards to TOEE.

Atari rushed it out, and Atari delayed the patch significantly(they even admitted it on the international infogrames forums).

Secondly, the rumours that Troika were sitting around for 6 months not working on the game, seem to be completely unfounded, and by all accounts, the game was again rushed out on the demands of publishers.

Now this is really starting to sound like Taldren again.

First Interplay then Activision, and reguardless of who the publisher was the game was bug ridden and still is. The only person still working on the SFC line of games is David F ex Taldren guy and the community (god bless their little broken bodies).

As much as I REALLLLLY enjoyed the first vampire game the holiday season is just too cramed packed of other good games that I just can't even justify even thinking about purchasing a half finished game.

The combat in Redemption was your typical action-RPG combat... which I whole-heartedly enjoy.

The combat in Bloodlines is on par with Morrowind, however. Slap the attack button a billion times. Booooooring.

Anyways, if you're a true RPG fan you probably play for everything *but* combat, which is why, despite all its flaws, people (yours truly) still enjoy Bloodlines.

the rumors about Troika and this game are sickening.

Excuse me, what rumors?

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“The closer you get to being a pro, the closer you can get to the client. The knife, for example, is the last thing you learn. Ok?"

The combat was just terrible.

BACK TO REDEMPTION STYLE, SAYS I!

Ahh, good crap almighty, NO! That combat was so monotonous that I needed to cheat my way through the last bit of the story. Even a 2 month break, even a 3 YEAR break, didn't cure the sickness I felt when I got into the same fight for the three hundredth time. I got some of the frustration out by turning off the AI and hammering on them without my crappy AI friends doing crappy AI things, or having the AI glitch out all over the place...argh, the pain of it all. The pain! I ended up just running past all the non-story enemies for the last 45 minutes At least that was worth it.

Then again, I feel right at home with first person shooters. Loading up with the Spazz in Bloodlines, damn, made me wish Christof had had that puppy. Though by that point in Redemption, Christof still had his instant-death sword with him, so bullets were laughable, especially since you could just fill up on blood via the pathetic humans shooting at you, pretty much at will. And he was basically invulnerable.

And then also again, I didn't even start using my Ranged Feat until halfway through Bloodlines, when the increasingly powerful enemies stopped responding to my un-amplified diplomat's fists Good thing I'd been keeping up with ammo inventory and firearms ability...


Aside from all that, though, the rumors about Troika and this game are sickening. These past couple weeks, I don't know if I'm on game forums, or in a freaking girl's dormitory. If it's the latter, I'm seeing very few pretty faces and pleasantly curved bodies to make up for it

I haven't had this much fun with a game since Deus Ex in 2000, or Fallout in 1997. It's that good. My friends and I have been lucky in the regard that we've had very few problems, and with these fan patches by dan_upright, my friends will be spared the bugs that aggravated me (he's fixed pretty ALL of the scripting errors I saw, and then some). I'm waiting to resume my second playthrough with the hopes that an engine patch is forthcoming, hopefully with some of the Source improvements that have been made in the time span between the version of Source that Vampire uses, and the version that HL2/CS:S/HL2DM all use. After playing for 5 or 6 hours, exiting Vampire makes my HD vomit. After exiting CS:S, HL2DM, or even HL2 itself, it takes about 20 seconds to get back to a mostly usable system. BIG discrepancy there.

I suggest people read my review for this game over at Mobygames. And vote it down if you think it sucks...I really have no idea what that does, but the idea of it amuses me.


Edit: Agh, too late at night to be messing with the italics tag. Took 3 edits to figure out how to get that quote right

This comment was edited on Dec 10, 02:48.

Hey, it's only 50 bucks Troika...

Don't use that term around me

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“The closer you get to being a pro, the closer you can get to the client. The knife, for example, is the last thing you learn. Ok?"

and was this also not because of Activision withholding something?

No, TOEE was published by Infotari, who own the D&D license, and who also pushed the game out of the door quickly and then refused to fund a patch. Same as Activision is doing now. It's not that Troika is waiting for permissions, Activision is just dragging its heels with funding, and the Troika guys want to eat.

Quite frankly though, after three promising but terribly (and I do mean TERRIBLY) bugridden games, Troika has shown that they have plenty of ideas, just not the technical expertise to pull it off.

They either need to nab a top programmer from somewhere, or just stop trying to be so ambitious with their games. It's all great that you want 58 different things in your games, but if you can only get 30 of them to work well, odds are it's not going to do so well.

Bloodlines was no 1 on my "Must Buy" list, but the bugs and shit have made me forget about it already. Hey, it's only 50 bucks Troika...

Creston

The combat was just terrible.

BACK TO REDEMPTION STYLE, SAYS I!

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“The closer you get to being a pro, the closer you can get to the client. The knife, for example, is the last thing you learn. Ok?"

Hopefully while they were waiting for HL2 to come out they were working on their Post Holocaust game. They be Fallout devs, matey. Some of em anways.

Personally I'm still waiting for the patch for Arcanum. Good game but too easy because of balance issues in the late game. A real FO spiritual successor. TOEE is still sitting on my shelf waiting to be installed because of the negative vibe and I may never bother if this run of great PC games doesn't dry up.

The thing is, if you're using a PC configuration similar to the Troika guys then you've probably had a great time with all their games. They make good games. But if your config has led to bugs then you've had to wait months to get them sorted out and possibly have never had all your bugs addressed.

Like most of the industry they're working on somebody else's dollar so if, as was the case with TOEE, Atari demands the game be released, then they release the game and wait until they're told there's money available to write a patch. And anyway, what happened to publishers having last word on testing?

They were with Atari for TOEE werent they? They make really good old-school games, but sometihng is up with their tehnical side.

We were testing on Dilapidation with TONS of success.
Of course then Dilapidation was hit by a hacker for the thrid time again at which point Dan the site owner, was hired to run Planet Vampire.
dan_upright creator of the unoffical patches has been doing tremdious work that is even an old list he is up to patch 8 now I believe.
If we found a problem he was on it, he has even added quest to obviouly unfinished charaters like Issac.


Edit: Oops I meant patch 9, doh!
This comment was edited on Dec 9, 20:11.

What I find most interesting is the reports of Troika sitting on their hands with a "finished" game for an undetermined time, waiting for Valve to release HL2 to Bloodlines could be shipped.

What the hell? Were they seriously not doing anything during that wait time? I would have been continuing to test my game, personally.

Troika has alot of good dev's, but they always have problems making their games work correctly.

They produce awesome games with great storylines, but they cant seem to tie everything together into a finished product, well...they can, but it happens 6-12months after its already released.

I like their games but I hate how they screw over the customer, if they took the time to fix these bugs in their games they could be as big as Bioware.

BTW, on blaming the publisher. Troika still had their code on hand while the game was being held, and they could have been making a patch during the many months they had to wait for HL2, so that it would be available upon release. THe thing is they didnt do this, and just now they start working on a patch for the same problems they had to have known about half a year ago. It just pisses me off to see them do this, they know theres alot of game-stopping bugs and glitches in their game but they refuse to do anything about it.

This comment was edited on Dec 9, 16:45.

Has anyone noticed that most fan-made patches of late seem to be for Troika titles? This game, previously TOEE and I htink there was an Arcanum unofficial patch too wasn't there? Strange that the community so actively does this for Troika stuff but not so much for others.

and was this also not because of Activision withholding something?
I believe I remember there was something of a disagreement between the 2...

I wanna know why this game runs like crap on my computer when half life 2 runs very smooth at the same settings (until it autosaves that is) and has much better graphics

i think i have to wait till i upgrade to play this and by the time that happens i will be playing WoW anyways

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Love,
Mayor Dan:
The mayor of your hearts <3<3<3<3<3

I've heard rumblings that Troika has layed off staff. Anyone confirm this? Could be the normal winding down that most companies face after finish a big project, or they could be in real trouble. There might never be an official patch.

Video game industry seems to be going down the toilet. I personally do not buy games anymore until I've checked the boards (HL2 the only exception) I wanted RCT3 but it is a bug fest, another quality sequel totaly ruined. I learned my lesson with SC4, it was months before maxis patched it and they never got it to work correctly, the community had to patch it themselves.