Bug reports, Issues and Solutions

[[archive] sakus33182628]

                In Reply To #15
 
 Getting off topic, but.. you need to push it. Literally. Not just by pressing the action key, but actually push the board by it's handle.                        

 

                                                  

[[archive] tiborvadovan]

                In Reply To #15
 No, it IS a bug.
 You are supposed to push the bar aside, but it just wont move an inch sometimes!
 I got the same bug, and, believe it or not, the solution is:
 
 just quicksave/quickload while in front of the door.
 
 I mean it...not a regular save, just a qs/ql, and voilá, by magic you can pushthe bar now!!!
 
                       

 

                                                  

[[archive] blahblahblah33265383]

                I started to play the game,and after few days,game started to crash every time I tried to load a game.Only way to continue with the game was-I have opened a new game,and then pressing the esc and load game.But after day or two i couldn´t open a new game,because if I try to enter in new game,game crashes to desktop.That means,if I tryed to open new game or load game,game crashes.I have uninstalled the game,deleted the saves and all folders and installed game again,and game crashes AGAIN when I try to enter a new game.Is there any solution,I am on the edge of madness because of this.
 
 Sorry for mistakes in writing,I am from Croatia and I hope that you guys will understand what I have writed.                        

 

                                                  

[[archive] Hoz_Hun]

                In Reply To #14
 
 Final I uninstal the game, but keep my save files in main directory. Then rename the the directory for example "Old". Install game again, then put back save game files into the new one.
 This problem not come again to me.
                       

 

                                                  

[[archive] djclawson]

                In Reply To #3
 

PaladinGunn posted:
 I deserve no credit for this, this is merely a repost from the original message by LeonX on the dilapidation forums, I just added a post by another user of the Dilapidation board.
 
 
 
 Original post by JAck Corbenon the Dilapidation forums
 This is with regards to the slow downs, stuttering. etc. I initally had when I first installed the game.
 
 These are the "main" things I did to significanlty improve performance.
 
 1) add "-heapsize 512000" to shortcut.
 2) Set pagefile size to 1.5 times my ram, in this case 1.5 GB, STATIC and CONTIGUOUS on a separate physical drive from windows and the game.
 
 
 

 
 I don't understand the two things you just said and I need to.                        

 

                                                  

[[archive] Spudthehamme11687394]

                Could some one help me please ?
 
 When i load up Bloodlines, it says Loading...
 
 then crashes and says. Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library. C;\blalalala\Activision\Vampire - Bloodlines\vampire.exe
 
 Then it goes back to desktop,what should i do ?                        

 

                                                  

[[archive] erisian33420247]

                All of the current tweak / patch information I can find.
 
 
 Please add to this if there are more settings out there that can generally improve performance at a software level. Everything here is copy/pasted from other threads throughout these forums. Most of them are still in the original wording, but a few I have altered (because I emailed this to a friend).
 
 
 Patch:    http://oma.cultoftheinept.com/downloads/omaVampPatch1.2.exe.
 .
 
 Tweaks:
 1) You can create an autoexec.cfg in the cfg folder  and it'll execute all commands in that.
 
 Mine reads like:
 r_3dsky "0"
 autosave_on "0"
 cl_smooth "0"
 bindtoggle "F6" cl_showfps 2
 cl_ragdoll_collide "1"
 
 And in config.cfg (same folder) I changed:
 dsp_dist_max "1440.0" into dsp_dist_max "440.0"
 following a suggestion here. It makes details pop up only when you come close to things, but should aid with performance some.
 
 2) As stated in the Minimum System Requirements, Vampire requires a 1400MB* swap file in order to function properly after playing for some time. If you are using WindowsXP, 98/99, or ME, make sure that you have “Let Windows Manage My Virtual Memoryâ€? enabled, and if you are Windows 2K, make sure that you have manually set your max swap file size to 1400MB. In addition to this, ensure that you actually have enough free space on your hard drive to facilitate the swap file (1400MB).
 
 - Make sure any anti-virus software you are running is disabled.
 
 - Select Game Options from the Main Menu and set options to basic settings.
 1) Select the Audio tab and turn off Environmental Effects.
 2) Select the Video tab and turn off Bump Mapping.
 3) Select the Visual tab and set Shadows to “Simpleâ€? and move the Particles slider to the half-way point or less.
 4) Click on the Okay button.
 
 - Some people have reported increased performance by turning off Anti-Aliasing or Anisotropic Filtering on their graphics cards. If you are not sure how to do this, contact your graphics card’s manufacturer.
 
 - Some people have reported increased performance by setting their DirectX audio acceleration to “basicâ€?.
 1) Select Run from the Start Menu.
 2) Type in “dxdiagâ€? (without quotes) and press the Enter key.
 3) Click on the sound tab.
 4) Set the Hardware Sound Acceleration Level slider to “Basic accelerationâ€?.
 5) Click on the “Save all informationâ€? button
 6) Click on Okay button.
 7) Click on Exit button.
 
 * Make the swap file on a different partition than the OS/game files - this helped one person dramatically.
 
 3) I tried what a lot of half life people are doing which is reducing the priority of the game through the task manager.
 
 To do this start the game and wait until it gets to the menu screen, Then press alt+tab to bring up task manager, find vampire.exe and right click on it and go to priority, set the priority to low, a warning message will come up I did it anyway and nothing dicey happened. Close down task manager and go back to the game.
 
 For me this resulted in a very noticable performance increase as there is now rarely any stutter at all. Also you don't need to worry about only doing this on high end computers as I have a 2Ghz machine with 512 RAM and a pathetic Geforce FX 5200.
 
 4) I've got a crap system ( AMD 1.2g processor, 512M RAM, GEForce4 MX420-Wal Mart special, stock sound card) and I pull 50+ fps in the LA hub on 800x600.
 
 The main things I've done are:
 a) I followed Activision's suggestion on changing my desktop to 800x600 before playing. Definately cuts down the stress on the ol' vid card.
 b) Increased my "rate" to 25000 and changed my max_fps to 99.
 c) Changed "snd_surround" from 0 to 1. Don't ask me why, but for some reason, it seems to make the game stop trying to sync everything together.
 d) I solved the memory leak problem by following a suggestion I found on the forums a while back. Before starting Bloodlines, I hit Ctrl-Alt-Del to bring up the Systray. After the game has started, but BEFORE I load my saved game, I hit Alt+Tab to get to the systray. In "processes," I right-click on vampire.exe and change the priority setting to "low." Not only does it seem to make it load faster, it seems to stop the whole memory leak thing. Try it.
 e) I use the r_3dsky 0, autosave_on 0 and cl_smooth 0 settings, and they improve the lag immensly.
 I would imagine the patch, when put out by Troika, will address most of these issues.
 
 5) As for the autosave 0, this has been known, since the first week if not second [this is amidst arguing in the thread, but if you disable autosave you improve performance], heck no one has even mentioned in this thread is if you unpack your Pack files you get faster load times, due to the fact that with Pack files each time a file is needed in the game it has to be decompressed, with thousands of files constantly being loaded it improves loads due to the fact that no decompression is necessary [noone has mentioned it, and I wish someone would ... this might be cool].
 
 6) Halflife 2 Optimization Guide: http://gear.ign.com/articles/554/554744p1.html?fromint=1  
 
 
 7) Nvidia info: The 5x.xx drivers will most definetly give you the best performance cause you have a 5th series gforce card. Those drivers are more likely the most optomized for your type of card. The newer the drivers does NOT mean better the performance. All drivers up to 61.77 work pretty well on any nvidia card but releases after that are more catered towards the newer 6600/6800 cards.
 hope that helps and dont be afraid to experiment with older drivers!
 
 8) Also, interestingly enough, I never had any frame rate problems on my machine, I'd get the occasional stutter but thats just the engine. This may be because I used the shortcut command line "-mat dxlevel80" Which forces the game to use directx 8 shaders, this should make a big difference on lower end cards. To add shortcut commands just rightclick on the shortcut to the game (this only worked for me when I used the shortcut in the start menu but other people don't seem to have this problem) find the target info and add the command line at the end.
 
 [added Dec 23 2004 10:25AM]
 
 Noone has good tweaks to add? :-(                        

 

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[[archive] Yuna_Fireros15238517]

                copied from my new thread:
 
 After creating my character and loading up the intro, the video and audio *really* lagged to the extent that the audio would skip like a badly scratched up cd.
 
 Eventually, I turned everything - gamma, particles, etc - to the bare minimum as well as unchecking bump mapping and high quality audio and environmental sounds. The vid now runs better, but when it gets to the Prince's speech, its the same problem; major skipping and lagging. I have not yet heard one coherent word from the guy..its that bad.
 
 As always, any assistance with this problem would help me majorly. I'd post my comp stats, however, I'm not quite certain how to obtain them.
 
 Here be my vid card; I do not yet know how to find my sound card.
 
                         

 

                                                  

[[archive] erisian33420247]

                This may seem silly but I have gotten significant performance improvement by replacing my 17" generic CRT monitor with a 19" Trinitron.
 
 It's still not perfect, but it's better.                        

 

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[[archive] Grashnek]

                I have the problem i can't use a computer anymore, after installen the second nosferatu network in nocternal theater i cant access my computer anymore. can someone help me?                        

 

                                                  

[[archive] lytros]

                I' ve been playing the game and i have to say it's a great game and it's really addictive... However i can't seem to install the 1.2 patch!
 An error message keeps on popping out saying
 
 Setup could not determine the current version of your VTM:Bloodlines installation. Please verify that the game has been properly installed.
 
 A friend told me he faced this kind of problem with some other game before and it has something to do with the registry...Anyone can help me out here?                        

 

                                                  

[[archive] olliebobaa]

                In Reply To #15
 push the bar not pull                        

 

                                                  

[[archive] Naryldor]

                I'm having trouble, bloodlines won't even install for me. Every time I try I get a compatability error because I'm using Windows XP 64 bit beta version, and the compatiblity wizard won't help me. I can get it to work with my copy of 98 second edition, but my sound card won't work then. Can anyone help me figure this out? Thank you.
 
 AMD 64 3000+
 512 MB Corsair PC 3200
 Windows XP 64 bit Beta
 GeForce 5200 FX Ultra
 Aopen AK 86-L (using onboard sound)
 40 Gig hard drive                        

 

                                                  

[[archive] aurayle]

                In Reply To #28
 
 Hi there  I'm getting this error where it displays that my binkw32.dll file is incorrectly installed within my windows or windows system folder, and then it says my engine.dll file is missing. The reason why this is truly vexing is because I have searched for the bink file and I see a copy of it in those directories, and there is no problem with the engine file, its in the right directory too. I'm not sure how to fix this, any idea?                        

 

                                                  

[[archive] Degenerationxbox]

                Problem and Solution For Bloodlines and other games
 
 Problem
 Some people get a blackscreen soon they start up (music
 plays etc but get no picture)and if they alt+tab a couple
 of times the will see the intro but not the game menu (after the intro plays) *most* of the people that get this glitch have and nvidia card and a old *dumb* monitor (by dumb i mean monitor thats analog plug & play and no special drivers for fixing refresh problems etc)
 
 Clarification
 The monitor is going out of sync with the graphics cards (similar to tearing when vsync isnt on but on a MAJOR scale)
 
 Fix
 Right Click on desktop go to properties then go to the display/settings (varys depending on OS) tab then click advance go to the video card tab.When the Nvidia thingy pops out you should see a "Refresh Rate Overrides" click that and put the bubble in the "Overide Refresh Rates" i suggest u change the 3 normal resoulutions to use 60hz (u can change it later just testing)those three are 640x480 800x600 and 1024x768.
 
 Apply the settings then start the game you *should* not be able to see the intro again (normal). now restart your pc
 
 Once restarted try again everything should work exit the game and windows usally crashes (did on me) just restart your pc and play
 
 Hope this helps those people with old CRT monitors like my self