Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines keeps crashing when I try to feed

[Eeezee]

This is so frustrating. Every time I feed there's a 50/50 chance that the game will crash. And it's not just a little crash; it doesn't drop me to desktop, at which point I'd just shrug my shoulders and reload.

I can't alt-tab, I can't do a soft reboot at all, all I can do is a hard reset. It's horrible.

I've google searched and all I could find is that if you own a Geforce 8000 series, you're screwed (that's me). Does anyone know of a fix? I'm patched to the 1.2 official patch and the 5.04 Tessera unofficial patch.

Anyone know of a fix? Does the Planet Vampire patch fix this issue, or am I just screwed and unable to play this game?

How can so many people like this game? I've heard that it's incredibly buggy without the unofficial patches? WTF -_-

Edit: I remember now why I never played this game the first time I tried it, I had the same problem on my Radeon x800 XL back then!

Edit 2: I'm going to try the other unofficial patch (from planetvampire) and if that doesn't work I'm throwing this game in the dumpster -_-

 

[Drift3r]

This wont help but I've only ever used the Planet Vampire patch put out from Wesp5. I've played through the game with no problems on that patch along with the wide screen patch and yes I do have a 8800 video card. Might want to check your audio drivers as well sometimes those can cause trouble.

 

[Eeezee]

I couldn't get the wide screen patch to run; it just didn't do anything. I downloaded it off fileplanet. Do you remember if you had to do anything special to make it run?

 

[Eeezee]

I've checked my audio drivers, they're up to date. The other patch didn't fix the problem. Screw this game

 

[Bateluer]

Damn shame about Bloodlines. It really could have been a Hall of Fame contender if Activision had actually let Troika finish the game. 6 months prior to its release, Activision essentially declared the game finished and then laid off the bulk of Troika's staff.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Damn shame about Bloodlines. It really could have been a Hall of Fame contender if Activision had actually let Troika finish the game. 6 months prior to its release, Activision essentially declared the game finished and then laid off the bulk of Troika's staff.

Yep, imagine what they could have done with it if they had given them another year to develop and debug it and used a nonbeta (final) version of the HL2 engine. It could have been one of the best games ever made. Eventhough it is very buggy, unfinished, and I am sure plenty of content was cut, it is still a great game. The people at Troika had talent that was wasted when Activision "rightsized" them.

 

[Eeezee]

Originally posted by: Bateluer
Damn shame about Bloodlines. It really could have been a Hall of Fame contender if Activision had actually let Troika finish the game. 6 months prior to its release, Activision essentially declared the game finished and then laid off the bulk of Troika's staff.

Even so, weren't the patches supposed to fix these issues? The game is still unplayable for me. Even the fan-made patches didn't fix my problem.

Something is up, but I don't know if it's necessarily the fact that the game was released unfinished. I've never run into a problem with any other game, and I've played a lot of them.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: Eeezee
Even so, weren't the patches supposed to fix these issues? The game is still unplayable for me. Even the fan-made patches didn't fix my problem.

The last "official" patch was made by the already downsized employees on their own time. They were mostly rush jobs from the sound of it.
Text

It then authorized Troika to spend a week creating a patch to address the most serious issues. However, Troika's inability to find revenue from another project had already forced the developer to lay off all its employees in two waves, except for the three owners: Jason Anderson, Leonard Boyarsky and Tim Cain. Despite this, several employees continued to work without pay on the Version 1.2 patch

 

[BFG10K]

This is an nVidia driver problem on the 8xxx series, not a problem with Bloodlines.

I never saw this issue on my 7900 GTX but when I switched to my 8800 GTS I started having the problem almost immediately.

nVidia?s 8xxx drivers have other problems in the game, like not working AA and a BSOD if you try to use 4xAA.

 

[BladeVenom]

Originally posted by: Eeezee
I've checked my audio drivers, they're up to date. The other patch didn't fix the problem. Screw this game

If it is the video card not getting along with the game, do you have an older PC to play it on? I played it when it came out, and it was a little bit buggy but not that bad.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
This is an nVidia driver problem on the 8xxx series, not a problem with Bloodlines.

I never saw this issue on my 7900 GTX but when I switched to my 8800 GTS I started having the problem almost immediately.

Excellent detective work BFG10K, glad to see it was not this great game causing his crashes. Maybe the driver issue will be fixed by nvidia.

 

[Eeezee]

Originally posted by: BFG10K
This is an nVidia driver problem on the 8xxx series, not a problem with Bloodlines.

I never saw this issue on my 7900 GTX but when I switched to my 8800 GTS I started having the problem almost immediately.

nVidia?s 8xxx drivers have other problems in the game, like not working AA and a BSOD if you try to use 4xAA.

That doesn't make any sense; if it's a driver problem, why does only one game crash? Why do these bad drivers work fine for every other game in existence?

And there's a guy a little further up using an 8800 who claims that he ran the game just fine. So WTF? And WHY wouldn't the game run on my x800 XL when I first tried playing it?

 

[Eeezee]

Originally posted by: BladeVenom

Originally posted by: Eeezee
I've checked my audio drivers, they're up to date. The other patch didn't fix the problem. Screw this game

If it is the video card not getting along with the game, do you have an older PC to play it on? I played it when it came out, and it was a little bit buggy but not that bad.

I'm going to try giving this a shot. My old computer had the same problems (x800 XL video card + A64 3200+), but I don't think I had installed any patches. It's still hooked up and ready to go, I'll just have to install the game.

 

[BFG10K]

That doesn't make any sense; if it's a driver problem, why does only one game crash?

How can you make an inference that a driver bug requires multiple games to crash or it?s not a driver bug?

Perhaps in the selection of games you play only Bloodlines is affected?

And like I said, it's not just bugged with feeding, it won't apply any AA unless you use 4xAA and when you use 4xAA you?ll either get a BSOD or a driver stopped responding

Why do these bad drivers work fine for every other game in existence?

Since when?

And there's a guy a little further up using an 8800 who claims that he ran the game just fine. So WTF?

It initially works for me as well, but later in the game I'll get intermittent freezes if I try to feed in certain situations. I?ve played the game the game back-to-back on earlier hardware and never had issues until I moved to the 8xxx series.

And WHY wouldn't the game run on my x800 XL when I first tried playing it?

I'm not sure as I never had the issue on my X800 XL Maybe ATi had the same driver problem and later fixed it.

Now, if you want to try to do something about this, here?s nVidia?s email address:

nvidia@mailca.custhelp.com

Let them know you?re having the feeding issue on 8xxx hardware and tell them others are too. Also if you can replicate my AA issues in the game, it?d be great if you could report those as well.

 

[Drift3r]

Originally posted by: Eeezee
I couldn't get the wide screen patch to run; it just didn't do anything. I downloaded it off fileplanet. Do you remember if you had to do anything special to make it run?

The Widescreen patch needs to be put in the same folder as the .dll file it is trying to modify. That is how it worked for me.

 

[Sheik Yerbouti]

Not to divert from the OP, but I just got bloodlines myself, and have a very stupid question, I downloaded the latest patch (unoffical, 4.5 or something like that), and tried to install it. I tries to install into c:\program files\vampire, I redirected to the right folder, c:\program files\activision\vampire... but not sure if the game took the patch or not, any way to know if it did?
thanks.

 

[Sheik Yerbouti]

Anyone?

 

[imported_protoz]

I have a BFG 8800GT on Vista 32-bit and I haven't had any troubles playing Bloodlines. I played about halfway through it again after I put the card in just to see it run smoother than with my ATi X850XT (Still chugs in some parts but that's the engine).

No patches, Running as Administrator because it sometimes does not start without it.

If you are on Vista with an ATi card be sure to have drivers newer than Catalyst 7.6. That was the month they fixed most OpenGL and DX issues with Vista.

 

[speakinsilence]

Sorry for bringing up an old thread but I am having the same problems as this gent after downloading the game via steam. At first I thought it was because of my operating system being Windows 7 Ultimate 4 bit, which I tried to fix with the unofficial patch; however this did nothing. I don't get any blue screens at all. It's almost like 50/50 that my game with crash. Sometimes it crashes five minutes into the game, and sometimes it crashes 20 minutes of playing the game, but it always crashes. I've tried every patch out there, and none of them help. Like the op if it just crashed to the desktop then I would've just shrugged it off and just reloaded; however that is not the case. It sends my monitor into a screen usually with red and black lines, or blue and white lines making me unable to ctrl-alt-delete or alt tab. I have to completely restart my computer.

One forum said it could be a driver issue, but after updating drivers for my graphics card I still have the same problem. I'm at a loss of words here, maybe it's overheating issues? If so what are some problems I could use to see my overheating issues?

here are my specs.

Operating System
Windows 7 Ultimate (x64) (build 7600)
Install Language: English (United States)
System Locale: English (United States)

System Model
Gateway FX6800-01e
Enclosure Type: Desktop

Processor
2.67 gigahertz Intel Core i7 920
32 kilobyte primary memory cache
1024 kilobyte secondary memory cache
8192 kilobyte tertiary memory cache
64-bit ready
Multi-core (4 total)
Hyper-threaded (8 total)

Display
ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series [Display adapter]
DELL S2009W [Monitor] (19.9"vis, s/n X318J9AD062S, October 2009)

Multimedia
ATI High Definition Audio Device
High Definition Audio Device

Drives
500.00 Gigabytes Usable Hard Drive Capacity
448.69 Gigabytes Hard Drive Free Space

HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GH15F ATA Device [CD-ROM drive]
LGR 5ANS1YZWLY7 SCSI CdRom Device [CD-ROM drive]

Generic- Compact Flash USB Device [Hard drive] -- drive 1
Generic- MS/MS-Pro USB Device [Hard drive] -- drive 4
Generic- SD/MMC USB Device [Hard drive] -- drive 3
Generic- SM/xD-Picture USB Device [Hard drive] -- drive 2
ST3500418AS ATA Device [Hard drive] (500.11 GB) -- drive 0, s/n 5VMBPSGJ, SMART Status: Healthy

Memory Modules
3064 Megabytes Usable Installed Memory

Slot 'DIMM0' has 1024 MB
Slot 'DIMM1' is Empty
Slot 'DIMM2' has 1024 MB )
Slot 'DIMM3' is Empty
Slot 'DIMM4' has 1024 MB
Slot 'DIMM5' is Empty

Main Circuit Board
Board: Gateway TBGM01
Bus Clock: 133 megahertz
BIOS: AMI 842P091G 09/27/2008

I just don't know what to do.

 

[speakinsilence]

I would greatly appreciate it if someone could help me.

 

[Sclamoz]

I haven't played VTMB in ages so I probably won't help much help but I remember there being some issues supposedly with VSYNC. If you can get to the settings somehow before the game crashes I would try turning off anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering and turn everything down and see if that helps.

 

[BladeVenom]

I would greatly appreciate it if someone could help me.

Other games play fine?

You've updated your video drives, try updating everything else also.

Try turning off as many other programs as possible.

 

[speakinsilence]

Besides video and audio drives what other drives would cause these problems? Someone once said it could be my gfx card overheating anyone know a way to check the temps of my hardware?

 

[SZLiao214]

Go download HW Monitor. Small program that tells you your fan rpms/cpu/gpu temps

 

[speakinsilence]

What is too hot for a graphic card?