Vampire: Bloodlines v6.6 Unofficial Patch Released

Wesp has released version 6.6 of his unofficial Vampire: Bloodlines patch, which turns out to be his most ambitious update to Troika’s RPG masterpiece yet. To celebrate the game’s 5th anniversary, he’s went ahead and added new character skins, decals, and models in addition to his usual round of fixes. Details below:

To celebrate Bloodlines’ 5th anniversary it will include the largest content restoration ever! I took the great PackfileExplorer tool by Dave Gaunt, went through all the Bloodlines archives looking for unused stuff and was able to restore almost 20 character skins, over 40 sign decals and over 200 scenery models! Most of these are used all over the maps in inconspicuous positions so that many players probably won’t notice most or all of them, but I hope you will notice something different at the Empire Arms hotel, the beachhouse, the netcafe, the Dane, King’s Way, the Nosferatu Warrens, the warehouse, the Ocean House, the Lotus Blossom, Grout’s mansion, the Giovanni mansion and the museum.

I tried to restore most of the new content according to the map labels in the archives, but sometimes I had to take liberties to fit it in somewhere adequate. Because these are pure cosmetically restorations there shouldn’t be any impact on the gameplay, but if you somehow don’t like a special placement or find it inappropriate, we can discuss it here. Some of the restored items were intended to be more than scenery, like the hollow book or the vacuum tube socket board, so if you have any ideas on where to use them, I am open to suggestions as well! A few items were not restored because it wouldn’t be worth the effort or there was just no place they would fit, like stuff from the cut library level and simple and colourful Malkavian furniture that doesn’t seem to belong inside Grout’s mansion. Some models are even missing their textures like the “Gio spirit”, any ideas what this could have been?

Last not least an interesting observation of mine: Almost all of the restored content was found concentrated in the last not-sound-or-stats archive of Bloodlines. This implies to me that most of it was not cut on purpose because in that case it should have been in the archives connected to the levels from which it was removed. No, I imagine that Troika was well aware that their publisher was again taking an unfinished game out of their hands, as mentioned in the article on The Escapist, and included the unfinished content either because they intended to use it in later patches, if their company would survive, or to show everyone interested that they were not finished, if they went under. Now at least their work is not wasted!

‘¢ +Translated Japanese and Russian text, thanks to szhinji and Lenuska.
‘¢ +Added Masquerade redemption for Gary’s photo and fixed weapon info.
‘¢ +Gave humanity for Dominating Milligan and fixed tutorial key and xp.
‘¢ Made Misti refill and fixed prophet and pinball dude not animating.
‘¢ Fixed fire not triggering at junkyard and basic poster quests mixup.
‘¢ Restored original flicker-less decals to Dane, netcafe and warrens.
‘¢ Fixed some dialogue issues of Imalia, LaCroix, Isaac, Jack and Phil.
‘¢ Adjusted a too strong history and removed many possible text loops.
‘¢ Locked outer Tawni door and corrected bad Giovanni invitation names.
‘¢ Corrected clipping problems for Venture Tower lamp and cop glasses.
‘¢ Fixed frenzy for all clans and eye colours, thanks to Zer0Morph2000.
‘¢ Prevented Heather from appearing in Hallowbrook if you ignored her.
‘¢ Restored dialogue tutorial popups and removed Ventrue’s rat feeding.
‘¢ Added the frenzy animation to common NPC models, thanks to DDLullu.
‘¢ Fixed Voerman emails not appearing and Copper suddenly having money.
‘¢ Restored Isaac’s gift for the warrens in basic being Toreador only.
‘¢ Used white SWAT skin at Venture Tower and Nines skin at solo ending.
‘¢ Placed alternative Cal skin into diner and rookie cops on the Dane.
‘¢ Restored Lu Fang, Therese and hustler to Lotus Blossom and Vesuvius.
‘¢ Used new Ming skin in Empire hotel and hustler and girl in Asphole.
‘¢ Restored headless security corpse and severed head to warrens level.
‘¢ Placed two scrubs into Grout’s mansion and bartender in Last Round.
‘¢ Added raver and female models into Glaze and missing VW bus to pier.
‘¢ Placed alternative Chang in temple and fixed Luckee Star fireplace.
‘¢ Used alternative stripper skins at Sin Bin, Vesuvius and Giovanni’s.
‘¢ Restored over two hundred scenery props and over forty sign decals.
‘¢ Added breakable tomb stone, gas tank, board and phones to warehouse.
‘¢ Fixed and added breakable air compressor and board into Ash sewers.