GameBanshee Forums

Greertings people gameanshee. Im a fan of vampire the masuqerade pen&paper game and when i heard there was gonna be a new videogame with awesome graphics and which would be true rpg (not like the old ne which i think sucks) and all. I new i had to buy it, and so i did. I played for one week at my grandmas place and it was AMAZING, maybe even better that kotor, and thats a lot. The only thing i dislikes where the long loadings.
Now im back from my xmas holydays and i installed the game in my very much uo to date pc, with 512 ram, an ati radeon 9200, atholn xp 2000. And the goddam game teakes ages to load, specially the ig places, and sometimes it even shuts i dont know why. its seriously pissing me off, do any of u guys know what my problem might be??? is it my ram thats broken or is it something else, what can i do!!!! im desperate, im gonna die soon i i cant pay!!!! please help me!!!
thanks

hail to thee

First, you might want to edit your post to get rid of obsenities. Not my rule, not the mods' rule, but the guy that owns the site. So yeah.

Next: you really should do a forum search. If you have a problem, chances are someone else has already had it and asked about it. For example, this huge post sitting on the front page is chock full of tips, some of them which might work. Or take this one, which is just as meritous.

But enough of being a whiny little one. Basically, here's what you can do to increase performance:

• Close all open programs-- virus scanners, etc. Open your task manager with ctrl-alt-delete and take a knife to any process that's running under your name. Most of those you can get rid of, you might get 1-2 fps this way.
• Defragment your hard-drive. Just right click on it in My Computer, hit properties, Tools, and Defragment Now. Let it run over-night, that might improve load times.
• For some reason, change the priority of VtM:B to low, when your on the task manager screen above. Don't ask why, but apparently it works.
• Update your video card drivers. The latest and greatest drivers always improve performance, so go grab them from www.ati.com.
• Disable EVERYTHING flashy. No shadows, no water, nothing. 800x600.
• Get another 512 mb of ram. It costs $50, about the price of the game, and you'll get a large performance increase (this is questioned by some, but confirmed by others. Its your money.)
• Increase your page file size. Go to Control Panel, System, Advanced, Performance Settings (change), Advanced. Hit change under the pagefile size area, and change it to double your current ram (so put 1024 if you have 512).
• Turn off high quality sound! A MUST.
• There are other tips, for one using a console command to change the sky quality to low. Dig around in the threads I gave you, I'm too lazy to find them now.
• If you're willing to sacrfice some visual quality to gain a few fps, go to your start menu, and right click on the VtM:B shortcut. It points to something like
  "C:\Program Files\Activision\Vampire: Bloodlines\Vampire.exe". Leave everything there, except at the every end, add this "-directx7". You're not going to used the more advanced capabilities of your graphics card, but since the 9200 is only a Direcx8 card, you wont miss TOO much... just some discipline and water effects. Ugly, but you'll maybe get a few fps.
• If you don't have the official patch yet, go get it. I'm not sure where to find it (I got it from a link from the homepage of this site) but I'm sure you can manage.
• Lastly: go get Spybot or Adaware. Run a sweep of your comp, just in case. Spyware and all that nasty business can slow gaming down incredibly.

That's all I can think of. Have fun, and remember: search is your friend!

but...

hello. Im sorrry for the obsenities, i was very angry when i wrote that so...im sorry, wont happen again. The prolem is that acording to what the box mi computer is perfect to play the game, but the loadings take mre that 10 minutes sometimes, so i was wondering if my ram is broken or if the game has a problem. If i do what you just said in the list it wont change much.
thanks anyway.

If you have long load times, get more RAM. That's what's worked for some folks on this board. Try the other ones as well if you haven't, if you do them all together it may do something.

death dealer, your compleatly wrong, vampire redemtion was sooo much better than bloodlines, for starters you could get more than 3 bloody disaplines, there were hundreds of swords, not like on this where theres like 2, you could get a cool team, and it took a long time to comple, therefore worth buying, not like this piece of ****, which alriht is relly adictive, but its just like every other sequel, crap, not true to the original, same thing hapend with deus ex, when will they learn , sorry but just my opinun

[QUOTE=Maxinion]If you have long load times, get more RAM. That's what's worked for some folks on this board. Try the other ones as well if you haven't, if you do them all together it may do something.[/QUOTE]

i have 1GB RAM (with an AMD64 3400+) and get long load/save times when trying to access the menu.
so RAM is not the problem here.
plus i get sound stutter. my hdd works like crazy when i want to load or save.
actual loading of a map is done quickly. but for some wicked reason when accessing the load save options in the menu something f***s up.
had the same with HL2, there the sound issue is fixed by now.
although valve will release another patch soon as i have heared.

[QUOTE=jezza]death dealer, your compleatly wrong, vampire redemtion was sooo much better than bloodlines, for starters you could get more than 3 bloody disaplines, there were hundreds of swords, not like on this where theres like 2, you could get a cool team, and it took a long time to comple, therefore worth buying, not like this piece of ****, which alriht is relly adictive, but its just like every other sequel, crap, not true to the original, same thing hapend with deus ex, when will they learn , sorry but just my opinun[/QUOTE]

Stop flaming and going outside the scope of this thread. This has nothing to do with the questions asked. The game is different, deal with it. Redemption didn't get great reviews at all and was generally disliked by all except a few. Its no suprise that the franchise was given to a new developer, one that made a real rpg out of it, instead of another Diablo clone like Redemption.

One of the biggest problems, of course, is the stability. Pulsar, I have almost an identical setup as you, but my save/load and level load times are all around 30 seconds. More than anything, I believe its a simple luck issue-- some people have these bugs, others don't. Some have improved by moving up to 1 gb, others haven't.

I don't know what to say, Death Dealer. It seems as though the gaming gods don't like you. If you're up to it and you know what you're doing, I'd recommend a complete reformat of Windows, as I know that several have tried that to at least some success. I'm sorry I can't help you any further.

EDIT: And if you think your RAM is at fault, go here: http://www.memtest86.com/. Download the program and install it to a floppy, following the directions, boot off the floppy, and let it run overnight. If it comes back with errors, then your RAM is indeed borked to some extent, but if it runs with 0 errors, then your RAM Is fine. I really don't think that would be the problem, but if you want to check, go ahead.

More possibilities

The other leads in the thread are good, especially the defrag issue. Also, learn how to set and create a static and contiguous (sp?) swap file. Constant hard drive activity is a sure sign of a fragmented/too small swap file. Once you have set a static swap file size (2.5 X RAM in NT based systems), you have to delete the old fragmented swap file before you will get much benefit from it. If you are using XP, get into the Recovery Console and follow these steps (type the full command in step 2 and 3):

1. Switch to the drive root (CD \).

2. Copy c:\boot.ini pagefile.sys

3. DEL pagefile.sys

If you get this done correctly, it deletes the swap file, and forces windows to rewrite it as a contiguous file. If you set it to be a static size before-hand, it will always stay defragmented.

Search the 'net for help in doing his in 98/ME, it's just as important (and actually easier to do) for those systems too.

Hope this helps, if nothing else, your system should run a little better.

Folks, please read the site owner's rules. Pay particular attention to obscenity, flames, and spamming. Repeatedly doing any of these will get you locked out of the boards.

Note that if you want to discuss other games, we have forums for those discussions: both an RPG forum, and one for all other games. We also have SYM (Speak Your Mind), a forum for those who want to discuss just about anything else. Please keep these threads in Bloodlines relevant. Thanks.

Fable,
moderator