GameBanshee Forums

It seems that there has been some discussion about this one the steam forum lately, worth checking out.

A quote from the post:
I was wandering if it has come to valve’s attention that porting the poorly coded activision’s Vampire bloodlines game into an up to date source engine version could be both lucrative and also a great contribution to the gaming community.

Lets analyse my proposal:

- Vampire bloodlines is considered by most gamers, magazines a critics as one of the greatest unfinished games of all times.

- As said by several online reviews, Bloodlines' got everything to become an instant classic, like great graphics, great engine and great story.

- The only things lacking in the game was the proper coding to make it less buggier, more stable and with much better performance. (less loading times and better fps)

It is well known that because of this bad coding, poor quality assurance and almost no support by its creators the game didn't sell as expected by activision.

So, what if activision gives valve the rights to port Bloodlines to a much newer version of the source engine, finishing that 10% (mostly coding) that was left undone, and ending up with additional benefits in the process.

It could be sold on steam, going 50-50% to valve and activision.

What you got is:

Activision improves its profits on a game that sold poorly as it is now.

Valve profits for finishing a game that is almost done and distribute it with steam to reduce the costs.

To finish the equation you get these buyers:

People who already own the game and want a faster more polished version with perhaps some cool additions like multiplayer.

People who own any Valve product, has steam, and knows the quality of valve's work.

People who saw the reviews, liked the game but didn’t buy it because of its bugs and performance problems.

It is also good publicity for the source engine and will remove a rather black mark on the engine's resume.

I have also been thinking on a reason not to do this but I just couldn’t find the negative side, since as I see it everyone benefits from such action.

I would also like to add that the game has a great and loyal community that has released several parches in the lack of official ones to try to give the players a better experience.

I would like to hear your opinion and also valve's opinion on this Thank you for reading.

LINK: http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/s ... genumber=1

I've been trying to reply to this on the steam forum but I got a technical issue with my account

It looks as if this is going nowhere, the thread is turning into a debate on the ethics of whether anyone would want to do it and not whether it is possible or not.

As a coder I fully understand the implications of FIXING someone else's code, it's a nightmare even if you knew the methods the previous coder used

The person who started that thread obviously has no idea about the amount of work required to fix something let alone 'port' it to another format. There is an old addage that all the coders I have ever known understand, it goes like this...

"It takes 20% of the time to do 80% of the code but takes 80% of the time to finish the last 20% of the code"

This might explain why the game is as buggy as it is and the main reason that it was never fully finished. I'm not saying it shouldn't be done I'm just commenting on someone else's lack of knowledge about it.

I for one would LOVE to see a HL2 mod/port of this game but I fear it will never happen so I'm not holding my breath.

Activision

Would also require, if somewhat indirectly, the admission on the part of Activision and or Troika that in there being a requirement for Bloodlines to be "fixed" they didnt do an optimally functional job the first time round. I don't know about you folks, but I've not noticed a generic tendancy amongst commercial software developers to admit to "Yeah, ok, we kinda screwed up the first time" followed by a subsequent appeal to the broader community to "fix it for us? kthx" But thats just me

-Terradoss

No way this could/would happen.

Ported it not really the correct word.
Updated is more accurate and in a legal since you could not make an expansion, as mentioned WW, 99% probably would never do it unless Requium falls on it's face.
However updating (patching) could be done without WW, since the game wouldn't be changed, even could add MP since it was orginally intended but pulled by Activison.
Hence you are back to why should Activison update/patch something they can't make money on?
The only thing that comes to mind would be a update/patch which added MP.
Also I am not sure why Valve would need to be involved, there is a very good chance that Activison has the upgrade Source code or at least availble to them when they bought the license.
Generally I would guess a Publisher would get access to updates for at least a year, thou it is only a guess.
Activison, I think refuses to spend any money more money on it as they see no way to make what they consider enough profit, to do anything.


If you want to form a team and do a mod fine, but the idea you guys keep bringing this up that Activision and Value would spend money on a product that Activision won't even spend moeny to release the tools or patches is absurd.