Epic of Ankaran -- quest repeats after it's finished -- bizzare bug

BlueSpawn · Post by **BlueSpawn** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 2:24 am

I've encountered quite a lot of bugs in Bloodlines, even with the latest patch. But this one is by far the most bizzare, game killing thing I'ce come across:

Please stop me if you've heard this one before:

After I am done battling the two brothers in the "Italian Dinner" quest, I watch a cutscene of the Ankaran tombstone being loaded into a truck. Next thing I know, my character is transported into Le Croix's Tower. There I see him standing by his desk with Bekette examining the tombstone. BUT, when I talk to Le Croix he tells me that everybody is blaming him for calling a blood hunt after Nines.
At first, I thought this was purposefully done by developers to remind the player about what has happened before by reusing some dialogue. Then Le Croix asked me, "Well, will you be needing any help bringing the Sarchophegus upstairs?" My only available response is that it was "stolen."

Stolen?

STOLEN???

After checking my Quest log, my Completion of the "Epic of Ankaran S" has been replaced with "You must find Isaac in Hollywood."

The deal is, is that it's really not even an infinite loop in the quest. When I came back to see Isaac, he was still asking me if I was on my way to the King's Road. It's just screwed up all over the place.

Any solutions? I tried to look for this issue on the forum, but no such luck.

BlueSpawn · Post by **BlueSpawn** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 2:39 am

Well, I found this thread, with a bloak having an identical problem:
[url="http://www.gamebanshee.com/forums/vampire-tm-bloodlines-47/bug-91441.html"]http://www.gamebanshee.com/forums/vampire-tm-bloodlines-47/bug-91441.html[/url]

I'm afraid the solution of starting the game from scratch is quite absurd though. There must be another way.

Wesp5 · Post by **Wesp5** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 5:37 am

BlueSpawn wrote: I'm afraid the solution of starting the game from scratch is quite absurd though. There must be another way.

There is if you use the earlier infos in the thread. Open the console and type "G.Story_State". What is the result? It should be 60 when you are using the unofficial patch and I think 65 in any other case...

BlueSpawn · Post by **BlueSpawn** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 12:01 pm

Right, the value 60 worked. I have the Tessmage's 5.04AT patch installed.

A quick note about the solution: do not enter "G.Story_State = 60" during the cutscenes! This will result in the tomb and Bekette to be replaced by furniture when you finally appear at Le Croix. Rather, type the stuff in the console after you arrive, but before you speak to the Prince.

Frankly, I think this bug is increadibly rediculous. Much worse than the quest bug I encountered with Imalia screaming at me after I had successfully installed cameras in the hotel room (without getting caught). I'm guessing this game had a short life in the QA stage of the production.

Wesp5 · Post by **Wesp5** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 2:27 pm

BlueSpawn wrote:I'm guessing this game had a short life in the QA stage of the production.

I don't remember this bug being in the original. It was probably introduced by the 5.04AT patch by accident.

Shizz · Post by **Shizz** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 2:43 pm

Nope; AFAIK Troika's to blame here, not the "True" patch guys (as much as I abhor their approach to publicity work). There've been reports of that bug since more or less the beginning; and there's at least half a dozen threads flying around here covering all possible aspects/solutions.
It's just not common enough to be widely known (unlike certain boat trips...), yet not un-common enough to not be annoying.
</knowitall>

Tiberius · Post by **Tiberius** » Wed Feb 06, 2008 8:18 pm

It might be yet another random bug from the original; I remember reading in an old walkthrough, when the 2.3 patch was still current apparently, that sometimes "the prince has memory loss" and would give you quests you have already completed.

Wesp5 · Post by **Wesp5** » Thu Feb 07, 2008 2:35 am

Shizz wrote:Nope; AFAIK Troika's to blame here, not the "True" patch guys (as much as I abhor their approach to publicity work). There've been reports of that bug since more or less the beginning; and there's at least half a dozen threads flying around here covering all possible aspects/solutions.

Are you sure? Because I had this bug a lot when people installed my earlier basic patch incorrectly, namely without installing the normal one first, so this may be where some of these threads were coming from. It would also happen to anyone installing the 4.04AT "true" patch on top of my unofficial patch...

Shizz · Post by **Shizz** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 6:35 am

@Wesp:
Pretty much, but not completely, since I've joined the community when your patch was around v1.9; havn't been here completely from the start, in other words.
What I'm positive of, however, is, that this problem was already encountered before you introduced the basic version and even before the "True" patch showed up. It still might be an issue with your earlier patches, but I seem to remember that there were a few vanilla users also reporting it (not sure on that one, though).

Wesp5 · Post by **Wesp5** » Fri Feb 08, 2008 8:14 am

Shizz wrote:It still might be an issue with your earlier patches, but I seem to remember that there were a few vanilla users also reporting it (not sure on that one, though).

Interesting, if this is really true as I always assumed it was our (the patchers) fault. Otherwise it would imply that the game changes the Story_State randomly at that point which would be a very serious issue. Because during the truck loading scene this was originally set to 65 and the prince starts from there. I changed the 65 to 60 because of problems with people leaving before talking to the prince, but I wouldn't know how this could ever end up e.g. at 55...