I'm trying to add a dummy opening movie to my mod by putting the .bik file in VTMBMP/media, as a hacky way to skip them. It works when I replace the vanilla movies themselves with the file, but it does not work when the file is packaged into the multiplayer directory without overwriting the originals. Antitribu also has a replaced opening movie, it doesn't override the original movies correctly either. I had to manually navigate to it in file explorer to watch it. Loading the multiplayer via the UP mod loader makes no difference either. Any suggestions? Could I have flicked a switch somewhere?
I really like the idea of this gamemode. Would it be possible to add in features Project Vaulderie planned like custom classes? IE: Vampire, vampire hunter etc.
I really like the idea of this gamemode. Would it be possible to add in features Project Vaulderie planned like custom classes? IE: Vampire, vampire hunter etc.
I'm not too familiar with Project Vaulderie, I will look into it tonight. What other features were they planning for multiplayer?
As for "custom classes", the Counter-Bite mode will be vampire vs hunter, and each team has access to different weapons and disciplines/numina, which is sort of adjacent. There is no class interface but I'm planning for players to be able to buy their loadouts between rounds like Counter-Strike itself... All of the details of this mode are being derived from Tim Cain though, so I don't really want to make too many changes outside of what he specified, or what would be natural.
Deathmatch is my own mode though, it might be possible to implement discipline groups/classes once I finish the launcher.
Oh yeah I forgot to say, I'm working on a launcher right now, no more changing player attributes in the console after joining the server...
I really like the idea of this gamemode. Would it be possible to add in features Project Vaulderie planned like custom classes? IE: Vampire, vampire hunter etc.
I'm not too familiar with Project Vaulderie, I will look into it tonight.
Project Vaulderie was an attempt to port Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines into the Unity engine. It was C&D'd 10 years ago by CCP (the previous rights holder for Vampire the Masquerade, they sold the IP to Paradox a year later).
What other features were they planning for multiplayer?
A lot of stuff. Like coloring player skins.
They were also planning things like specific gamemodes like Human vs Kindred stuff. There's a lot of random gamemodes you could create to take advantage of the setting. IE: Disciplines show up as floating power ups that the player can collect. One thing I'd personally love to see is a skin selector menu where the player could select any player model as their skin. IE: Jack, La Croix, Nines, etc. And the ability to create new ones so you could import say Christof from Vampire the Masquerade Redemption.
Another thing to keep in mind is a huge amount of players would want to play VtmB's multiplayer in a purely roleplay context, which is how Vampire the Masquerade Redemption's multiplayer was played.
Last Edit: Aug 24, 2024 10:08:46 GMT by thatdarnowl
I'm not too familiar with Project Vaulderie, I will look into it tonight.
Project Vaulderie was an attempt to port Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines into the Unity engine. It was C&D'd 10 years ago by CCP (the previous rights holder for Vampire the Masquerade, they sold the IP to Paradox a year later).
What other features were they planning for multiplayer?
A lot of stuff. Like coloring player skins.
They were also planning things like specific gamemodes like Human vs Kindred stuff. There's a lot of random gamemodes you could create to take advantage of the setting. IE: Disciplines show up as floating power ups that the player can collect. One thing I'd personally love to see is a skin selector menu where the player could select any player model as their skin. IE: Jack, La Croix, Nines, etc. And the ability to create new ones so you could import say Christof from Vampire the Masquerade Redemption.
Another thing to keep in mind is a huge amount of players would want to play VtmB's multiplayer in a purely roleplay context, which is how Vampire the Masquerade Redemption's multiplayer was played.
Thanks for the in-depth reply.
First of all, I had a little snoop around Project Vaulderie. Their website is long gone, it seems, but I found a couple of videos on their YT channel of the multiplayer in action. Very impressive, I wish it hadn't been C&D'd.
Anyway, I'm interested in reading more. Apart from what you've told me, is there a collection of their planned multiplayer features archived somewhere?
You raise some interesting ideas, let me go through them quickly:
1. I had high hopes for custom colors, NPCs and players have top/bottom color properties (like in Half-Life 2), however there seems to be no method to change them from in-game, so this is probably impossible.
2. I'm planning three gamemodes at present - Deathmatch, Counter-Bite, and Coop. Counter-Bite is an explicitly human (hunter) vs vampire team mode so hopefully that fulfills that niche.
3. Disciplines as a collectable is a wonderful idea and what I wanted to do this for Deathmatch from the start (amongst other fun power-ups), unfortunately any sort of character sheet alteration lags the server badly, so Deathmatch just has weapon pickups at the moment. Even weapon pickups can cause little stutters, type "net_graph 2" in the console to see how rough it can get. I'm trying to optimize the player ID code so that calling methods on player stats doesn't make for a miserable experience, please bear with me here.
4. The skin/model selector is a great idea and feels completely in line with the range of models available in Half-Life multiplayer. This is one reason why I'm doing the launcher sooner rather than later - so everyone can browse the full list of human/vampire models and pick who they want! As for importing models, I'm not sure how this would work for Bloodlines. Any asset needs to exist clientside too. This requires further consideration on my part.
5. I understand the desire for roleplay. I have to be blunt though - the Bloodlines multiplayer is not exactly conducive to multiplayer RP. A staggering number of features that should be no brainers crumble under pressure when a server is running. Dialogue and non-combat NPC interactions? Broken. Audio? Sometimes bad enough to crash. Advanced VPhysics interactions / complex geometry? Always bad enough to crash. This is why Coop is being designed for PvE/environmental puzzles with light RP elements, in lieu of a full cooperative RP mode. I've not had the pleasure of playing Redemption multiplayer as of yet, but it sounds far more in-depth than Bloodlines multiplayer could ever hope to be.
Let me say this, though - we finally have PvP damage and significant stability improvements, even the host can play now! The Bloodlines engine fights me at every turn, but the game is worth it, and I'm stubborn. If there exists a large interest in RP after Deathmatch and Counter-Bite are feature complete and polished, I'll do it, somehow.
Project Vaulderie was an attempt to port Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines into the Unity engine. It was C&D'd 10 years ago by CCP (the previous rights holder for Vampire the Masquerade, they sold the IP to Paradox a year later). A lot of stuff. Like coloring player skins.
They were also planning things like specific gamemodes like Human vs Kindred stuff. There's a lot of random gamemodes you could create to take advantage of the setting. IE: Disciplines show up as floating power ups that the player can collect. One thing I'd personally love to see is a skin selector menu where the player could select any player model as their skin. IE: Jack, La Croix, Nines, etc. And the ability to create new ones so you could import say Christof from Vampire the Masquerade Redemption.
Another thing to keep in mind is a huge amount of players would want to play VtmB's multiplayer in a purely roleplay context, which is how Vampire the Masquerade Redemption's multiplayer was played.
Thanks for the in-depth reply.
First of all, I had a little snoop around Project Vaulderie. Their website is long gone, it seems, but I found a couple of videos on their YT channel of the multiplayer in action. Very impressive, I wish it hadn't been C&D'd.
Anyway, I'm interested in reading more. Apart from what you've told me, is there a collection of their planned multiplayer features archived somewhere?
You raise some interesting ideas, let me go through them quickly:
1. I had high hopes for custom colors, NPCs and players have top/bottom color properties (like in Half-Life 2), however there seems to be no method to change them from in-game, so this is probably impossible.
2. I'm planning three gamemodes at present - Deathmatch, Counter-Bite, and Coop. Counter-Bite is an explicitly human (hunter) vs vampire team mode so hopefully that fulfills that niche.
3. Disciplines as a collectable is a wonderful idea and what I wanted to do this for Deathmatch from the start (amongst other fun power-ups), unfortunately any sort of character sheet alteration lags the server badly, so Deathmatch just has weapon pickups at the moment. Even weapon pickups can cause little stutters, type "net_graph 2" in the console to see how rough it can get. I'm trying to optimize the player ID code so that calling methods on player stats doesn't make for a miserable experience, please bear with me here.
4. The skin/model selector is a great idea and feels completely in line with the range of models available in Half-Life multiplayer. This is one reason why I'm doing the launcher sooner rather than later - so everyone can browse the full list of human/vampire models and pick who they want! As for importing models, I'm not sure how this would work for Bloodlines. Any asset needs to exist clientside too. This requires further consideration on my part.
5. I understand the desire for roleplay. I have to be blunt though - the Bloodlines multiplayer is not exactly conducive to multiplayer RP. A staggering number of features that should be no brainers crumble under pressure when a server is running. Dialogue and non-combat NPC interactions? Broken. Audio? Sometimes bad enough to crash. Advanced VPhysics interactions / complex geometry? Always bad enough to crash. This is why Coop is being designed for PvE/environmental puzzles with light RP elements, in lieu of a full cooperative RP mode. I've not had the pleasure of playing Redemption multiplayer as of yet, but it sounds far more in-depth than Bloodlines multiplayer could ever hope to be.
Let me say this, though - we finally have PvP damage and significant stability improvements, even the host can play now! The Bloodlines engine fights me at every turn, but the game is worth it, and I'm stubborn. If there exists a large interest in RP after Deathmatch and Counter-Bite are feature complete and polished, I'll do it, somehow.
Bloodlines wouldn't be particularly feasible or ideal for detailed multiplayer roleplay unless you were somehow able to permit dialogue interactions between players, although if you were somehow capable of manipulating the engine to the extent that a player could press a button to initiate dialogue with another player, and if chat messages between them could then be typed into the console and appear in the dialogue box, that is essentially all which would be required. Unfortunately however, it sounds as if dialogues are entirely broken.
Any limitations on the ability to successfully ensure compatibility with maps featuring complex geometry also hinders the roleplay potentially, especially since roleplay-oriented maps would absolutely demand intricate features.
It might be worth attempting to contact AtrBlizzard in the Planet Vampire Discord server with regards to the other multiplayer features Project Vaulderie planned to incorporate, although since I have not been a part of the Planet Vampire Discord for nearly a year at this point, I have no idea if he is still available there. AtrBlizzard was of course the lead developer of Project Vaulderie.
To be honest, I doubt that many players would like to play Bloodlines deathmatch like Quake 3 with weapon and discipline icons floating around in the map, especially if taking them lags badly. Better concentrate on the unique game mode, which for me would be Counter-Bite and have the player select a character right from the start which has fixed weapons and disciplines, like I did with the multiplayer clans in the patch. If people want unique NPCs to play, of course they could have their own discplines that way!
Bloodlines wouldn't be particularly feasible or ideal for detailed multiplayer roleplay unless you were somehow able to permit dialogue interactions between players, although if you were somehow capable of manipulating the engine to the extent that a player could press a button to initiate dialogue with another player, and if chat messages between them could then be typed into the console and appear in the dialogue box, that is essentially all which would be required. Unfortunately however, it sounds as if dialogues are entirely broken.
Any limitations on the ability to successfully ensure compatibility with maps featuring complex geometry also hinders the roleplay potentially, especially since roleplay-oriented maps would absolutely demand intricate features.
It might be worth attempting to contact AtrBlizzard in the Planet Vampire Discord server with regards to the other multiplayer features Project Vaulderie planned to incorporate, although since I have not been a part of the Planet Vampire Discord for nearly a year at this point, I have no idea if he is still available there. AtrBlizzard was of course the lead developer of Project Vaulderie.
Players can speak to each other just fine via the console (rudimentary chatbox) but it's a sloppy interface. There's also the problem of data management since only the host is able to change most variables, clients are invisible to many engine functions that derive from player stats / quest stages. I would basically need to write my own save management system in Python in parallel with the system that already exists.
I don't have Discord unfortunately, I'll see if AtrBlizzard has a public modding email though. Thanks for the tip.
To be honest, I doubt that many players would like to play Bloodlines deathmatch like Quake 3 with weapon and discipline icons floating around in the map, especially if taking them lags badly. Better concentrate on the unique game mode, which for me would be Counter-Bite and have the player select a character right from the start which has fixed weapons and disciplines, like I did with the multiplayer clans in the patch. If people want unique NPCs to play, of course they could have their own discplines that way!
I think it's fine for Deathmatch as long as it isn't at the expense of awful lagspikes, which is why only weapons are collectable for now. As for Counter-Bite, I agree, you start with a class and you stick to it. The only upgrades come from buying at the start of the round.
4. The skin/model selector is a great idea and feels completely in line with the range of models available in Half-Life multiplayer. This is one reason why I'm doing the launcher sooner rather than later - so everyone can browse the full list of human/vampire models and pick who they want! As for importing models, I'm not sure how this would work for Bloodlines. Any asset needs to exist clientside too. This requires further consideration on my part.
Most multiplayer games tend to have a default skin the game loads if the server references another one it can't find. IE: in Half-Life it was Gordon Freeman. In Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy it was Kyle Katarn.
The launcher has been implemented and will be included with the next update. All connection/host/customization business is now carried out pre-game in the launcher, no more messing around with the console. I've not implemented the host rules or player customization yet, those are a bit more complicated, should be done by the end of the week though.
As you can see, it looks a little barren at the moment... advanced options to come! The GUI is designed after the classic Source dark green interface, hopefully this makes the multiplayer experience feel like a more authentic restoration.
Version 1.5 is out, featuring the new launcher, very happy with this update. It's so much easier to connect and host from a dedicated app...
I've had some reports of the connection failing, which is to do with Windows Firewall blocking the application and/or the necessary router ports (27005/27015) being shut down as a security caution. Sadly I don't think these are problems that can be solved without an Windows app certificate.
Social Media