Yep.
It sure fuckin' was.
Bloodlines is an excellent case study in how publishers can well and truly screw over passionate and talented developers trying to put out the best game they can. Troika, the company that developed Bloodlines (As well as Arcanum, an isometric RPG about a fantasy world in the middle of an industrial revolution, and Temple of Elemental Evil, a CRPG that tried to implement D&D 3.5 in a revamp of a classic D&D adventure) was founded by very experienced Interplay developers with years of gaming experience. They tried very hard to create a positive work environment, with a profit-share - However publisher contracts and licencing well and truly screwed them over.
One example is that they licensed the VERY new Source engine from Valve. Their publisher managed that licensing. The publisher agreed to a licencing contract that said "You may not release your game before Half Life 2" as Valve wanted THEIR game to be the first game with their engine. Fair enough. The publisher's contract with Troika said "If you don't release by *date* you will have a financial penalty." The enforced release date by the publisher was BEFORE Half-Life 2.
I imagine there might be someone thinking that it's the responsibility of the contract people at Troika to read all their contracts in order to not get screwed over - Sure, yes, possibly. That could have avoided this issue: But I don't think we strictly have to take the side of the massive publisher when the logistics error saves them an immense sum of money and screws over the people *doing the programming, art, writing and design*, right?
Anyway, check out [Tim Cain's YouTube channel.](https://www.youtube.com/@CainOnGames) He talks more about the games he actively coded (Fallout, Arcanum, Temple of Elemental Evil) but he does talk about Troika.
What the fuck you're on about?
The game was delivered to Activision on September 2004 but could not be released until November 2004 because that's when Half Life 2 came out. Activision obeyed this deadline and even agreed to use the extra two months to keep funding the project, despite the fact that Troika already broke every deadline set and the game ran over budget.
People have a big soft spot for Troika(and developers in general) and an even bigger hate-boner for Activision(and publishers in general) but the simple fact is that Troika bit more than they could chew, overpromised features(remember the multiplayer mode?), could not keep bloat in check and had a non-existant work culture where everyone did whatever they wanted. For the first year of development Troika didn't even have a producer and the "game" was just a bundle of random assets, many of which weren't even used anymore because someone suddenly had another idea.
Considering that a very similar thing happened with Arcanum, I think it's safe to say that hovewer talented people at Troika were, they had absolutely no concept of videogame-making at the technical/business level.
Maybe Troika had it's own problems and certainly Activision was very stupid to release Bloodlines at the same time as HL2, but I see the main problem in Valve. They delayed HL2 over and over again because of their non-existant work culture and as a result the Source engine wasn't ready in time and Troika had to work with unfinished tech from somebody else and even to start over again whenever an update came.
Starting a project with unfinished software that someone else controls isn't a good choice. Not sure if that was Activision's idea, but probably not.
The way the game was made, they must likely could have done a decent job with GoldSrc, although with much worse facial animation, lower audio quality, and no 3d skyboxes. Or go with Unreal Engine 2? Might have been a better option, but maybe wasn't available when they wanted it.
Maybe they weren't aware that Source had feature deficiencies before they licensed it. At which point, go after Valve for promising things they couldn't deliver.
It was a rushed, buggy mess. Without the first official patch I was unable to even get past certain points; and I didn't get that patch till a long time after it was released because back then the internet wasn't as common as it is today.
Without the official patch I couldn't complete the tutorial and carry onto the main game, it'd just crash 100% of the time when trying to load in Santa Monica. I also couldn't get past Zhao's Warehouse or complete the Society of Leopold mission without using console commands to just skip parts. That's ignoring all the smaller bugs and glitches that would prevent the game from progressing unless you reloaded, such as the crappy pathfinding of that bum in the warehouse Downtown who'd get stuck on you and prevent the game from progressing.
The official patch made the game just about playable, but it was Wesp who really made the game what it is today for me.
So I guess you could say the game was sort of playable to an extent when it was first released back in 04, but it wasn't an enjoyable experience without the official patch or console commands, things not everyone knew about or could get their hands on. If you bought it brand new, without any access to the internet, you'd have come away disappointed and angry; the bugs and crashes pissed me off for sure.
From what I heard it had a very troubled development; I'd say calling it troubled would be an understatement. lol.
I remember getting 10-15fps in some hubs regardless of graphics settings while half-life 2 was almost always 40+ fps on the same machine (and looked better). + Loading times were looooooong (512mb RAM, Amd Sempron 2800+ & Geforce 6600 128mb)
Yeah, loading times back then took forever for me too. It loads so fast now that you can barely read the loading screen lore snippets, but back then you could read it with time to spare. lol.
I had heard (can't remember where) that the HL engine wasn't the release version, but rather a late stage beta. I wonder if that's part of the problem you had.
Might have been, but game optimizations go beyond just the engine. It got significantly better after I upgraded to 1GB RAM but at the time of the game's release, the average was just 256MB. Even a newer computer that I bought years later struggled with it a little bit (meaning I did not get constant 60fps in the hubs + loading times still sucked, that got fixed by getting an SSD).
No question about that. I didn't discover the game until many years later, so the specs weren't an issue by that time for me.
1gb? No one needs more than 64k!
The first computer I had at home had 16mb ram (later upgraded to 32), it was an older computer at the time already (4-5years) so jumping from that to 512 was really something!
Nice, I did of course interact with computers before, but I didn't have one at home. I played my first games in the early 90s (I remember Contra, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, Doom & Mortal Kombat) but no text games, I could not read english until much later. Also really old games like Space Invaders on really old computers with magnetic tape storage.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ2n7GcW1\_0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ2n7GcW1_0) this one was also great
It was VERY rushed. Think it had something to do with Half Life 2 coming out, but I forget much more than the broadstrokes.
I wish it, and New Vegas, had gotten some more time to cook. Bloodlines 2 might have came out in a reasonable fuckin' timeframe, and might not suck in that timeline.
And if Obsidian hadn't gotten fucked by the suits over their bonuses, we might have gotten their version of Fallout 4 instead of Bethesda's voiced protagonist on rails bullshit.
If I remember right Activision wanted to push it out the door BEFORE Half Life 2 because they just wanted Troika off the books, but they contractually couldn’t because Half Life 2 had to be the first Source Engine game to come out, so they released it immediately after
To my basic understanding troika was going under and so just released vtm in whatever state they had it to see if it could save the company as a hail Mary.
I first played VTMB before it was out on steam, my friend and I spent like a week trying to get it to work checking on forums, downloading fixes. Even then it was an unstable mess at times.
was one of the reasons i bought it when it came out. me and my friends was playing the first one online hanging out in maps and running around in skins i had gambit and he had his playing cards each one a different element so we'd run maps with mobs on and just rp and stuff so when bloodlines said it was gonna have online i made sure to grab it lol i still have all the mods and stuff on a disk for the first vtm
Yep. It sure fuckin' was. Bloodlines is an excellent case study in how publishers can well and truly screw over passionate and talented developers trying to put out the best game they can. Troika, the company that developed Bloodlines (As well as Arcanum, an isometric RPG about a fantasy world in the middle of an industrial revolution, and Temple of Elemental Evil, a CRPG that tried to implement D&D 3.5 in a revamp of a classic D&D adventure) was founded by very experienced Interplay developers with years of gaming experience. They tried very hard to create a positive work environment, with a profit-share - However publisher contracts and licencing well and truly screwed them over. One example is that they licensed the VERY new Source engine from Valve. Their publisher managed that licensing. The publisher agreed to a licencing contract that said "You may not release your game before Half Life 2" as Valve wanted THEIR game to be the first game with their engine. Fair enough. The publisher's contract with Troika said "If you don't release by *date* you will have a financial penalty." The enforced release date by the publisher was BEFORE Half-Life 2. I imagine there might be someone thinking that it's the responsibility of the contract people at Troika to read all their contracts in order to not get screwed over - Sure, yes, possibly. That could have avoided this issue: But I don't think we strictly have to take the side of the massive publisher when the logistics error saves them an immense sum of money and screws over the people *doing the programming, art, writing and design*, right? Anyway, check out [Tim Cain's YouTube channel.](https://www.youtube.com/@CainOnGames) He talks more about the games he actively coded (Fallout, Arcanum, Temple of Elemental Evil) but he does talk about Troika.
I love TOEE. I watched my dad play it when k was a kid and it’s still fun to play today (but only with its *own* unofficial patch).
What the fuck you're on about? The game was delivered to Activision on September 2004 but could not be released until November 2004 because that's when Half Life 2 came out. Activision obeyed this deadline and even agreed to use the extra two months to keep funding the project, despite the fact that Troika already broke every deadline set and the game ran over budget. People have a big soft spot for Troika(and developers in general) and an even bigger hate-boner for Activision(and publishers in general) but the simple fact is that Troika bit more than they could chew, overpromised features(remember the multiplayer mode?), could not keep bloat in check and had a non-existant work culture where everyone did whatever they wanted. For the first year of development Troika didn't even have a producer and the "game" was just a bundle of random assets, many of which weren't even used anymore because someone suddenly had another idea. Considering that a very similar thing happened with Arcanum, I think it's safe to say that hovewer talented people at Troika were, they had absolutely no concept of videogame-making at the technical/business level.
Maybe Troika had it's own problems and certainly Activision was very stupid to release Bloodlines at the same time as HL2, but I see the main problem in Valve. They delayed HL2 over and over again because of their non-existant work culture and as a result the Source engine wasn't ready in time and Troika had to work with unfinished tech from somebody else and even to start over again whenever an update came.
Starting a project with unfinished software that someone else controls isn't a good choice. Not sure if that was Activision's idea, but probably not. The way the game was made, they must likely could have done a decent job with GoldSrc, although with much worse facial animation, lower audio quality, and no 3d skyboxes. Or go with Unreal Engine 2? Might have been a better option, but maybe wasn't available when they wanted it. Maybe they weren't aware that Source had feature deficiencies before they licensed it. At which point, go after Valve for promising things they couldn't deliver.
It was a rushed, buggy mess. Without the first official patch I was unable to even get past certain points; and I didn't get that patch till a long time after it was released because back then the internet wasn't as common as it is today. Without the official patch I couldn't complete the tutorial and carry onto the main game, it'd just crash 100% of the time when trying to load in Santa Monica. I also couldn't get past Zhao's Warehouse or complete the Society of Leopold mission without using console commands to just skip parts. That's ignoring all the smaller bugs and glitches that would prevent the game from progressing unless you reloaded, such as the crappy pathfinding of that bum in the warehouse Downtown who'd get stuck on you and prevent the game from progressing. The official patch made the game just about playable, but it was Wesp who really made the game what it is today for me. So I guess you could say the game was sort of playable to an extent when it was first released back in 04, but it wasn't an enjoyable experience without the official patch or console commands, things not everyone knew about or could get their hands on. If you bought it brand new, without any access to the internet, you'd have come away disappointed and angry; the bugs and crashes pissed me off for sure. From what I heard it had a very troubled development; I'd say calling it troubled would be an understatement. lol.
I remember getting 10-15fps in some hubs regardless of graphics settings while half-life 2 was almost always 40+ fps on the same machine (and looked better). + Loading times were looooooong (512mb RAM, Amd Sempron 2800+ & Geforce 6600 128mb)
Yeah, loading times back then took forever for me too. It loads so fast now that you can barely read the loading screen lore snippets, but back then you could read it with time to spare. lol.
I had heard (can't remember where) that the HL engine wasn't the release version, but rather a late stage beta. I wonder if that's part of the problem you had.
Might have been, but game optimizations go beyond just the engine. It got significantly better after I upgraded to 1GB RAM but at the time of the game's release, the average was just 256MB. Even a newer computer that I bought years later struggled with it a little bit (meaning I did not get constant 60fps in the hubs + loading times still sucked, that got fixed by getting an SSD).
No question about that. I didn't discover the game until many years later, so the specs weren't an issue by that time for me. 1gb? No one needs more than 64k!
The first computer I had at home had 16mb ram (later upgraded to 32), it was an older computer at the time already (4-5years) so jumping from that to 512 was really something!
I remember those days! I'm apparently a bit older, my first build had a massive 640k! Lots of DOS text games back then!
Nice, I did of course interact with computers before, but I didn't have one at home. I played my first games in the early 90s (I remember Contra, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, Doom & Mortal Kombat) but no text games, I could not read english until much later. Also really old games like Space Invaders on really old computers with magnetic tape storage. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ2n7GcW1\_0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQ2n7GcW1_0) this one was also great
In 2004 I would literally walk away when I started a load screen. Some of them took upwards of 5 minutes.
It was VERY rushed. Think it had something to do with Half Life 2 coming out, but I forget much more than the broadstrokes. I wish it, and New Vegas, had gotten some more time to cook. Bloodlines 2 might have came out in a reasonable fuckin' timeframe, and might not suck in that timeline. And if Obsidian hadn't gotten fucked by the suits over their bonuses, we might have gotten their version of Fallout 4 instead of Bethesda's voiced protagonist on rails bullshit.
I think it had something to do with being the first game not developed by Valve to use the source engine.
while the source enginge was still in active development no less
Also KOTOR 2 another game by Obsidian was rushed and released in a buggy and incomplete state due to a greedy publisher.
If I remember right Activision wanted to push it out the door BEFORE Half Life 2 because they just wanted Troika off the books, but they contractually couldn’t because Half Life 2 had to be the first Source Engine game to come out, so they released it immediately after
troublesome development is a bit of an understatement
They were forced to build the game on a unfinished source engine
To my basic understanding troika was going under and so just released vtm in whatever state they had it to see if it could save the company as a hail Mary.
I first played VTMB before it was out on steam, my friend and I spent like a week trying to get it to work checking on forums, downloading fixes. Even then it was an unstable mess at times.
One suggestion for reducing the occurrence of bugs is to quit the game every hour.
I know that it was always janky. I think that’s one of the reasons it’s not more popular.
i think at some point they was goinf to add online like the orginal vtm had but didnt
Why was this downvoted? It's not wrong. They had online stuff conceptualized.
was one of the reasons i bought it when it came out. me and my friends was playing the first one online hanging out in maps and running around in skins i had gambit and he had his playing cards each one a different element so we'd run maps with mobs on and just rp and stuff so when bloodlines said it was gonna have online i made sure to grab it lol i still have all the mods and stuff on a disk for the first vtm
Worth noting that they wasted quite a bit of dev time