Messages

1

Announcements / Cease and Desist

« on: November 21, 2014, 07:05:19 pm »

Fellow Kine and Kindreds,

As of now, you may be wondering why we haven't been sharing any updates on the behalf of the project as of late. We are aware that all of you wait patiently for our news as always.

We're very sad to report that we received a Cease & Desist e-mail from CCP Games, asking us to cease game development, remove any materials that might contain Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines, names, locations or related elements from the sites we control, and cease any further use of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines property, and in a disappointment shared among our team we are complying with that request. All of this invalidates our effort and the meaning of the entire project: as a remake of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines cannot be a remake without its contents.

Over the course, you have fought with us and been patient. You have trusted us when we were silent and listened when we spoke. Many of you have done what you could to help us. And for that we would like to thank you. You're a wonderful group of fans and have been very supportive. It goes without saying that your interest was far greater than our team would have even anticipated.
We have been deeply honored by the support we have received from you all and we believe that the best relationship we can have with you is that of honesty and transparency.

Along with your support, we've received a lot of sympathies from former developers on Bloodlines and former White Wolf employees along the way. Our contact told us that the copyrights were with Activision, Inc., so we pursued there instead, with a pitch being prepared for the company to discuss what we were going to do with the property. This contact we knew from CCP has since left the company.

We made it quite clear that this is a fan re-imagining of the game. We simply want to do this to keep the game, the story, and the world it lives in, alive and re-imagined for a new generation. Both the game and the idea behind the project was made sorely with out of passion.

Since support of the game dropped long ago, ever since the fall of Troika Games, Inc., and it’s almost impossible to play without patches or bug fixes, sponsored by the community, and there is so much left that could be finished that hasn’t been touched. We want to see this game thrive, in a time and industry where games with deep lore and storylines like Bloodlines simply are hard to come by. Project Vaulderie would help revive interest in a game that was forgotten with time, and I believe all parties could have benefit from its creation.

But that will not be the case anymore, and it's clear that there won't be any newer titles created under the Vampire the Masquerade brand, as this project was the only hope for Bloodlines to reborn from the ashes they were left to cease.

We are avidly seeking a resolute course to continue working on a future game, but we cannot at this time discuss this publicly and with that I urge you to please be patient and hopeful that we will find a way.

I hope you understand, and as always we appreciate your support (in the distant future).

For the Vaulderie Team
Arthur - Project Vaulderie lead

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Inventory Items and Weapons / Re: Weapon reference

« on: November 09, 2014, 07:13:19 pm »

Thanks for the model and no worries, totally understandable. Even if I've been wondering about the silence from your end for a while, hoping there wasn't any serious issue. Regardless, it's good to see you're still alive and I do hope all is well now. 

3

Shaders / Interior Mapping

« on: November 09, 2014, 07:08:40 pm »

To those who don't know, interior mapping is a great technique used to create virtual interiors on a material without any physical resemblance.

Watch Dogs | Interior Mapping gameplay

It can create believable interiors for such buildings as seen throughout the city without creating complex interiors within the mesh and at a reduced draw call.

I've been experimenting with implementing the shader to Unity and so far it's proven to be working, but there's some slight modifications I'd require to do in order to adapt to Bloodlines' building textures, including the re-add of specular and bumpmap support.

For more information about the technique behind this shader, here's the link: http://interiormapping.oogst3d.net/

4

Suggestion Box / Re: Unity

« on: November 09, 2014, 07:01:24 pm »

To answer your question shortly, yes. It's one of our intention to bring the project to Unity 5 because it brings a majority of improvements that are pair with Unreal Engine 4 in most cases, but there are a few things that currently stop us to achieve this.

Unity 5 beta is currently available for those who've preordered Unity 5 since March, which unfortunately we don't have such an option to opt-in to yet. There's a pre-order offer that grants the customer access to the pre-order beta until November 13. There are uncertainties which part of the engine remain free and which are Pro only.

Features such as Ambient Occlusion, post processing shaders, and might even HDR, not to mention real time shaders, are all part of the Pro version, which is one of the reasons why a lot of indie games or free games don't live up to the expectations of AAA.

Unity 5 will come with a PBR, known as physically based rendering, and Global Illumination to create fantastic lighting bounce results:

• Uses entirely new lighting rendering, called Enlighten, used by titles such as Battlefield 4 and engines such as Frostbite 3.
• Introduces a new shader, called the Standard shader, which implements full PBR support, including both metallic and specular workflow
• Baking lights will also bake AO for static light, creating impressive lighting.
• PhysX has been updated from 2.7.3 to 3.3.0 and has been rewritten for Unity 5's integration, improving physics in-game dramatically, removing the need for adding rigid bodies to everything to avoid performance penalty.
• Collider limit of 65,000 are entirely removed from Unity 5
• Revamped reflection probes that capture the environment surrounding and applies it to the specular map
• New state machine behaviors and hierarchies for Mecanim
• New Audio mixer

Unity 5 Graphics - Lighting Overview - Unity Official Tutorials [beta 10]

Unity 5 Graphics - The Standard Shader - Unity Official Tutorials [beta 10]

I'm working my ways to get to upgrade to Unity 5's Pro License as soon as possible so we can start the migration to Unity 5, but I'm not sure if that's going to be a possibility for such a short time.

5

Environmental Models and Textures / Re: Street Props

« on: November 09, 2014, 05:49:25 pm »

Actually never mind that, seems they're going to support it in the following beta already (either b13 or b14).

Default setup will be using the metallic workflow while having a separate shader for the specular when needed. For most props the metallic workflow is the one we go with, which is also a great news now with the metallic setup.

Edit: Just noticed you've updated your post on the trashcan props. Going to update the main post, thanks again!

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Environmental Models and Textures / Furniture Models (Part 1)

« on: November 09, 2014, 12:20:18 am »

models/scenery/furniture/bed2/bed2.mdl (Unclaimed)




models/scenery/furniture/bedmodern/bedmodern.mdl (Unclaimed)




models/scenery/furniture/dirty_matresses/dirty_matresses1.mdl (Unclaimed)




models/scenery/furniture/dirty_matresses/dirty_matresses2.mdl (Unclaimed)




models/scenery/furniture/displaytable/displaytable.mdl (Unclaimed)




models/scenery/furniture/dresser/dresser.mdl (Unclaimed)




models/scenery/furniture/fancybed/fancybed.mdl (Unclaimed)




models/scenery/furniture/heartbed/heartbed.mdl (Unclaimed)





models/scenery/furniture/heater/heater.mdl (Unclaimed)




models/scenery/furniture/ovena/ovena.mdl (Unclaimed)




models/scenery/furniture/ovenb/ovenb.mdl (Unclaimed)




models/scenery/furniture/server/server.mdl (Unclaimed)




models/scenery/furniture/shoppingcart/shoppingcart.mdl (Unclaimed)




models/scenery/furniture/soc_bed/soc_bed.mdl (Unclaimed)

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Environmental Models and Textures / Re: Street Props

« on: November 09, 2014, 12:04:18 am »

Great work as always, Iraito! The details on it is stunning with the added rust and metalness map. In the meantime, I've been keeping an eye on Unity 5's standard shader and apparently they went with a specular rather than metallic workflow. Shouldn't be too much of a problem to convert it to a specular workflow, nor implementing the metallic workflow since Unity 5 beta 12 also supports Surface Shaders through the standard shader inclusion.

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Off Topic / Re: R&R: Current status on Development

« on: November 05, 2014, 07:22:45 pm »

Thanks for the kind words everyone, and it's time for some good news, I'm slowly getting back into active development, so expect a lot of progress starting in the following days, at which I'm sure there's a lot of catching up to do .

As for Patreon and Kickstarter, those are out of question to make use of, as much as the community would like to help. Activision and CCP/WW will not allow their assets to be used by anyone for profit or gain without express written consent. The only thing we can accept are donations to help cover the costs of web hosting, dedicated servers and so on.

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Suggestion Box / Re: Map Connectivity and Inconsistencies

« on: October 27, 2014, 07:44:25 pm »

Impressive list of inconsistencies there, Sansuni! Nice find on the Downtown discoveries, but before that I should begin pointing out the issues with some maps that are harder to combine to resolve such issues.

The haven in the beginning of the game is indeed above the Foxy Boxes floor, but the inner part is as big as the outer shell, leaving no place to add the haven, unless some dramatic changes are added.

It never really occured to me of the road issues in the Downtown, seen those blocks a thousand of times by now but didn't manage to pick up on the "oh wait how are they getting in then" part. Those modifications you've pointed out make a lot of sense, further extending the Downtown map.

But to be on the safe side, I'd like to contact one of the ex-developers of Troika and lead him through these suggestions. If anyone knows what really went down in 'Nam, it's be him. I'm pretty sure he would have a lot of ideas and reasons for such rather forced changes.

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Suggestion Box / Re: World of Darkness

« on: October 27, 2014, 06:56:29 pm »

You know, I always felt like World of Darkness was more of an engine demo than anything, especially since the WoD team weren't allowed to fully work on it.

But on the bright side, with Unity 5 and its PBR support, we can create very impressive results, from realistic reflections on metals to global illumination and baked AO lightmaps. Santa Monica benefited a lot with Unity, being able to use proper dynamic shadow and keeping darker where it makes sense.

I'm very curious about the Chinatown map, it's easily one of my favorite map for its "colorful visuals" which would have stunning results with Unity 5, Bloom support and GI. I'll be most likely to post the benefits in both visual and otherwise regarding Unity 5 so everyone would know exactly what to expect and to end the "it looked better on Source" argument. Source could never do what Unity 4 can do with deferred rendering, but the real reason why it suffers is due to Beast lightmapping, which is still available in the current beta for legacy sake and will be permanently removed from the final release. I might be biased but a lot of the lights in the original game made no sense. A lot the places were too bright and without dynamic shadows (or baked on props) it's hard to achieve the same feel and look.

I really enjoyed the tech demo they had done for the engine and game. The water puddle can be done easily from the looks of it in a newer Unity 5 demonstration, same goes for the window, a parallax shader can easily make a fake yet believable interior.

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Environmental Models and Textures / Re: Street Props

« on: October 27, 2014, 05:57:43 pm »

I prefer Blender and Maya over 3ds Max, especially with the new overhauled interface since a few updates ago and now the Pie menus. Way more flexible and easier to write scripts to IMO.
And I agree, anything can be done if you know the techniques and components, the tool updates are mostly just a new shortcut for making a few tasks easier without the need to do 3 things, but into one big component, like between Maya versions.

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Inventory Items and Weapons / Re: Weapon reference

« on: October 27, 2014, 05:51:15 pm »

Looking good! Now it's resembling the original one quite well and I'm loving the detail in it. Awesome work there!

13

Off Topic / Re: R&R: Current status on Development

« on: October 23, 2014, 07:05:34 pm »

Much appreciate the kindness, Elgyn!

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines and this project are an enormous passion to me, let alone changed my life when it comes to active development. As any older projects that weren't started by me, I had a huge passion at that time to decompile and disassemble games to understand how they work, and given at the time I enjoyed the game so much, that I decided to give it a try. I had a huge passion for Source and what better opportunity to recreate a game, little did I know the obstacles I was about to face during that time with Source.

Fast forward to this day, I never been as passionate as I am today, working on an engine that is more open (especially during development) but also allowing us to invest more on the asset side of the project. But nothing fuels my passion for this project than the community behind it. I never thought the community would be that supportive, even if there are a few but strong voices against several changes. The vision for us is to bring the "definitive" version of Bloodlines, without the fear of what the past brought us nor the risks we're willing to take but the commitment put into it is tremendous. The new team members have shown great initiative, and since the whole project is a labor of love, I highly believe nothing can bring it to life more than passion itself.

My development might have been less active during my recovery but definitely not put aside, and as much as I'd like to be involved with the fan base, it's something my timeframe cannot truly allow me to embrace, at least not just yet. But we're definitely happy when the community is happy about the progress put in, and nothing is more rewarding than bringing the fans something that matters. There are no more Vampire the Masquerade games out there, but with the right will and mindset, that can easily change.

I cannot stress enough excitement for the plans we have for the future on the project, I'm aware we are light on media and on showcasing any progress. As much as I'd like to, my PC rig is just not up to the full power to properly record much but that'll change soon. There's nothing more enthusiastic than to enrich each devblog and to be as transparent as possible, when possible of course.
I'm hoping to change the lack of communication and hopefully get a few people involved with PR, not to mention the forum. Most of my focus goes into development only and it's best to keep it that way (unless I go for a witch-hunt on feedback).

On a small side note, I've been suffering from heavy calcium deficiency and absorption issues, the last treatment I had a month ago shown no result and it has gotten far worse, so I've started taking another one since the beginning of the week and hope this time it'll have great results and that I'd be back on my feat in no time! Having my limbs go numb almost every day isn't fun at all (where are thou well rested nights?)

That's it for now, just wanted to give a small status report from my end, but whatever the outcome may be, things should be getting better now.

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Environmental Models and Textures / Re: Street Props

« on: October 23, 2014, 05:42:15 pm »

Awesome work as usual, Iraito! Really loving every detail put into it.

May I ask, and chances are you've already informed me with this question, what software are you using to modeling them?
I'm heavily inclined on brushing up my workflow on getting some prop models done here and there myself, not to mention a good opportunity to expand my roles on the project for a chance.

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Environmental Models and Textures / Re: Santa Monica (Structural Props)

« on: October 23, 2014, 05:28:00 pm »

Looking good, Iraito!

The textures are usually compressed by default with a regular DXT5 compression, the rest should be taken care of by the mipmap and LOD system in Unity, but for the meshes themselves the LOD versions have to be done manually.