The Announcement of Bloodlines 2
Many fans of the World of Darkness, Vampires: the Masquerade, and Vampires: the Masquerade - Bloodlines, are eagerly anticipating the sequel to one of the most prolific role-playing games of all time, garnering an impressive cult following. When officially announced by Paradox Interactive, fans rejoiced. Social media and game journalism sites were ablaze with excitement as they covered the announcement. While we have yet to see gameplay and what the game has to offer, we've no choice but to wait and see if Paradox and Hardsuit Labs can hold true to their promises of a sequel worthy to the original.
Vampires: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, A Personal Retrospect
In the meantime, I think it's noteworthy to reflect on the original and explore why it remains so memorable. While the game wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, there was no denying the brilliance it possessed. In my first playthrough, I was impressed with how quests often required reasoning, consideration, and exploration in order to achieve a desired outcome or to maximize the experience your character gained. Timeless and well-written characters like Jack, Therese/Jeanette, LaCroix, and Andrei helped this supernatural world feel so much more complex, effectively selling the player a politically dangerous world of vampire hierarchy and powerplays. The settings feel oddly nostalgic and surreal, portraying a dark and gritty underbelly entrenched in the culture of the late '90s and early '00s. More importantly, the game felt empowering as your character grew increasingly more formidable, stealthy, conniving, and persuasive while furthering the main storyline/side objectives. The player becomes increasingly pivotal in a high stakes confrontation between factions that are ultimately divided by principles and philosophies, of which, neither faction is "right" or "wrong" in their principles, each possessing flaws and grounds for understanding.
Why Clan Quest Mod 4.0 Matters
Vampires the Masquerade: Bloodlines, with all of its technical flaws, is a game near and dear to me as a fan, as an aspiring game designer, and as a story writer. It introduced me to the World of Darkness which left me in awe of White Wolfs fantastic role-playing universe. It was only after I had purchased several World of Darkness books did I realize that Bloodlines only scratched the surface of such an enticing world hidden within the night's veil. I scoured the internet only to find that the game’s development history was plagued with a myriad of complications regarding Valves Source engine and Activision’s push to conclude development. I often wondered what could have been if the game had been given adequate time and resources for development, only to grow disheartened when I grasped the only cold truth to be had. We would never know.
Clan Quest 4.0, in my honest opinion, helps fulfill, if not restore, some of the lost potential the concept of the game originally had. With the announcement of Bloodlines 2, fans will undoubtedly return to the original in anticipation and excitement for the sequel that is to come. However, I feel that those seeking a return to the original will certainly have a broader, more fulfilling, World of Darkness experience by allowing the player to consider a new perspective, that of the Sabbat. Aside from the Sabbat content, players are also given unique quests at various parts of the game that only available to specific clans, providing a degree of replayability for each clan. The Sabbat may play a role in the upcoming sequel, for which, CQ4 may help educate players of their philosophies and goals that I have grown to empathize with throughout CQ4's Sabbat storyline. I implore any fan of Vampires: The Masquerade and Vampires: The Masquerade - Bloodlines to install CQ4 and give it a playthrough. It doesn't bite...much.
Clan Quest Mod: A Labor of Blood, Sweat, and Years
Nearly a year ago while browsing Youtube a user caught my eye, XOR101. One of the videos showcased an upcoming mod that was in development. A mod where you could actually ally yourself with the Sabbat in Bloodlines! To say I was excited was an understatement as I began quickly sifting through the videos and found a link to the mod’s Mod DB page. Though the updates for the mod were few and far between; they kept me interested nonetheless with information about original new characters, voice acting, character concept art, and custom-built hub area called East L.A. The mod was scheduled for release in late October, still several months away at the time, and I was all too eager to see how it contributed to the overall experience of Bloodlines.
Suffice to say, the wait was well worth it in my honest opinion. Halloween rolled around and I quickly installed Clan Quest v4.0. Immediately I created a fresh character, a Malkavian who was quite fond of her machine guns and sought the infamous Sword of Caine. Upon confronting Andrei at Kings Way, roughly half-way through the game, you are given the choice of proving yourself to the Sabbat. A choice I was all too eager to make. Upon accepting Andrei’s offer you are hit with what Clan Quest mod has to offer.
The new dialogue and voice acting for Andrei within Clan Quest were so strikingly similar to the original that it had me fooled into thinking it was the same actor for a few moments. The voice acting within the game is pretty solid with some noteworthy performances from Victoria, Hazel, and of course Andrei. Upon arriving at the new hub, East L.A., players will find themselves wandering throughout the projects in search of your contact Victoria, and by proxy, Hazel, The Mack, and Arturo. All of the characters within Clan Quest’s 4.0 release are phenomenally well written, possessing an intricate balance of personality and exposition with the utmost finesse. The quests were largely fun and engaging, serving to further develop the player’s relationships with the mods highlight characters. As these relationships grow, the player will gain more insight into the motivations and intentions of these characters as they try and secure themselves within a pack. The quests had me guessing what exactly was going to unfold as tensions grew to a boiling point in East L.A. The mod provided a variety of choices and approaches to the now more apparent Sabbat threat within L.A. that left me wanting to play through it all over again to see its various conclusions.
However, the mod does have its fair share of issues. East L.A. is somewhat large, possessing very subtle indications for where to find particular NPCs and I can see how it could prove problematic for some players. Though, I particularly loved walking around East L.A., exploring the fresh change in scenery and what it had to offer. Quests can sometimes be vague and unintuitive; however, burgermeister01 has since been aware of this issue and is planning to address it at some point. The game still has a lot of its traditional issues such as bugs, random crashing, some of the cutscenes for the mod were buggy, and the Empire Arms Hotel is somewhat unstable towards the end of the game (May have been resolved in recent patches). There are also missing voice lines for custom events and scenarios in Clan Quest; Particularly the biggest offender was Nines Rodriguez during the climax if you allied with the Sabbat.
Despite the mod’s handful of flaws, and generally the games buggy/unstable nature, I was able to look past these issues and see the quality of the content that Clan Quest provided. Even more so after contacting and interviewing the mods creator, burgermeister01, to find that he had largely worked on the mod by himself since 2008. This mod and its 4.0 release are clearly a labor of passion and love for not only the game but the World of Darkness itself. I truly felt that Clan Quest fulfilled some of that lost potential the game had all those years ago during development, and in turn, made VtMB a much more fulfilling experience. Clan Quest broadens the World of Darkness within Bloodlines to an impressive degree when considering its lengthy development. Upon completing my playthrough of the mod I felt inclined to contact burgermeister01. I asked him if he would be interested in an interview/Q&A for the mod and I was thrilled when he agreed.
You can explore Clan Quest for yourself on its Mod DB page.
Interested In Providing Feedback Or Helping? Reach Out
For those of you who are interested, burgermeister01 is still continuing to iron out as many bugs for Clan Quest as possible. He had only a handful of testers during development and ultimately decided to release the mod just so he could finally get it out the door. If you have any bug reports feel free to post a comment on Clan Quest’s Mod DB page so that he can document and address them in time.
He is also considering to continue development on additional content for the mod. If you are legitimately interested in seeing more content and support for Clan Quest, I’m sure burgermeister01 would appreciate your thoughts and opinions for the mod. If you have great knowledge in game design, modding Bloodlines, and even voice acting you can contact him via ModDB and PlanetVampire. If you are seriously interested in contributing, I recommend you contact burgermeister01 to see if he can utilize your talents in a collaborative effort to further development for the mod. As previously stated, he’s worked on the mod mostly by himself and I’m sure he would appreciate any major assistance you could provide!
You can contact burgermeister01 through, Twitter, Youtube, and ModDB
The Interview With Clan Quest 4.0's Creator, burgermeister01
With all of that said and done, I have included a portion of our Q&A below. However, there is still roughly over 50 minutes of untyped discussion in our actual recorded interview (It’s roughly 1 hour and 45 mins long. I had to gut much of it for this post). You can find a link to our live recorded interview at the bottom of the post. I thank any and all who took the time to read this recap/review and I hope you all enjoy reading the interview as much as I enjoyed conducting it! Furthermore, I hope you all enjoy Clan Quest as much as I did!
Zeruvious: I really wanted to ask you about the development process, yourself, and your role within the creation of the Clan Quest. I’m recording the audio right now and then I’ll go back later and then post it to try and garner some attention for your mod because I think it’s pretty kickass.
burgermeister01: Thank you man. I really appreciate the kind words, y’know? I was actually just watching someone do a live stream play of it and I’m just cringing so hard because I’m watching all the little things that are just confusing or not working quite right. I’m like, “Oh god, I need to go back and fix that!” It’s good when people are like, “Oh yeah! It’s a great experience. I love the mod! Everything was wonderful!”
ZV: Tell me a little bit about yourself. Name, age, hobbies, interests, goals, etc. . .
BM01: My name is Lee, I live in Arizona, 33 years old now. And I guess to give you a little background about me, I’ve always been a gamer you know since I was a young kid. Dad got me started with the Commodore 64 and I always really liked video games. I always thought I wanted to grow up and be a video game developer or designer. I did a lot of learning on my own, just learning how to program. I got a bachelor’s degree in computer science. And as I’m sure you’re aware it’s difficult to get that initial foot in the door for game design. I never really made that leap, I just started working in the private industry. I ended up getting a job at a non-profit type organization as the programmer, always with this intention in the back of my head that I was going to go back and do this video game design stuff seriously. I got really engrossed in the work that I was doing and I don’t think that ever really happened except for the fact that on the side I was working on this mod, Clan Quest, during my free time in the evenings and such. That kind of became this proxy for me to sort of do video game development. I never really done that in a professional setting but I do feel like I’ve “done it,” y’know what I mean?
ZV: Yeah, I understand what you mean. That’s pretty cool though, your background in computer science is pretty impressive. What other games do you play in your free time?
BM01: Haha. That’s actually kind of funny because there was another guy who did an interview with me, months and months ago. He was doing a podcast for modders, he never actually published it, and when he asked me that question I was stumped. I was like, “Wait a second, I don’t play games anymore!” I spend all my time working on this mod and that leaves very little time for me to play other games. It’s kind of ridiculous right? It was a really hard question for me to answer. I finished this mod a couple weeks ago and released it. I just took a deep breath and said I need to take a break from this thing. The two games I have installed so far are Vampyr and I just started playing Overwatch. My friends are super obsessed with this game (Overwatch) so I had to give it a try.
ZV: So, I guess since you have such a huge interest in Bloodlines, are you familiar with the World of Darkness at all?
BM01: Yeah! So, when I started playing Bloodlines I had no idea. That was sort of my first introduction. It’s actually kind of funny. It’s reflected if you go back and look at some of the early content for my mod it doesn’t really live up to the cannon setting. There’s just sort of odd requests that people make of you or it just doesn’t quite fit with the setting very well. I’m very reminiscent of that. Especially in this researching this next chapter, I got really absorbed into the World of Darkness setting and started reading all the clan/sourcebooks. That was sort of my introduction, my “indoctrination” if you will, into the World of Darkness was Bloodlines.
ZV: Bloodlines was my first gateway into the World of Darkness as well because I found out it was based off a pen and paper RPG and I was like, “Wait, what?” So, then I went on Amazon and I saw how many books there were and I just started buying them like crazy. I just started reading through them. I still haven’t read through all of them but what I love about games is the lore. Games like Warcraft, Mass Effect, or Dragon Age even, have crazy amounts of lore and detail of what creates the world. With Vampires the Masquerade, the lore behind it is absolutely incredible. There’s so much information about all the clans, all the factions, the history proceeding the Final Nights. I could lose myself in the reading for hours and hours about the World of Darkness.
BM01: Yeah, you could read those books for days and days. The thing I love about the setting is just this idea that there’s a whole other world out of sight. Just in the shadows, just in your peripheral vision, but you just can’t quite put your finger on what it is. I love that and incorporating that real-world grittiness into it. It’s great stuff. Bloodlines actually inspired me to run a tabletop game with my friends, it went on for about a year. That was an amazing tabletop game.
ZV: What’s your favorite clan and faction?
BM01: Ohhhh, my favorite I’d have to say is probably the Ventrue. I think if I could have one power in real life it would be Dominate. Just being able to do the Jedi mind trick on people would be so badass. I just like the idea of vampires in business suits. I guess its super cliché but pretty much all of them (clans) have their clichés. I have a feeling that if I were to be embraced by a clan it’d be Nosferatu, being somewhat of a computer nerd.
ZV: (laughing) So has your experience in game design just been mod work on the side and programming?
BM01: Yeah, so the programming background was really helpful. I had done a few other things before this Bloodlines mod like maps for Left 4 Dead, I made an addon for World of Warcraft, umm I programmed a couple of games in Java but they were just recreations like Tetris and Battleship. That was about the extent of my experience in game programming. Despite the fact that it’s on this archaic engine and the tools are kind of shitty. It was accessible in the sense that this person, Dheu, had documented working with Bloodlines very thoroughly. So that kind of lowered the threshold to working on Bloodlines and that’s kind of how I got started with that. He hasn’t been involved in the community for a good long while but he’s the one that really opened the door for a lot of other modders to work with the game.
ZV: How did the concept of Clan Quest happen? How did it get traction? How did you manage to get people interested and make it a realization?
BM01: It’s really just been kind of my own labor of love, to be honest with you. I can kind of tell you the idea that got me started and kind of what got me started with modding the game too if you are interested in hearing something like that. But the first time I was playing through I got stuck on this bug toward the end of the game your talking to Damsel about Nines location. Beckett comes out of the alley and stops you and he’s like, “Don’t open the sarcophagus!” But there’s this bug where Beckett will sometimes get caught on another one of the civilians on the street. So, you get stuck and you can’t proceed with the game and you have to start all over. You have to reload your game and I was like, “Well that’s shitty. I should see if I can fix that.” So that’s what got me started with digging into the code, the engine, reading the mod guide and being like “How can I fix this bug?” Because the Unofficial Patch had made this game that I love so much playable, I thought it’d be great to add something back into the community. I tried and tried and tried and I couldn’t fix the bug. But it did teach me how to work on the game. So, I figured, “Okay, that’s kind of cool. What if I actually added quests into the game and more customizable experience based on the clan that you picked?” They already have specific dialogue for the Malkavians and Nosferatu, but what if the actual experience changed? That was essentially the basis of Clan Quest mod really. Having done that, the main complaints I get from people are, “Now I have to play the game seven times if I want to see all the new content!” Which was kind of the point because you get something new every time you play it. So that’s what got me started and I’ve been the main person doing this whole thing. You mentioned a team a couple of times in your introduction, but for the most part, it’s just been this one guy, me, working on this mod.
ZV: Oh god, that’s crazy! So, you do all the writing, the level development, and all the programming?
BM01: Yep! You name it, I do it.
ZV: That’s insane!
BM01: Yeah, the only thing that I cannot do is the character modeling. The thing about Bloodlines is that it’s not possible to import new models. I don’t know the exact technical reasons why but you can take an existing character model, copy it, distort it, retexture it, and then make something new that way. It’s really challenging and there’s a handful of people who are even willing to take on something that challenging. I was very lucky in being able to attract the interests of a few modelers that were able to help with that because otherwise, I would have been kind of stuck using existing character models. I felt that it would have detracted from the whole experience.
ZV: Yeah, that wouldn’t have made it as unique. That’s crazy though how you have to repurpose in-game assets and then repackage them into the game.
BM01: It was wild. I was really worried for a while. I thought I wasn’t going to be able to release this thing for some time because I’m not going to be able to make these models. Then out of nowhere this modeler shows up on the Planet Vampire forums and starts posting these amazingly attractive character models that he was making for his own mod. I was like, “Dude you have to help me.” And he was such a good sport about helping me. He worked from home and so he had all this free time, he basically worked full time on the mod for a month. He cranked out all these character models and then he got really busy in real life. The second he was done he was gone again. It was this crazy coincidence.
ZV: That’s actually pretty awesome! I’m glad that worked out otherwise we probably wouldn’t have the mod today.
BM01: (laughs) Yeah, I would have been panhandling on forums or something for someone to help me.
ZV: You said you did most of the work by yourself. That changes my questions about the team a little bit. So, since you did most of the work, how did you come across finding people for specific things that you needed to be addressed? Things you couldn’t handle yourself? You mentioned the modeling and how you weren’t really experienced with that and someone just came along at the right time. How many other people did you work with?
BM01: So, I guess I’ll talk to you about a few of the collaborators that I had worked with over the years. There are the modelers, finding those people is a little bit happenstance. I think when I was posting teasers about the mod I was also putting out these calls to action like, “Hey, I need someone to help me with the modeling. Who among you can help me?” A few people would step up and try but they would fail more often than not or lose interest. That’s why I say it was happenstance and kind of lucky I got the people that I did to help me. Another modeler who helped me was Lenuska. She did the Antitribu mod. I kind of went to her, recruited her, and she was really good about helping me until she fell off the face of the earth about a year and a half ago. The other main thing that I had to get help with was the voice acting. Obviously, I couldn’t do all these voices myself.
ZV: I’m just going to say I think the voice acting, for the most part, is pretty solid. But there are some characters that are absolutely phenomenal. Like the voice acting for Andrei was so good I had to do a sort of double take thinking, “Is this the same voice actor as the original?”
BM01: Dude, so yeah! I found him on some list for actors in New York City. I have an actor friend in New York City who did the voice acting for the Regent in the original Clan Quest mod and he’s like, “I can’t help you anymore because I’m in SAG (Screen Actors Guild) actor. But I can put this out on the list there.” So, I had all these different people applying and there was this one guy came up and I knew I had to get him. He did the voice (Andrei) spot on and was great to work with. That was a great resource, these lists for actors and voice actors. I used the local Tucson lists and got a bunch of local talent as well, which was great because I could work with them in person and direct them as they were recording. It was also great to do it in person because I had access to a proper sound booth in Tucson for a while so I was able to get high-quality recordings.But another collaborator, I just wanted to point out that I was advertising for voice actors on Voice123.com, this website for freelance voice actors, and I got this one guy who applied and had a background with World of Darkness. He knew what the game was, he knew what the setting was, and he did a number of the voices in the original Clan Quest mod. He read the lines and said, “Look. I see what you’re trying to do here, but it’s not very good.” (laughs) He was very blunt, but he was absolutely right. He actually redrafted a bunch of writing that I had done and when I read it, I said, “Holy crap! He’s right! This can be improved upon so much.” And, of course, this was early days, back in 2009/2010 or something. I saw what he did and I learned from him. I saw how he took was I was trying to say and made it tighter. It was a really helpful experience to see someone take something you write and do it better. That was a huge help in terms of someone that tried to collaborate with me.
ZV: In terms of voice actors (I have a list here for the ones I really like) I really like the actor for Andrei (Peter Coleman). LaCroix(Eric Du) was almost spot on. Victoria(Brie Zepeda) was awesome, I really enjoyed her character. Even Hazel(Zane Forier-Montes) was sort of captivating and even convincing in how he was batshit crazy. That sort of leads me into my next question. How did you go about writing these characters? What led you to develop characters like Victoria, Hazel, and The Mack.
BM01: That’s a great question and I’m glad you asked because something that I’m very proud of is that tabletop game, that I mentioned earlier, was this amazing resource for me. The tabletop game was basically the players are Camarilla, they get cast out from Chicago to another town near Chicago that Sabbat run, and their infiltrators that are supposed to tear down the Sabbat. The truth of the matter is the Camarilla are trying to get rid of the players, they are all outcasts. The Sabbat was falling apart already, there were three packs warring with each other. It was up to the players to come in and manipulate those packs and play them off of one another to get what they wanted. And the reason why I’m telling you this is because the player characters who were super invested in this tabletop game were most of the characters you see in this chapter for Bloodlines. So, The Mack is one of my friend’s characters, Jesse is another one of my friend’s characters, Hazel same thing. Hazel and Jesse actually ended up voice acting for the characters. I got the players to come in and do the lines because they both had some experience in acting, and I knew they both had the right voices for this and they did a great job.
ZV: I assume that because they played those characters, they were more easily able to project the personality into them.
BM01: Yeah, absolutely. Victoria is kind of interesting because there was one player in the group who wasn’t a huge nerd about roleplaying and she didn’t really get into it. Her character concept couldn’t really translate over, but we had done this LARP together where she played this Aztec god, which is this snake form of this sun deity. I was like, “Okay your player character in this tabletop game wasn’t very inspiring, but your LARP character was amazing. Let’s take that and combine it with these other two concepts that were from the tabletop game. This Chola/Ductis Sabbat vampire and that had a subterranean haven. I mashed all these things together and I got this character concept of Victoria which I’m pretty happy with.
ZV: I gotta say, I found her the most engaging and also the most interesting. The more I talked to her, the more I wanted to do stuff just so I could keep talking to her because she had a really great personality. She had a very intimidating but enticing demeanor. I was like, “I don’t care what happens. I’m rolling with Victoria because she’s badass.”
BM01: That’s awesome! That’s exactly what I was going for!
ZV: How was the process of development for this mod? When did it start? It sounded like you said it started in 2008?
BM01: Well, yeah. The first chapter of Clan Quest mod, which was just those initial quests that are specific to each clan, started in 2008. I worked on that until about 2012 with version 3, I had that final quest I put out were you meet up with this Kuei-Jin woman for a night out on the town with her. After that, I got burned out modding and in general, just wanted a change of pace. I wasn’t really doing much with my computer at all for a good 3 years. I was just kind of enjoying myself. Then like I said we did this tabletop game in 2014-2015 and when it ended I was like, “I should make a Sabbat chapter for Clan Quest mod using these characters.” That’s when I got back into it. For a good 3 or 4 months, I was trying to nail down ideas for this mod and trying to figure out how to incorporate these ideas into Bloodlines. Tried to sort of mentally figure out how it would fit together. Then I just started working on it for a good long time, 3 or 4 months I would say. I just started really hammering away at it. Then I just lost my steam for a while. I just got frustrated with it. I had worked so hard on it before and I could see that happening again and I didn’t know if I was ready to delve back into it again. But I had this long break and I was like, “If I can make the HUB I can get past all the things that are intimidating to me.” I had ten days off of work and just started hammering away at the HUB. I got 90% of the way there and I was like, “Great there’s nothing stopping me now except for myself!” It was a good 2-2 ½ years I was just hammering away at this mod and I released it a couple of weeks ago and that’s about it.
ZV: I can definitely understand that when you work on passion projects so intensely you burn yourself out. You step away and then coming back seems daunting. You’re sort of like, “Oof, I don’t know if I want to get into that again.”
BM01: Oh yeah, god. It’s intimidating. It’s like, “God, why am I doing this?” Especially since I can’t put it on Steam and sell it. It’s just purely for the love of the game.
ZV: Let’s see, (laughs) I guess the next question I have is could you describe working with Bloodlines’ problematic engine?
BM01: Oh god (groans). See that’s such an easier question to answer because there are so many answers I could give you. It’s horrible.
ZV: I read your comments (on Mod DB), there was a user asking about a missing poster item for a questline. You talked about how you can only have a certain amount of special items in the game and how you actually had to remove the item for that quest in order to make room for other stuff you wanted to do for your mod. That’s really interesting
BM01: Yeah “interesting”, that’s one way to put it. The items are a big thing in Bloodlines, there are 200+ unique items with the weapons, armor, quest items, power-ups and that’s it, that’s all you get. Most of them are unused. The few that were left behind that didn’t get completed during the games development process. So, you can pick them up and use them. Like you’ll have this item that’s not being used for any quests that's just sort of this random definition for an item in the game files. You’re just like, “Okay. I can fill this in with whatever I want and repurpose it.” Especially with the Unofficial Patch, most of them have been used up at this point which means if you want to add a new item or weapon into the game you have to figure out how you can shuffle things around so that everything the player needs is still there but you can still fit this new item in. This gets even more increasingly difficult because Clan Quest mod has this feature where you can install other mods. So different mods make different changes to different files that control different items. You have to manage all of these different sets of item files for each mod separately and make sure none of them contradict one another. It’s a nightmare (chuckles). The other big challenge in Bloodlines is the animations. It’s not possible to add new animations to models which means that any animations, any cutscenes in this new version of Clan Quest mod, is a repurposing of an existing animation. So that is really limiting because there are so many different things that I would have liked to have done with the story in terms of conveying different elements for the Sabbat. It’s just not possible if you can’t animate the characters to demonstrate what’s happening in the game. I knew there had to be a Vauldiere sequence because this is the most sacred of all the rituals in the Sabbat and so I did this crazy workaround that made it work about 50% of the time. But the amount of work that had to go into making that work is just ridiculous and only works so precariously. It’s totally a stick and gum creation. It wasn’t after I released it but it was during testing when two people ran into this issue where the scene didn’t execute correctly and so the whole sequence doesn’t really run properly about 50% of the time. I haven’t been able to reproduce the issues so I can’t fix it. It’s been a disaster, it’s been really frustrating for me. (Chuckles)
ZV: It’s completely understandable given the age of the game. Especially considering the fact it runs on an archaic/broken version of Source and Activision rushed development.
BM01: Yeah, that’s exactly what happened. The game, when it released, was essentially unfinished. The base game has all these bugs and defects. It just doesn’t work without the unofficial patch. I mean full stop. Bloodlines is frustrating for a lot of reasons, I could go on and on about technical difficulties and the fact that there is no documentation, no real official guide on how to do this means sometimes you’re just left grasping for answers in the dark trying different things until you get it to work properly. Yeah, It’s a challenge. Sometimes it can be fun but most of the time it’s frustrating.
ZV: I guess if anybody can take anything from this interview it’s that to mod the game itself you need to have a really good understanding of how it works and you have to know how to make everything work efficiently if you’re trying to mod it. What aspect of development was the most time-consuming?
BM01: Ohh! That’s actually an interesting question. Just because of how tedious it is, the lip animations. Doing all the animations while people are talking is incredibly tedious and time-consuming. Once you get down to a beat you can work through it pretty quickly but you have to have a really efficient work process otherwise it just takes forever. The writing was another big one as I said earlier. Doing four, five, six drafts sometimes just trying to get it right. A lot of times just facing a blank page and writing something is just like, “Ah, no. That’s fucking stupid.” Then deleting it and starting over. Just working through that process of being frustrated with your own writing is very time-consuming. The thing that was easy to overlook, and a lot of people wouldn’t believe me, is the testing process. Just going through and checking your changes, making sure you didn’t break anything, running through the game, and making sure everything is working is just a huge time sink. I can basically play Bloodlines in my sleep at this point.
ZV: I was about to say, you probably had to run the game probably a few thousand times just to make sure testing worked out.
BM01: Before releasing the mod I had a team of six or seven testers, people just trying it out and letting me know what bugs they found, doing my best to fix those before the release. Even that was really not feasible. Basically, I had to release it and then people shake out the bugs and report them to me. So, I got this huge list of bugs that I need to go back and fix now. I hate making the players my testers but given that it is basically a labor of love I don’t really have a choice otherwise.
ZV: Not only that, but it’s a lot of work for one person to take on. Especially for a project like this is crazy.
BM01: Yeah. Well, that’s why it took me like three years to do this (Version 4.0).
ZV: What was your favorite aspect of development for this mod?
BM01: Honestly, I had said it was time-consuming, but the writing was the most fun for me. When you finally get that one piece of dialogue that you are happy with and proud of. It’s pretty satisfying being able to iterate it, seeing how it evolves, see how these characters start to take shape in your head and on paper is a really cool process. So even though it’s painful I really enjoyed that. Another thing is I enjoyed working with the voice actors. It’s a pain in the ass to do the auditions but once you actually get into the recording booth and you direct people, they don’t really know what you want, you don’t know how they work, just working through that creative process with them together is a lot of fun. Some of those people I’ve made friends with, so it’s a great way to meet people as well.
ZV: With the 4.1 release of Clan Quest how did you react to feedback? I know you got more feedback than you anticipated.
BM01: I got the feature on Rock, Paper, Shotgun, they did a little write up on the mod which was really cool. I remember I had it set on MoD DB to release with a countdown and I had actually gone to a movie and I came home with three minutes left until release. I started preparing things like fixing up the news article and changing some stuff on the website. During that time the mod released and 40 minutes had passed. I went outside, drank a beer, came back in, and someone had already posted a video on how to install it within the first 30 minutes. I was just like, “Wow! That’s awesome!” There’s been a lot of bugs and I’ve been doing my best to help people work through those but I think that’s just to be expected. But generally, it’s just been all pretty positive feedback which is great. I’ve gotten some criticisms and I think that a lot of the criticisms levied have been fair. So, I’m just going to take those things on board and see how I can make the next version, or the version after that, a little bit better.
ZV: In terms of my feedback, I honestly love it. I think it’s fantastic and the passion definitely shows. What I’m hoping to achieve is sort of promote this mod and reach out to as many people as possible. Help make people aware of it because I think what you’re doing is fantastic and I think people who are fans of Bloodlines should be aware of what you’re doing.
BM01: Yeah, definitely. I really appreciate that. It really helps balance out the bug reports and the haters. Feedback like that really makes me want to come back and continue working on the mod.
ZV: With all that said and done, do you have any future plans for Clan Quest? Where do you go from here besides working out bugs?
BM01: Well the main thing that I want to do is, almost sort of like an obligation, is to put the newest version of the unofficial patch in the mod. I was kind of thinking something sort of like this weird Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, sort of wild west/werewolf crossover possibility? Some sort of ideas floating around for how to do a quest with The Mack. It’d be cool if he took the player to a different locale. I also want to fill out the packs. Victoria and Hazel just have these two packs and they’ve got other packmates but it’s just like these generic NPC models and you don’t talk to them. What would be cool is to develop full characters that could be part of your pack right? Another Tzimizce character that’s not totally batshit crazy like Andre would be cool to get more of an aspect about that clan.
The Fully Recorded Audio Interview
Note: I apologize for the audio quality, both I and burgermeister01 had completely different audio setups, so trying to edit the contrast between our audio quality proved difficult. The audio recording does feature some spoilers about the mod towards the end, so be warned!
Submitted April 06, 2019 at 12:09AM by Zeruvious http://bit.ly/2UimQIn
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