Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines

What works

As far as I can tell, everything works fine, silky smooth and gorgeous with all settings maxed out (but see below).

What does not

* In my case, the 3 CD version was absolutely uninstallable; even trying all the tweaks and workarounds suggested by previous users. Through every single Wine version since 1.1.28 to 1.3.2, I experienced with this format of the game error messages during the installation process: sometimes, the setup asked me for a certain CD even when that particular CD was in my drive; sometimes, it crashed with various file-not-found errors. I had to buy the game again, but this time in DVD format. There's was no problem at all, since the setup in the DVD format doesn't need to change discs since everything is extracted from a huge .cab file.

* In my case, I couldn't run the game without applying a crack.

Workarounds

What was not tested

* Multiplayer.

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

I don't know if it's relevant or not, but for honesty sake: since I'm also playing Civilization IV, I have installed XML 3 and 4 through Winetricks, and I have disabled the gameux dll through winecfg. I also applied the official 1.2 patch, and the latest unofficial patch (7.1); since Bloodlines, like all Troika games, was bundled with a lot of bugs. Since the game is running out of the box, I would give it a platinum rating; but since I had to buy another copy of the game on a different format and apply cracks and patches due to its buggy nature, I gave it a silver rating looking to match the rating system accordingly. Nonetheless, I will let the moderators to adjust my rating if they consider it necessary.

 If you get the following error and performance issues:

fixme:d3d_surface:fb_copy_to_texture_direct Doing a pixel by pixel copy from the framebuffer to a texture, expect major performance issues
 Adding the following Registry key should help:
HKCU/Software/Wine/Direct3D: OffscreenRenderingMode = "fbo"
 
Also if you have a black menu when the game starts, or graphic errors, you can set the following Registry Key:
HKCU/Software/Wine/Direct3D: UseGLSL = "disabled"
 
(this also increases the performance strongly) 

(see http://wiki.winehq.org/UsefulRegistryKeys  for further information)

To force antialiasing in the game, run this in a terminal:

__GL_FSAA_MODE=4

export __GL_FSAA_MODE

wine /path/to/your/Vampire.exe -game Unofficial_Patch