Malaks general notes

This is just going to be my "general comments" as well as a brief overview of my run-through. Intending on "that was brutal/cakewalked that one" type comments, with observations on the changes.


Initial note: my old DRM fix is unhappy with TFN 1.3. Had to go find my disk.
program likes alt-tabbing less than it used to. (crash from menu 1-in-5 alt-tabs, old was 1-in-9)
Female Osebo still invisible for me.
Button for turning off hardcore mode is called "reset stats."
No reason for a new player to choose a history - stats not shown on history description.
no way to 'reset skills' without togling hardcore mode, no indication that doing so will toggle skills until hardcore mode turned on.

BGs:
Talented Mortician and Desperate Labrat have same bonuses, both available to Samedi. Samedi effective BGs down one.
Practitional of Evil(Settite): stacking bonus to persuasion, intended?
Sexy Klepto (Ihtarri): stacking bonuses again.Seduction
Rent-a-Thug, withdrawn tack star, womens gym instructor, adventuring historian, hard-timing it: bonus to bashing soak? out of line with other BGs, and I think actually more powerful than the rest.
Missionary of Burden: EVEN MORE OF THE ABOVE!
From a character optimization viewpoint, "None" background is worst background. possible to remove?

intro: assamite female closeup on bed: she has no neck or shoulder
Jack cheating death: freezes at fade to black after decap. Intentional? can still esc-go to main menu.
first time noticing: Sheriffs sword does not move with him. Looks like it's a separate actor that just follows him REALLY close. huh.
BGs still change attribute/skill priority (which one gets which dots) with no explanation
No explanation of the three Assamite weaknesses I can find.
Hardcore Mode: enables the auto-level button.
Options: video: #GameUI_anamorphic ? What it do? Maybe I just never noticed it before.


random note: enabling hardcore, then backing out of sheet (to queue up the Jack execution) removes the computers memory of the dots. Possible way to use this to prevent the exploit entirely?

EDIT:
now into actual gameplay: playing a hardcore Fem Ass BG:Sharpshooter. going for ranged combat, lockpick, then hack, low humanity build.
will try to break bgs later.
Quietus 1 tutorial does not require a stealth kill, simply that mook dies while disc is active.
Dancing Assamite Female arms move through breasts (noticeably) at Money 0.7 and above.
Word "Ninja" on chest distorted outside money 0.6-1.3.
dancing prevents boodloss from killing you (at least it looked like it was supposed to kill me. that HP drop . . .) You heal while dancing as well.
This (whether having 0 blood, or the damage) appears to STOP the bloodloss timer. did not trigger again, at 1 humanity/1stamina, in 20 minutes. did not add blood to see if it would restart. should have. bugger.
Also, impossible to frenzy in an Elysium area?
In Asylum, spirit girl appears to have priority on pathing, moving everyone (including Jeanette and myself) out of her way. This caused it to take Jeanette almost 3 minutes to reach the elevator, as she got stuck on gimp guy, gimp guy walks into spirit girl who pushes him back in front of Jeanette, then spirit girl turns to stand in gimp guys spot, pushing Jeanette further back.
Girl with twin pigtails and the red-on-black corset never did dance with me. Pure chance? she doesn't dance with player? not sure.
HOLY CRAP! I can jump up on the stage!! Why is there no dance spot behind the microphone!?

Initial note: my old DRM fix is unhappy with TFN 1.3. Had to go find my disk.
program likes alt-tabbing less than it used to. (crash from menu 1-in-5 alt-tabs, old was 1-in-9)
When reskinning the female Assamite I used the Windows key to get out of the game and back in again. Worked fine after 50 presses with no crash.

Female Osebo still invisible for me.
That's because you installed the game wrong.

Button for turning off hardcore mode is called "reset stats."
It resets your stats and Hardcore mode.

No reason for a new player to choose a history - stats not shown on history description.
I'm going to add the effects in the description, though I don't want too.

no way to 'reset skills' without togling hardcore mode, no indication that doing so will toggle skills until hardcore mode turned on.
Nothing I can do about that unfortunately.

BGs:
Talented Mortician and Desperate Labrat have same bonuses, both available to Samedi. Samedi effective BGs down one.
Thanks for pointing that out, I thought about how I wanted to handle that and decided to just remove Desperate Lab Rat from the Samedi option. Good catch!

Practitional of Evil(Settite): stacking bonus to persuasion, intended?
Intended

Sexy Klepto (Ihtarri): stacking bonuses again.Seduction
Intended

Rent-a-Thug, withdrawn tack star, womens gym instructor, adventuring historian, hard-timing it: bonus to bashing soak? out of line with other BGs, and I think actually more powerful than the rest.
Intended

Missionary of Burden: EVEN MORE OF THE ABOVE!
Intended

From a character optimization viewpoint, "None" background is worst background. possible to remove?
I wish that I could remove "None" but I can't. If it's possible or I find a way later, I'll remove it. I tried.

intro: assamite female closeup on bed: she has no neck or shoulder
Graphical bug with the engine I believe.

Jack cheating death: freezes at fade to black after decap. Intentional? can still esc-go to main menu.
I've seen that before and I'm not sure what to do about it. It's a minor bug that can easily be over-rided by pressing escape, but I'd like to fix it if I can.

first time noticing: Sheriffs sword does not move with him. Looks like it's a separate actor that just follows him REALLY close. huh.
Not a TFN bug, I never touched the sherrif's sword. If there's a way to fix it later I will but right now I'm not that concerned.

BGs still change attribute/skill priority (which one gets which dots) with no explanation
Intended, it's part of the entire Background package. Stat shufflers and bonuses are no longer separate.

No explanation of the three Assamite weaknesses I can find.
In the Assamite description before choosing a background, you will see the explanation that their clan weakness is an obsession for either talents, skills, or knowledges.

Hardcore Mode: enables the auto-level button.
Another thing I couldn't remove, I tried. Who uses auto-level anyways?

Options: video: #GameUI_anamorphic ? What it do? Maybe I just never noticed it before.
I'll check it out, I've never seen that before either.


random note: enabling hardcore, then backing out of sheet (to queue up the Jack execution) removes the computers memory of the dots. Possible way to use this to prevent the exploit entirely?
Oh how I wish there were. This is a long standing bug that not even Wesp could fix. I hate cheating so you know of all people, I'd implement the fix first.

EDIT:
now into actual gameplay: playing a hardcore Fem Ass BG:Sharpshooter. going for ranged combat, lockpick, then hack, low humanity build.
will try to break bgs later.

Quietus 1 tutorial does not require a stealth kill, simply that mook dies while disc is active.
Intended

Dancing Assamite Female arms move through breasts (noticeably) at Money 0.7 and above.
What is Money 0.7?

Word "Ninja" on chest distorted outside money 0.6-1.3.
What is money 0.6-1.3?

dancing prevents boodloss from killing you (at least it looked like it was supposed to kill me. that HP drop . . .) You heal while dancing as well.
I'm okay with that, though I didn't program it that way. I've never touched dancing.

This (whether having 0 blood, or the damage) appears to STOP the bloodloss timer. did not trigger again, at 1 humanity/1stamina, in 20 minutes. did not add blood to see if it would restart. should have. bugger.
I'm unclear what you're saying here.

Also, impossible to frenzy in an Elysium area?
Intended

In Asylum, spirit girl appears to have priority on pathing, moving everyone (including Jeanette and myself) out of her way. This caused it to take Jeanette almost 3 minutes to reach the elevator, as she got stuck on gimp guy, gimp guy walks into spirit girl who pushes him back in front of Jeanette, then spirit girl turns to stand in gimp guys spot, pushing Jeanette further back.
Weird, that's never happened to me in all the years of playing Bloodlines. Was this during a proper installation or the bad one?

Girl with twin pigtails and the red-on-black corset never did dance with me. Pure chance? she doesn't dance with player? not sure.
Yeah I'm not sure on that, probably just chance. Some actually stop dancing with you and walk away from awhile then come back.

HOLY CRAP! I can jump up on the stage!! Why is there no dance spot behind the microphone!?
I never placed one there, but yeah you can jump on the stage. I suppose I could put a dance icon there, lol.

What is Money?
the console command "money" will change the female PCs bust line. Default is 1.0

bloodloss question
after testing, it seems that after you take the damage once for blood=0, the bloodloss timer stops until you load a new map.

When reskinning the female Assamite I used the Windows key to get out of the game and back in again. Worked fine after 50 presses with no crash.
probably something running in my background then. Only does so when alt-tabbing, so no impact on legitimate game-play anyways.

Options: video: #GameUI_anamorphic ? What it do? Maybe I just never noticed it before.
I'll check it out, I've never seen that before either.
Only saw it on one character load. disappeared for me now. Wish I knew how I made it show up, so it could be properly eliminated.

spirit girl this was with 1.0. I've seen Jeanette have to wait for someone to move before, but never get moved herself. watching more, spirit girl moves other people sometimes, sometimes waits for them. Noone else seems to move other actors though.

now for more notes:

Pier:cop did not attack me for no reason. first time he hasn't
beachhouse (astrolite): lockpick 7 for $200? if intended for us to return, I would raise the reward, if intended for us to get prior to warehouse, but for lockpickers, I would lower difficulty to 5.
Gang at parking garage (Jummy Reed quest): ignores me if I stand on the stairs. let me shoot them across the hand-rail.
Surfisde Diner: first time I've noticed the "Troika Special" if that's new, thats great, if not, I should probably stick to hack-and-slashers like Redemption and Diablo.
beer drinking chick: after she takes a drink, can moves to her cootch for a few seconds, then floats above her hand.
Kilpatricks: Feel like I should lose humanity for stealing from his cash chest.
Bloodloss during computer usage. Also, Kilpatrick shot me while hacking his bank account, intended? (this was after I opened his cash chest, while he was cowering.)
Criminal violation for feeding from fatty after he shot me in his bonds office, not for stealing from him.
fem-assamite body armor - looks nice. love the hoodie. can't say that it visually says "body armor" to me, but most of the core ones didn't anyways.
Gimbles: ouch. that fight sucked. cash chest: 8 for 300? on an area we are unlikely to ever revisit? again, when do you expect players to collect this? By the time I have 8 lockpick, I can make money by wandering downtown and selling off thugs/cops weapons. Other Gimble note: music in the lounge on the way out just clinches his creepy factor.
SM thug has blood equal to bum. ?  Green dress prostitute blood equal to a blue blood. ? Both of these are 'combat' feeds.
Asylum: hacked Jeanettes PC. popup says I hacked Asylums bank account. Does Tourette share a single bank account? will need to check after the haunted house.
If blood timer hits while sucking a rat, effect is a blood loss. would expect a "net zero" effect.
Been trying to score a masquerade violation by feeding in public. seems that I have to have three people see it before the masquerade violation happens.
Also, feeding in front of a cop, get the criminal violation, and he crosses his arms at me for a good 6 seconds before drawing his weapon.
Confirmed: no Humanity loss for hacking below 6.

What is Money?
the console command "money" will change the female PCs bust line. Default is 1.0
Oh yeah, haha. Yeah, I'm not concerned that the shirt gets distorted when you change the model's boob size, LOL.

bloodloss question
after testing, it seems that after you take the damage once for blood=0, the bloodloss timer stops until you load a new map.
I will have to check that out, I've never had my blood to 0. So you're saying if you have 0 blood, then go feed while in the same map, the timer will pause until you go into a new map? Interesting.

When reskinning the female Assamite I used the Windows key to get out of the game and back in again. Worked fine after 50 presses with no crash.
probably something running in my background then. Only does so when alt-tabbing, so no impact on legitimate game-play anyways.
True. And I used the Windows key, not Alt + Tab, it might crash when I Alt + Tab too.

Options: video: #GameUI_anamorphic ? What it do? Maybe I just never noticed it before.
I'll check it out, I've never seen that before either.
Only saw it on one character load. disappeared for me now. Wish I knew how I made it show up, so it could be properly eliminated.
It's okay. It's hard to know or comment because I'm not sure if this was the messed up install or the good one.

spirit girl this was with 1.0. I've seen Jeanette have to wait for someone to move before, but never get moved herself. watching more, spirit girl moves other people sometimes, sometimes waits for them. Noone else seems to move other actors though.
Maybe I need to put her down... permanently, LOL.

now for more notes:

Pier:cop did not attack me for no reason. first time he hasn't
He did NOT attack you? That's a good thing right?

beachhouse (astrolite): lockpick 7 for $200? if intended for us to return, I would raise the reward, if intended for us to get prior to warehouse, but for lockpickers, I would lower difficulty to 5.
The money intended to be returned to Mercurio hasn't been touched, you still can return that to him. The money in the chest is for people who get their lockpicking to 7 or higher, or people who want to specialize in lockpicking. Those chests are all over the game now.

Gang at parking garage (Jummy Reed quest): ignores me if I stand on the stairs. let me shoot them across the hand-rail.
Haven't touched this quest since 1.1, but sometimes they don't see you until you attack them. When you shot an killed one of them, did they all come at you?

Surfisde Diner: first time I've noticed the "Troika Special" if that's new, thats great, if not, I should probably stick to hack-and-slashers like Redemption and Diablo.
Troika Special? HAHA, nice, no I didn't put that there.

beer drinking chick: after she takes a drink, can moves to her cootch for a few seconds, then floats above her hand.
Yeah, that's been around since 1.0. Frustrating that the interesting_place animation gets messed up sometimes. Other NPCs using the beer animation do it too sometimes.

Kilpatricks: Feel like I should lose humanity for stealing from his cash chest.
You will, if your humanity is 6 or higher. It must had been lower than 6.

Bloodloss during computer usage. Also, Kilpatrick shot me while hacking his bank account, intended? (this was after I opened his cash chest, while he was cowering.)
Not intended but kind of funny, LOL. If you hack his bank account first, he doesn't notice you, or shouldn't, but maybe it's cause you turned him aggressive when you stole out of his chest.

Criminal violation for feeding from fatty after he shot me in his bonds office, not for stealing from him.
Did it all happen in the same visit? Or did you steal from him, leave, come back, then feed on him?

fem-assamite body armor - looks nice. love the hoodie. can't say that it visually says "body armor" to me, but most of the core ones didn't anyways.
Yeah, should've still had the body armor icon in the graphic hud though.

Gimbles: ouch. that fight sucked. cash chest: 8 for 300? on an area we are unlikely to ever revisit? again, when do you expect players to collect this? By the time I have 8 lockpick, I can make money by wandering downtown and selling off thugs/cops weapons. Other Gimble note: music in the lounge on the way out just clinches his creepy factor.
These chests are all over and you can get into them at any time. The amount of total money and goods is worth getting into all of them at Lockpick 10. Remember where they are, and come back later. Trust me, it adds up.

SM thug has blood equal to bum. ?  Green dress prostitute blood equal to a blue blood. ? Both of these are 'combat' feeds.
All the prostitutes should have the same blood amounts, they don't? SM Thug, which one is he?

Asylum: hacked Jeanettes PC. popup says I hacked Asylums bank account. Does Tourette share a single bank account? will need to check after the haunted house.
I have it listed as "The Asylum" bank account, so you're hacking both sisters accounts at the same time but through Jeanette's laptop, not Therese's desktop.

If blood timer hits while sucking a rat, effect is a blood loss. would expect a "net zero" effect.
I would think that too. Must be how it's mathematically calculated. Weird.

Been trying to score a masquerade violation by feeding in public. seems that I have to have three people see it before the masquerade violation happens.
Should be really easy to get a violation, it is for me. Strange.

Also, feeding in front of a cop, get the criminal violation, and he crosses his arms at me for a good 6 seconds before drawing his weapon.
Stupid AI. LOL

Confirmed: no Humanity loss for hacking below 6.
Good to hear that's working!

About #GameUI_anamorphic. You probably copied it in from Wesp along with the version display in Options.
For some time now the patch uses display options directly for widescreen, and doesn't any longer require respatch.

bloodloss timer stop
that is what appears to be happening.

Jimmy Reed Gang
I attacked them, then retreated to the stairs to funnel them. they froze as soon as I stepped onto the actual stairs.

Kilpatrick
In one visit, humanity 5, stole cashbox, fatty flee, hacked bank, he shot me just as I finished getting his money(almost instant, not quite), I bit him, got criminal violation. No humanity loss through this(did not kill).

SM thug
This is the thug with the red bandana and white shirt, same model as the tutorial humans. Seems I recall getting more from them. Also seems wrong that a hooker who won't fight is worth more BP than a gang-member who will beat my face in with a baseball bat.

New stuff:
Silvia XP works fine.
Silvia Haggle also works, though haggle 10 seems a bit cheap to me. personal opinion, not balance.

Auto-level taught my Assamite Obeah. Ummmm. . . yeah. Autolevel priority went: Str->2(4xp), Unarmed->1(4xp), Obeah->0(10xp), Obeah->1(10xp), Obeah->2(6 xp), Str->3(8xp) This is with the sharpshooter background. It also bout a point of stealth for 1 xp somewhere in there. At Obeah 0 it appeared on my character sheet, with no dots.

Childe of Malkav wrote:

About #GameUI_anamorphic. You probably copied it in from Wesp along with the version display in Options.
For some time now the patch uses display options directly for widescreen, and doesn't any longer require respatch.

Ahhh yes, that makes sense actually.

bloodloss timer stop
that is what appears to be happening.
If the timer starts back up upon walking into another map, then I'm really not too concerned. If it broke the timer permanently, then I'd be freaking out.

Jimmy Reed Gang
I attacked them, then retreated to the stairs to funnel them. they froze as soon as I stepped onto the actual stairs.
I will look into this.

Kilpatrick
In one visit, humanity 5, stole cashbox, fatty flee, hacked bank, he shot me just as I finished getting his money(almost instant, not quite), I bit him, got criminal violation. No humanity loss through this(did not kill).
Your humanity must have been at 5 or less.

SM thug
This is the thug with the red bandana and white shirt, same model as the tutorial humans. Seems I recall getting more from them. Also seems wrong that a hooker who won't fight is worth more BP than a gang-member who will beat my face in with a baseball bat.
I'll check this out.

New stuff:
Silvia XP works fine.
Silvia Haggle also works, though haggle 10 seems a bit cheap to me. personal opinion, not balance.
I actually want it that way, a nice reward for specializing in Haggle.

Auto-level taught my Assamite Obeah. Ummmm. . . yeah. Autolevel priority went: Str->2(4xp), Unarmed->1(4xp), Obeah->0(10xp), Obeah->1(10xp), Obeah->2(6 xp), Str->3(8xp) This is with the sharpshooter background. It also bout a point of stealth for 1 xp somewhere in there. At Obeah 0 it appeared on my character sheet, with no dots.
Okay this concerned me BIG TIME so I immediately fired up 1.3 and tried it out and sure enough, it was broken as hell. I found the file that controls this and changed all 7 clans to reflect the proper disciplines. You can't get disciplines outside your own clan anymore. MAJOR KUDOS for finding this nasty bug Malak!! You earned your name in the credits today.

Malak, what exactly do you mean by "bloodloss timer stop
that is what appears to be happening. "
Do you mean, the timer stops during dialog and restarts after, as intendet? Or do you mean, it stops in dialog, but doesn't restart? Or something completely different?
Zer=, if the timer doesn't restart after dialog you should consider using the other way I suggested, with G.InDialog instead of timer.Dis/Enable()

I think he meant if you run out of blood, you hit 0, then feed, the timer is disabled until you zone into a different map, then it's fine again.

Childe of Malkav wrote:

Malak, what exactly do you mean by "bloodloss timer stop
that is what appears to be happening. "
Do you mean, the timer stops during dialog and restarts after, as intendet? Or do you mean, it stops in dialog, but doesn't restart? Or something completely different?
Zer=, if the timer doesn't restart after dialog you should consider using the other way I suggested, with G.InDialog instead of timer.Dis/Enable()

Was continuing the discussion from first post.
No matter where you are, so far as I can tell, once you take damage from bloodloss, the timer will stop until you reload the map. I can only see this being an issue in the plague maps (where blood is already supposed to be an issue) and MAYBE the Giovanni mansion. can't think of anywhere else that you would not be able to feed off an opponent (or rat, warrens hunt) for that long a stretch of time.

Glad the auto-level was an easy fix.

I like to have more notes than this, but here is what I have:

Some cutscenes make femAss bowlegged for first three steps. Exactly three steps. Then she walks normal. Seems to be when the engine is pathing actor to a 'start point' for the cutscene.

HC does not seem to be any more difficult than normal after the Dane. I had anticipated the skill difference to last until the museum. By the Giovanni mansion there was no noticeable difference. Suspect difference more stated for non-combat build.

Isaac fix worked for me.

Did you bump up the gargoyles bashing soak? took forever to kill him as a gunner.

Chinatown thug no-clipped into sewers. x2.

Had to reload the Kue-Jin map. portal out of her tentacleness' lair didn't spawn. I had been playing for about 4 hours without closing at this point. One reload and good to go.

____________________
Second run through: Osebo frenzy machine.  

Warehouse bum has a lot of blood.

Chunks gun does more damage than cops. Is he using a different one?

Violation 4:Hunters kill WAY too many innocents(particularly cops). I still disagree with the Humanity 3 near death loss. (lore perspective, if I'm that callous, why do I care?) for 1.4, maybe consider shifting to simply triggering frenzy? or fun 3 frenzy checks per nearby innocent death? Without changing one of your base concepts, can you make bystanders run away faster? or make cops back away from me/spread out with their pistols? Two hunters killed 3 innocents before I could close on them.

For Chunk. He has probably better stats. That causes more damage with the same gun.

Childe of Malkav wrote:

For Chunk. He has probably better stats. That causes more damage with the same gun.

Today I learned NPC stats work the same way mine do.