EDITORIAL: The History Of The True Patch Series

[Tessera]

Exactly how can one steal bugfixes?
---

A lengthy (but interesting) history lesson follows...

The term "stealing" would, in a larger sense, imply that any of us own the rights to the material contained within third-party patches and mods. Well, we do not own any rights to that material, no matter how much we have modified it. All of the files in question are the intellectual property of ActiVision. They are the copyright holders -- not us, and not Wesp.

The original True Patch was made after a long and heated argument between our side, and Wesp's side. We were of the opinion that his "unofficial patches" had long since stopped being patches, and had in fact mutated into massive total conversion mods which were bastardizing Bloodlines. We also felt that for him to continue labeling them as "patches" was deliberately deceptive on his part. It was unfair to new players in particular, because they would be unwittingly installing a supposed "patch," when in reality they would be installing so many arbitrary gameplay and item changes, that they would never know what the real Bloodlines game was all about. Wesp was essentially holding an entire community hostage, by forcing everyone to accept his massive (and totally unnecessary) changes to the core of the game if they wanted to also obtain the much-needed bug fixes. That thought was intolerable to us, and when it became clear that Wesp was not going to capitulate and do the right thing for the larger Bloodlines community, we got angry and took matters into our own hands.

When Wesp created his first mod (which is what I am going to call his "unofficial patches" from now on), he took all of his original bug fixes from someone else -- a guy named Dan Upright. So in like fashion, Acrimonious and myself took one of Wesp's mods and then reworked it in reverse. We removed any and all arbitrary changes that we could find, and replaced those changes with the original values that Troika had wanted. In a way, we were creating an "anti-mod" out of one of Wesp's own mods. We were in a hurry, and we wanted to immediately give ourselves an alternative to Wesp's irresponsibly produced mess.

We liked what we had come up with, so we then made it available to other players, through my website. Despite his claims to the contrary, we properly cited Wesp in the README.TXT file of that first True Patch... listing him as the source of the original template that we had heavily modified and repaired.

This move on our part was unwise, as it immediately caused an enormous conflict within the community. We were accused of "stealing from Wesp," despite the fact that we had merely reversed almost every change that he had made within his mods. Furthermore, we wanted people to be able to install our revised version right on top of one of Wesp's mods, too -- so we HAD to have all of the same files present (so that his versions would all be overwritten by our revised versions).

My own position is that Wesp has been "stealing" the true Bloodlines experience away from the entire VTMB community for nearly three years -- but that does not excuse what we did, either. No one has denied that, but the term "stealing" is not entirely accurate, in our case. What we did was to reverse-engineer a massive and inappropriate gameplay mod, and convert it back into a reasonably decent and proper patch. We could no longer tolerate Wesp's monopoly upon this game and its fans, and thus we acted rather precipitously in our haste to rectify that unfair situation.

The patch controversy eventually made us realize that so long as Wesp had a valid complaint against us (and we admitted that he had), then we would never be able to truly call our work a "True Patch," since it had originally been adapted from someone else's bloated mod. So, we immediately threw all of the previous versions of our work into the trash, and began the process of producing our own patch totally from scratch. We did not even look at any bug fixes or other material produced by Wesp, Dan Upright or anyone else. We did everything completely on our own, including the enlisting of a half-dozen volunteers to beta test our new patch and help us to find any bugs that we had missed.

The result of that procedure was the True Patch version 4.04AT, which was also the first True VTMB Patch to be offered on this website. That version was 100% our work and our work alone. It was released in June of this year, and it immediately proved to be a smash hit with the "purists." By the term "purists," I am referring to players who wished to play Troika's game, and play it Troika's way, but without any game-breaking bugs and glitches. Those players began downloading our patch by the thousands (nearly 11,000 downloads worldwide to date). I was actually rather shocked at how fast it gained in popularity... it was far more than we had ever expected.

The success of version 4.04AT spurred us onwards and so, over a period of about four months, we quietly refined what we had created. Eventually, the latest version of our work emerged. We beta tested it for two weeks with volunteers, the same as we did with our previous patch -- and when we were satisfied as to its quality, we officially released it on September 29, 2007. That is the current version: the True Patch version 5.04AT and you can get it right here:

http://www.tessmage.com/downloads/index.htm

So now, we need to answer the question of the moment: "Which patch should I use..?" The answer very much depends on whose game you wish to be playing. If you wish to play a heavily modified and rather dumbed-down conversion of Bloodlines, then you will probably want to install Werner Spahl's (Wesp's) "unofficial patch" (which is in fact an extensive mod). If, on the other hand, you would prefer to play a nicely repaired and restored version of Troika's original game -- witthout any arbitrary changes to any items, quests or gameplay mechanics -- then the only real choice is the True Patch version 5.04AT.

So there you have it: the actual facts of the matter, straight from the source. The Bloodlines community can be very polarized over this issue, so it is commonplace to run into various false rumors about these events. The best thing for every player to do is to simply try each alternative, and then stick with whichever one you enjoy playing the most. I will say that ever since the True Patch was made available to the Bloodlines community, it has proven to be more popular than anything produced by Wesp (when offered on websites which feature both his mod, and our patch). That's good enough for us --so it just might end up being good enough for you, too. 

All my best,

- Tessera -
Co-producer (along with Acrimonious) of the True Patch series for Bloodlines

[exx]

Very well written.  In the end, the problem with mods that heavily change the mechanics of gameplay is the fact that they are often done without the forethought and playtesting that is necessary to keep the game from being thrown out of balance.

One of the first things that's done in a game that has so many point-based aspects (like VTMB, and Diablo II as another example) is to develop a massive series of calculations that covers XP gains, character stats, and item stats with regard to each class's core skillset.  On top of this comes damage, resistance, and armor.  Once one parameter of this dizzying array of facets is moved, tens of others are also moved.  Sometimes, the moves are small and barely noticeable.  Most times however, these changes become the first tip-off in a domino effect consisting of changes, fixes, and changes again that overpower certain game aspecs, and underpower others.

In conclusion, if you enjoy VTMB and trust that Troika did their homework when creating the character classes and all their nuances, then the TRUE patch is what you want to play.  Are you geting bored of the game and want to add some oddball tweaks to shake things up?  Then perhaps Wesp's mods are the way to go.  Both versions bring their own spark to the game, and both products are the work of very talented individuals.  It all depends on whether you want to play the game as Troika, the creators, meant it to be, or as Wesp believes it should be.  The choice is yours.

[Kirketchelle]

Thank you! you made things quite clear to me. I've been playing VTMB for 3 years now and has experience different type of patch since I was seeking stability of the game to extent of upgrading my computer. However, I will try your patch and see how it feels.

Best Regards

[Tessera]

Copied over from "The Dark Side" (hidden to guests) area of this board...

My goal is to get Wesp to publicly acknowledge that he is not making patches, but mods.

...which is precisely the basis of my ongoing feud with Wesp. That's been the basis of our feud ever since it started. It's also the reason that the True Patch project ever began in the first place. I think the history of this conflict should be well-known to everyone by now. The only people who don't seem to ever get the facts straight are Wesp and his freaky little groupies. They seem to feel that I started busting Wesp's balls for no reason whatsoever... as if I was some kind of weird maniac who just hates Wesp for no legitimate reason. That's simply not the truth.

Please read this... I know it's long, but it's important stuff to remember:

This entire conflict began well over a year ago on the PV board, when I finally got sick of the way Wesp had been holding an entire gaming community hostage with his crappy mods for nearly three years. When I asked him to stop labeling them as "patches," Wesp barked at me and then sat back smugly while his groupies tried to tear me apart. The rest is history. Then I got a private message one day, from some guy who called himself "Anaximander." He seemed like a decent guy, and I remembered that he had helped me out on that board by telling me how to setup some hotkeys for the in-game camera angles. Well, this "Anaximander" guy surprised me, by telling me that he was "pretty good" at Python scripting and that he could also handle VTMB's game maps. He then asked me if I would like him to accept my open offer for ANYONE besides Wesp to get together with me and try to produce an actual, no-bullshit PATCH for Bloodlines.

You've already guessed by now that "Anaximander" was actually Acrimonious. As it turned out, he wasn't just "pretty good" at Python scripting... he's actually extremely adept at handling this kind of work, and the True Patch wouldn't be anywhere near as good as it is if we hadn't had his talents on our side.

Those goons over on Wesp's side have been bashing us ever since, and as you can see from the history of this mess, it was not a fight that we wanted. All that I wanted was for Wesp to stop fucking up this game for everyone, by mislabeling his crazy mods as "unofficial patches." The feud that continues to this day is directly Wesp's fault, for having the audacity to mock my requests and rudely laugh in my face. Well, here we are a year later, and Wesp isn't laughing anymore. Now, he's just running around lying his ass off, like the rotten and misleading little sleazebag that we all know he can be. Wesp wants his throne back... and if I have anything to say about it, he'll never sit there again. As good as Wesp's intentions may have been, his deliberately misleading use of the term "unofficial patch" for his mods may very well have ruined this game for lord knows how many newcomers and frankly, the thought of that makes my fucking blood boil.

Wesp is never going to tell the truth to people. He has made that abundantly clear -- so as I see it, it is up to the rest of us to keep telling that truth to the rest of the community. Somebody has to, and it sure as hell isn't going to come from Wesp's side. To him, this is a big ego battle... but to me, it's simply a battle for the truth to be told and the facts to be made clear. Otherwise, I could give two shits which patch or mod people decide to install. That's their trip. I just want them to have a well-informed CHOICE, which is something that Wesp clearly DOES NOT want them to have.

[Tessera]

Recent development:

Due to a major disagreement, the True VTMB Patch has been removed from the GameSpot website at my request.

It's just as well, because I haven't been very happy with GameSpot lately -- ever since I read that news story about how they fired one of their veteran game reviewers, simply because he wrote an honest (and negative) review of a particular game that does, in fact, suck. As it turns out, the publisher of the game in question had been paying a lot of money to GameSpot and to other commercial gaming sites, in order to bribe them into giving the game a positive review. Well, the reviewer at GameSpot must have figured that since he had seniority over there, he was within his rights to tell the truth about what is, in the final analysis, an utterly crappy and overly-hyped piece of shit. His honestly and integrity were rewarded by being promptly fired from GameSpot... after he had been one of their most respected senior staff writers for several years.

I don't wish to do any further "business" with a crooked website like GameSpot, so for that and several other reasons -- all of them bad -- I have instructed GameSpot to remove any and all patches produced by Acrimonious and Tessera from their website. They have honored that request and the True VTMB Patch is no longer available from GameSpot, nor shall it ever be again.

[Alehazar]

Wesp barked at me and then sat back smugly while his groupies tried to tear me apart.

Somehow I find this reminiscent of Andre the Tzimisce and the Sabbat; could be just me, I guess.

Alehazar

[Arandie]

Wesp is claiming:

[My Wiki Name] please stop changing the info on the unofficial patch! As I already said, I have an agreement with Tessera to not write anything here about the other patch and I honor this, so please do it as well. If you don't believe me ask him yourself! Wesp5 (talk) 13:39, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Is any of this true?


Anyways:

Enough is enough! If you Tessera supporters have no honor to stay true to the word of your leader, I will keep altering both patch chapters again to stay neutral. If you want to fight the patch war over again, do it on some Bloodlines board and not Wikipedia! Wesp5 (talk) 02:14, 29 January 2008 (UTC)"

[Tessera]

Wesp is claiming:

[My Wiki Name] please stop changing the info on the unofficial patch! As I already said, I have an agreement with Tessera to not write anything here about the other patch and I honor this, so please do it as well. If you don't believe me ask him yourself! Wesp5 (talk) 13:39, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Is any of this true?

(1) I have no agreements with Wesp of any kind. He was asked by the Wikipedia staff to stop sabotaging the entries for our True Patch.

(2) I have asked all fans of the True Patch to NOT sabotage the Wikipedia entries for any of Wesp's mods.

(3) I have also asked fans of the True Patch to correct any and all sabotage of OUR Wikipedia entries that they discover. Please leave Wesp's garbage alone -- just make sure that the True Patch entries have not been tampered with by Wesp.

(4) Wesp is a liar and he continues to sabotage the Wikipedia on a regular basis. Do not believe a single word that comes out of his mouth. He has already been caught red-handed by the Wikipedia staff no less than a dozen times. Wesp knows that his work is inferior to ours. Wesp also knows that more people are using the True Patch these days than are using his own shitty, ez-mode crap. That's why Wesp feels the need to resort to sabotage, to further his own warped agenda.

To all fans of the True Patch: please listen to me...

We don't need to sabotage Wesp. His crappy work and his own ongoing sabotage of Bloodlines is doing a good job of sinking Wesp all on its own. All that we need to do is to keep the information about the True Patch as accurate as possible -- wherever that information exists. To hell with Wesp... he's already the loser in this little "war" of his. Let him rot. He wanted this conflict -- not us. He asked for it, so now he's dying on the vine.

Tough shit, Wesp... and if you need to resort to sabotage to further your own agenda, then it is simply more proof of just how weak and inferior your position has always been, especially in this crappy little feud that you and your groupies started with us. Your wretchedly bloated and inferior mods can not stand up on their own merits, so you've needed to resort to childishness and destructiveness instead. Hopefully, you'll learn something from this mess that you created some day... but I doubt it. Your own mindless megalomania seems to prohibit you from accepting the rational truth about yourself. Wesp, what you think about me makes no difference. The fact remains that I care about the FANS... but you only care about Wesp.

C'est la vie, Wesp.

[SavageD]

I must admit to being somewhat skeptical of the True patch when I first heard about it, having already become aware of Wesp's work. I'm just glad that others, via their forum postings, made the effort to clarify the issue and reveal the true nature of both competing works.

[Tessera]

The following is an unedited excerpt from a recent and ongoing interview of yours truly...

Tell me about the creation of the AT True Patch series for VTMB (the process).

It's fairly common knowledge these days... but okay, I'll recount the essentials:


Back in 2006, I was a member of the PlanetVampire community. Several people on that board (myself included) had been complaining to Werner Spahl ("Wesp5") about his abuse of the term "unofficial patches" for his series of VTM: Bloodlines mods. Basically, the complaint was that his mods were not eligible to be referred to as "patches," because in addition to the legitimate bug fixes that Wesp had included within his mods, he was also tossing in dozens and dozens of completely arbitrary and unnecessary modifications to the default quests, items, player abilities and overall gameplay. I also felt that by monopolizing the patch scene, Wesp was effectively holding every Bloodlines player hostage. If they wanted his bug fixes, then they also had to accept his ridiculous number of arbitrary changes at the same time. To me, that seemed tantamount to a form of sabotage. His approach was both subjective and dictatorial... and I simply couldn't keep my mouth shut about it anymore.

Initially, our complaints were firm, but cordial. In response, Wesp and his acolytes (whom I often refer to as "Wesp groupies") immediately attacked us with a torrent of verbal abuse. Wesp himself was arrogant, intractable, unreasonable and completely smug in his attitude. Eventually, Wesp said something to me on the order of "Well if you don't like my patch, then go make a better one... if you can." Obviously, Wesp figured that he... and only he... had been blessed with the magical knowledge of how to produce patches and mods for Bloodlines.

I replied by saying "Fine Wesp... I will." Of course, I had no idea if I would actually be able to produce my own patch for VTMB, but I sure as hell wasn't going to give Wesp any more food for his ego.

Shortly after that confrontation, I received a private message on the PlanetVampire board, from a guy who said that he knew how to deal with Python scripting and Source maps. He also asked me for my e-mail address, so I gave it to him.

That guy turned out to be Acrimonious... who is not only a top-notch professional programmer, but in my opinion he is also the finest source of Bloodlines information on the entire worldwide web. He offered to help me produce an alternative to Wesp's mods and I eagerly took him up on his offer.

At first, we merely wanted to create a down-and-dirty alternative to Wesp's inappropriate garbage. We had no intention of releasing anything to the general public. We just wanted something for ourselves, as well as for a small handful of friends who likewise wanted an alternative to Wesp's nonsense. So with that goal in mind, we grabbed the latest version of one of Wesp's mods and then, Acrimonious set about reverse-engineering it. Not to steal anything from Wesp, mind you... but to simply remove any and all of his arbitrary changes -- leaving only the legitimate bug fixes intact. And about a week or so later, Acrimonious sent me a copy of a completely sanitized version of Wesp's "unofficial patch."

I liked what he had done very much, even though he had elected to keep a few of Wesp's arbitrary changes. In fact, I liked it so much that I made a very foolish decision: I decided to release Acrimonious' "doctored" patch to the public. Hence we released the first True Patch.... and we called it "version 4.01" so as to distinguish it from Wesp's original mod (which was at version 3-point-something at the time).

Naturally, Wesp and his groupies were furious with us, because we had altered one of Wesp's mods without first obtaining his permission. And after a few months, I found myself in agreement with them. Being a modder myself, I know how it feels to have somebody steal your work and make all sorts of unauthorized changes to it. So ultimately, I got in touch with Acrimonious and told him that I was going to pull the original version of the True Patch from the server. I felt that it should be discontinued, because it wasn't really our work.

Acrimonious responded by saying that it was easily within his abilities to create an entirely new patch from scratch. He was quite confident that if given enough time and resources, then he would surely be able to start with a clean copy of the "plain vanilla" game and then, go through the entire mess line-by-line and fix all of the bugs that he could find. It would simply take a long time for him to accomplish, if he tried to do all of the work by himself. Above all, he and I both wanted to produce a totally original patch that did not contain one single bit of code from anyone else's work. So, we took everything that we knew about Wesp and his mods and flushed it all down the proverbial toilet.

Meanwhile, the tessmage.com community was growing to respectable size and we had many people who were willing to assist with such an ambitious effort. And as for me, I was quite ready to lend my own skills to the project.

So finally, we decided to go ahead with the project. Acrimonious would do the Python scripting, the system files and the Source map repairs. He was primarily the nuts-and-bolts half of the team and the quality of his work was outstanding in every respect. I would handle the dialogue repairs, various roleplaying considerations, the continuity decisions and a handful of Source texture repairs. I would also serve as the project director. And of course, I would also promote and distribute the finished patch via my own web site. As for the tessmage.com community, we enlisted a half-dozen of the most enthusiastic Bloodlines players to be volunteer beta testers. Their job would be to test each beta version of the patch and then report back to us with any errors or observations that they felt were important.

On that note, it is important for me to point out that one of the biggest differences between the True Patch and Wesp's mods is that we did indeed have a group of people who thoroughly tested our patch, prior to its release. Wesp, on the other hand, has admitted that he never tests any of his own material. He simply releases it, waits for people to bitch about stuff that he screwed up and then, he releases yet another and supposedly "fixed" version two weeks later. This is why there has been only one major version of the True Patch during the past two years... where as in Wesp's case, he has vomited forth something like a hundred different iterations of his own work during the same time frame. I consider his approach to be irresponsible... but this is why the True Patch got made in the first place: to give Bloodlines players an attractive and viable alternative to Wesp's sloppily produced mods.

The entire process of producing our own patch took several months. In the end, we finally managed to produce a legitimate "bug-fixes-only" patch for Bloodlines that was compact, streamlined and very stable. Throughout its development, I went to great pains to ensure that there were almost no changes to the default gameplay whatsoever. You people have no idea how many times I said to Acrimonious "Is it actually broken..? No..? Then don't try to fix it." The only changes that we made were in a tiny handful of cases, when it was absolutely clear that those cases represented sloppily produced content that had simply been rushed by Troika... or was quite obviously intended, but incomplete. And even there, I tended to say "No" to all sorts of suggestions being made by Acrimonious and others. Above all, I wanted to keep Bloodlines as pristine as was reasonably possible.

But there were a few notable exceptions...

For example, the weapons being used by the vampire hunters at the Leopold stronghold are ridiculously puny in the default game. Most of them were wielding .38 pistols, which were totally illogical and completely underpowered when used against a late-game player character. It became clear to us that there was a very good reason for this nonsensical situation: it was because Troika had been VERY rushed when they were finishing up the late-game content and so, they simply populated that map with a bunch of generic vampire hunters taken from earlier areas of the game. Well, it frankly made no sense that they would be wielding weapons that the player had long since become nearly immune to, by that late stage of our un-life. So, we finally made the decision to re-equip the Leopold hunters with weaponry that was much more in line with the weaponry of most other late-game antagonists (such as high-powered rifles and semi-automatics).

There were a few other small changes as well and in almost every case, the rationale was the same: this is obviously NOT correct, so let's fix it. I must stress again that my primary consideration, throughout the entire process, was to maintain the overall atmosphere and continuity of the game. I am quite sure that if they had been given the same luxury of time that we had, then Troika would have made those very same decisions prior to the game's release. Whenever I was -not- positive about it (which was most of the time), my standard answer as the project director was "We're going to leave it alone... as-is." Acrimonious and I had quite a few long debates into the wee hours of morning, but he was always quite willing to accept my judgment on those few points of contention. He always knew that I had the game's integrity and the players' best interests at heart.

Once everyone was satisfied with the results of our labors, I officially dubbed our new patch as version 5.04AT and then released it to the public, back in October of 2007. We had worked for most of the summer and early autumn on it. And since the time of its original release back in 2007, there have been a total of six minor "hotfixes" added to version 5.04AT of the True VTMB Patch.

I'll wrap up this response by saying that in my opinion, the True Patch represents the best choice for new players who want to experience an untainted version of the classic game that they paid for. It is likewise the best choice for VTMB purists, who simply want to play Troika's original masterpiece, but without any frustrating and downright game-breaking bugs and glitches. It is really a top-notch piece of work, if I say so myself... and more than half of the credit for its creation belongs to Acrimonious. His minimalist approach to the exceptional work that he did is what kept the True Patch from turning into a gigantic piece of bloatware. Somehow or other, he managed to produce a volume of work that is extremely compact, and yet very very thorough and effective. Personally, I wouldn't even think of playing Bloodlines without it.

[Tessera]

*** UPDATE ***


It is necessary to append this thread, by mentioning that the very latest version of the True Patch -- the True Patch Gold Edition -- was compiled entirely by yours truly (moi). Any new repairs that were performed since the release of Version 5.04AT (back in 2007) were performed by myself. Several of those repairs were suggested by tessmage.com Forum members. The remainder were repairs that were entirely of my own doing. And there were dozens and dozens and dozens... LOL. I still get headaches from all of that squinting at the game code that I was forced to do.  :laugh:  

There are a couple of repairs in the Gold Edition which were graciously donated by third parties... most notably DDLullu, who very generously contributed the repairs to the female character models, during a critical cut scene which takes place down in the Santa Monica blood bank. And we have indeed been given written permission by DDLullu to incorporate those repairs, as well as an endorsement of the True Patch Gold Edition:

Hi,

 sorry for the delay, i miss planet-vampire on my email account telling me i have  receive a PM and i log in forum only if necessary. So if Tessera want something from me, let see... he can put everything i make for Bloodlines in his patch. I have download his new patch and the lighting is incredible, wow. The credit he gave me in it, is nice too.

Now if he has something else in mind he can ask. He can pass by you because i dont think i qualify for his board.

DDLullu  

Hmmm... not sure why he would think that he doesn't "qualify" for our board... unless maybe he is underage..? I have no clue. But he is obviously a very talented fellow and we sincerely appreciate his assistance. And many thanks to tessmage.com Forum member Zenosaiya (sp?), for acting as a liaison between DDLullu and myself.

I would also like to cite Jordi, as being the person who steered me into the right direction when I was seeking info on some critical repairs to the core engine's code. And of course, enormous thanks to all of the people who took time out of their lives to beta test the True Patch Gold Edition -- several of whom also offered some excellent suggestions on how to "fine tune" it. My name might be at the top of the list, so far as credits for the TPG patch are concerned... but in the cases of several key repairs which were performed, it was truly a team effort.

People on the web have a tendency to refer to the True Patch as "Tessera's patch." And whilst that is certainly very flattering, I feel compelled to point out that in reality, the history of the True Patch involved the critical input of about a dozen people, give or take. Not the least of whom is Acrimonious... the brilliant computer programmer who first teamed up with me back in late 2006, after which we attempted to right the serious wrongs being committed against this game by Werner Spahl (aka "Wesp5"). With the release of the Gold Edition of the True Patch, I think we have finally succeeded in achieving that noble goal. I hope so... because Bloodlines deserves the efforts that we have made. It's a brilliant game -- bugs notwithstanding.

So that should bring us up to date with the True Patch story.