My default field of view is slightly wider than what is rendered

[ShatteredMind]

Ceilings and object near the ceiling disappear when near the edge of screen, when I am looking straight ahead or only slightly up. When I look directly at them everything looks fine.

It's as if the game thinks my field of view is lower than it is, and it's trying to save resources by ceasing to render environmental objects that are offscreen. The only problem is that these objects disappear before they are actually off screen. The ceiling disappears when I move my view down away from it. The sewer pipes in the SM sewers disappear segment by segment as I run past, or if I move my view downward from looking up at them. It happens with the ground too, but there are fewer opportunities in game to witness it. If I noclip and go into the air, look at the ground, and move my view back toward level, at the bottom of the screen, rectangular chunks of ground will disappear before they get beyond the border of my screen.

It's very distracting! Can I expand the angle that the environment is rendered at, somehow? The "field of rendering", if you will? Or do I need to resort to reducing my FOV?

[R.I.P]

Has happenend before (bottom of screen as well). Is the "widescreen" box checked in Options Video (9.3)?

[ShatteredMind]

I don't have a widescreen box in options. The patch automatically gives me good resolution choices without running respatch manually anymore, but that checkbox does not show up. There's a console option for anamorphic though, and although it makes the aspect ratio look a little squashed horizontally, it does fix that pop-up problem. So for now that's my solution. It's probably the same option you mentioned anyway. Thanks.

I tried just playing with the FOV but the problem just follows whatever FOV I choose so that's no good.

[-3xA'Lu©κy the disappearing act]

That's quite odd that you don't have a widescreen box to tick in the Options --> Video menu.

It's what I would've suggested as well.

[R.I.P]

@Shatter
If you're still using your "custom" installl, (unofficial_patch 9.4 folder drag 'n' drop), did you also drag over the four .dll files from the 9.4 Bin folder? If not, maybe back up the originals and try that...?

[ShatteredMind]

I merged the entire Unofficial_Patch directory into Vampire, so all dll's would have been carried over, yes. cl_dlls and dlls folders.

This ancient tutorial[www.wsgf.org] mentions the issue, "things are transparent on the edge of the screen", so I'm sure it's totally normal. It's just screwed up because it's rendering the environment for a 4:3 aspect ratio.

Anamorphic looks squashed for me because I think it switches to a 16:9 aspect ratio, and I have a 16:10 laptop screen. Maybe I can try editing the engine.dll like the tutorial says about 21:9, but figure out the hex for 16:10 instead. Yep, someone already has me covered. And the results are perfect.

[R.I.P]

Originally posted by ShatteredMind:

I merged the entire Unofficial_Patch directory into Vampire, so all dll's would have been carried over, yes. cl_dlls and dlls folders.

I don't know if you installed 9.4 into Bloodlines before doing the above, or if you just merged the Unofficial_Patch folder by dumping it in "vampire" from a temporary install folder, like my reference install folder (new folder 11) which contains only files installed by 9.4 plus and nothing else. If the latter, then you would have missed out on some "engine.dll" and "shaderapidx9.dll" files in a "Bin" folder outside of the "Unofficial_Patch" folder, which are the files that I was referring to.

If you installed the Patch_Extras, you should have a ResPatch.exe in Patch_Extras/Player Mods/, this allows you to set an aspect ratio when ran and determines the res. choices available in the video menu.

[ShatteredMind]

Ever since the patch began enabling high resolutions automatically, and we are not prompted to run respatch at the end of patching, I have found that respatch.exe does nothing visible when I run it. It no longer brings up a window where I can set the game's resolutions. As far as I know it does nothing at all anymore. I have tried it out on Windows, Linux in Wine, and now Mac in Wine, since at least as far back as 8.something, and it never does anything anymore. respatch still works for you? I am shocked.

I'm reinstalling from scratch because NPC speech is completely absent. I tested the 9.4 plus features but neglected to just test the basics of the game. What I did to get 9.4 working on my Mac in Wine was patched the actual game, and then went to Unofficial_Patch, selected all contents and subfolders, and moved them into Vampire, overwriting any conflicts. So, the bin folder outside of Unofficial_Patch would have already been in place before my tinkering.

[-3xA'Lu©κy the disappearing act]

Originally posted by ShatteredMind:

Ever since the patch began enabling high resolutions automatically, and we are not prompted to run respatch at the end of patching, I have found that respatch.exe does nothing visible when I run it. It no longer brings up a window where I can set the game's resolutions. As far as I know it does nothing at all anymore. I have tried it out on Windows, Linux in Wine, and now Mac in Wine, since at least as far back as 8.something, and it never does anything anymore. respatch still works for you? I am shocked.

I'm reinstalling from scratch because NPC speech is completely absent. What I did before was patched the actual game, and then went to Unofficial_Patch, selected all contents and subfolders, and moved them into Vampire, overwriting any conflicts. So, the bin folder outside of Unofficial_Patch would have already been in place before my tinkering.

Ensure it's in your game's directory, try running the file normally and try running the file as admin..

My ResPatch.exe works (although it was bundled with the Antitribu mod installation) and here's a link to download it:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/839zouwm25bjy2i/ResPatch.zip?dl=1

[R.I.P]

For what it's worth, I ran ResPatch.exe on my 9.3 Plus 16:9 install and a "select your main bloodlines directory" wnidow pops up. After choosing the bloodlines folder, the respatch menu popped up and I chose 4:3. When I launched the game, everything was still 16:9 but I did have the 4:3 res. options in the Video menu. After choosing a 4:3 res., and restarting/relaunching the game, the main menu came up in 4:3. But I can't be certain that those choices weren't already there before.

I forgot to link the old Pinned thread case of the widescreen box solving the issue, I had not remembered the respatcher until Lucky referenced it there. See this page: http://steamcommunity.com/app/2600/discussions/0/540739861413343294/#c613940477952859670

Not sure if 9.4 includes a widescreen checkbox. Anyone?

[ShatteredMind]

Thank you for your link. Unfortunately it does not work when I run it on my machine. No window comes up. I will try my winxp virtual machine... OK, I just get "the application failed to initialize properly".

[-3xA'Lu©κy the disappearing act]

You're welcome ShatteredMind.

Originally posted by R.I.P:

Not sure if 9.4 includes a widescreen checkbox. Anyone?

Not sure -- haven't used 9.4 yet and I've still got my Antitribu playthrough to finish (from like half a year ago lol). I'll see if I've got a convenient vanilla backup somewhere.


[EDIT]:

For what it's worth, the gamefront ResPatch.exe is slightly bigger than the Respatch file included with the Antitribu mod (45,056 bytes --> 40,960 bytes). Here's the link to the Gamefront mirror:
http://www.gamefront.com/files/8624553/Vampire-the-Masquerade-Bloodlines-Res-Patcher/

[ShatteredMind]

setting r_anamorphic to 1, then quitting and hex-editing the engine.dll to replace the 16:9 aspect ratio entry with a 16:10 entry (Find 39 8E E3 3F [16:9], Replace with CD CC CC 3F [16:10]), and then lowering the FOV in the game, make everything look ideal on my machine, and fix that disappearing scenery problem. FOV 69 is what they recommend. I've read that FOV needs to be changed every session though. Not sure if that's true yet. Anyhow, I won't bother troubleshooting respatch.

[-3xA'Lu©κy the disappearing act]

Originally posted by ShatteredMind:

setting r_anamorphic to 1, then quitting and hex-editing the engine.dll to replace the 16:9 aspect ratio entry with a 16:10 entry (Find 39 8E E3 3F [16:9], Replace with CD CC CC 3F [16:10]), and then lowering the FOV in the game, make everything look ideal on my machine, and fix that disappearing scenery problem. FOV 69 is what they recommend. I've read that FOV needs to be changed every session though. Not sure if that's true yet. Anyhow, I won't bother troubleshooting respatch.

At least you got your problem sorted in the end.