Some extra info...

I've tried degrading my video drivers (older Lithtech games often have problems with newer drivers). No change. Also tried changing the resolution etc. No change.

I have found that some areas seem more prone to crashing than others. For example, when I encountered the Drudge Lord in the sewers, it would crash if I loaded anywhere near that area, but if I backtracked several rooms, then it seemed to work OK.

So far, the medical facility level hasn't crashed on me.

Does anyone know of a walkthrough that lists the secrets? In the med facility is a life seed in a toxic pool and I can't figure out how to raise the pillars that would let me get to it. Also, in the laundromat, there are a couple grates in the back room and if you use the noclip cheat and go up there, there's a whole section that I can't see any other way to reach. I suppose it's possible that it's used later, but it really looks like you're supposed to enter it from the ally above the laundromat, but I can't see any way to get there. It also seems weird that they would have that whole section on that map if it isn't used until later, since it would would be part of a different map.

you mean the centre for disease management ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OymIwaWirw4&feature=related

Rekrul , are you running it maybe with a no-cd fix? if you are running it with the original cd it could worth the time to get a no-cd fix, it could be a problem with the game protection...

Davros wrote:

you mean the centre for disease management ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OymIwaWirw4&feature=related

Yes, thanks. The last time I tried looking for Blood 2 videos, I ended up getting tons of unrelated ones. I didn't think to try with the level names.

keropi wrote:

Rekrul , are you running it maybe with a no-cd fix? if you are running it with the original cd it could worth the time to get a no-cd fix, it could be a problem with the game protection...

Thanks, but I already tried that.

It also seems more likely to crash if I have the flare gun(s) equipped, although that could just be a coincidence.

Davros wrote:

you mean the centre for disease management ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OymIwaWirw4&feature=related

After watching that video, I still don't know how to raise the pillars in the pool.

At 1:38 you can see them being lowered. And at 4:00, you can see them fully retracted. I found one computer console that will raise them halfway until they're just under the surface, but even after trying every console, I can't figure out how to raise them all the way. True, you don't lose a lot of health jumping across, but there should be a way to get them fully raised. I didn't really need it, it just bugs me that I can't figure out how to do it.

As for the other area I found, I later discovered that it was part of the sewers map. Either they re-used the entire map, or they modeled large portions of the level that people will never see.

Back to the crashing problem...

In some areas, it seems that it will crash almost every time when I go to load a save, and in other areas, I can use quickload all day long and it's fine.

I have to admit that I 'spam' the quicksave/quickload keys. Some of the creatures in this game can really hurt you if you get caught off guard. Like getting ambushed by three of those Shikari creatures that spit acid. For a common enemy, they seem to take an unusually large amount of ammo to kill.

Blood 2 has these crash problems, even if updated to latest version and using a no-cd fix. I have experienced all of them, plus one more related to the screen resolution. The height has to be less than 1000 pixels or it will crash.

filipetolhuizen wrote:

Blood 2 has these crash problems, even if updated to latest version and using a no-cd fix. I have experienced all of them, plus one more related to the screen resolution. The height has to be less than 1000 pixels or it will crash.

I'm only running it at 1024x768. I even tried lowering it to 800x600m, but it didn't seem to make a difference.

Most of the time, everything is fine, until I hit Enter on the save name to load it, or I hit the quickload key. Then (when it crashes) it instantly freezes and the sound goes into a 1/4 second loop, like a machine gun, and all I can do is hit the reset button.

You'll only get past the main menu 1% of the time with a resolution higher than 1xxx X 9xx. Blood 2 is buggy as hell. I wonder why Monolith dropped the build engine, it was so much better.

filipetolhuizen wrote:

You'll only get past the main menu 1% of the time with a resolution higher than 1xxx X 9xx.

I didn't try a screen height greater than 768. Even at 1024x768, it lags occasionally when there are a bunch of enemies all shooting at once. And this is on a system with a P4, 2.8Ghz chip and 512MB of RAM.

filipetolhuizen wrote:

Blood 2 is buggy as hell. I wonder why Monolith dropped the build engine, it was so much better.

Because the build engine wasn't true 3D. Don't get me wrong, I had fun playing Blood, but I would have given anything for a source port. The vertical aiming when using mouselook sucks. Fine movements don't register and larger movements overshoot the mark. Not to mention that you can only look up or down about 45 degrees. You have no idea how many times I wished that I could look/shoot straight up, especially when the stupid gargoyles refuse to come down from the ceiling.

Then there's the collision detection. At the end of the first level, you can be half out of the hole in the wall, your shotgun sticking out a good two feet past the wall, but every shot hits an invisible wall. Or you try to snipe a cultist who's half hidden behind a pillar and none of the shots will touch him. Or you crouch and equip the tesla cannon or napalm launcher and move out where a hellhound can see you, take aim, dead center, fire and the shots go right through it without even touching it. Then it runs up and sets you on fire.

Of course, the Blood 2 engine has some shortcomings as well (besides the crashing). You and the enemies can often shoot through walls, especially at corners. The blood spray is pretty primitive (I actually prefer Blood's effect for this). There are a lot of clipping errors, but a lot of old games are like that. It also doesn't seem to be capable of rendering large areas that well. Although some of the levels are quite large, they seem to limit your view at any one time to a small area. which kind of limits the usefulness of the sniper rifle. Also, a few times while crawling through pipes and such, the game has let me stick my head up through the level.

I can live with all of the above, it's the crashing that gets me. It's especially annoying if it happens in a tough area, where I'm likely to die a lot (or get hurt enough that I want to try it again). Thankfully, it didn't happen in the area before the boss fight at the end of chapter one! I would have been pulling my hair out!

I would have given anything for a source port.

Let's hope BloodXL comes out soon. Lucius, however, seems to be vanished.

That's a shame, I was really looking forward to DaggerXL coming out 🙁

I remember seeing info on those engines some years ago... they are dead in the water now? too bad 🙁

Seems to be, but not confirmed. Lucius said a few months ago it was far from being dead.

I don't want to jynx it, but Blood II has been pretty stable for me now that I'm later in the game (chapter 2). I had a couple questions that I was hoping someone could answer;

1. The eye - yeah, I know it's not very useful, but it would be a fun novelty, if I could figure out how to use it. The manual states that it can be thrown by holding down its hot key, except that there ISN'T any hot key for it. There's nothing in the options and nothing in the config file. Selecting it in the inventory and holding down Enter just drops it. Whatever usefulness or novelty it might have is severely hampered by not being able to throw it. To be clear, I know how to make it work, once it's been placed, it's just that dropping it at your feet isn't too useful. Also, the manual says that when destroyed, the eye returns to your inventory. Umm, no, it doesn't. Once it's destroyed, it's gone.

2. Night vision goggles - Do these actually work? All they seem to do for me is tint the screen green. I can't see any better in the dark than without them.

3. Is there any way to change what keys are used for quicksave and quickload? With Shogo, I was able to change the bindings in the config file, but changing them in Blood 2's config doesn't do anything. I really hate having both keys right next to each other. I haven't screwed up and saved at the wrong point yet, but I figure it's only a matter of time before I do.

I'm almost to the end of the second chapter and it's crashed a few times on me.

I'm starting to get frustrated though. Is it just me, or does Blood 2 have some of the most under-powered weapons ever? The howitzer and Napalm Launcher should be devastating, but other than plain human cultists and the tiny creatures, I haven't found a single enemy in the game that they're worth using on. Fanatics seem to be able to take 3-4 direct hits from the howitzer. Shikari barely flinch when you hit them with 3-4 blasts from the Napalm Launcher. I found the death ray, and even that seems to take a rather large amount of ammo to kill anything with.

The shotgun seems to work just as well, if not better than most all the heavy weapons, although you have to get in close to use it effectively. Which is usually impossible with most enemies, without getting getting wrecked in the process. If you're lucky, you can lure them around a corner and ambush them. If they don't shoot you through the wall.

The bombs might be useful if he didn't just flick them in front of himself. Most of the time when I try to throw them up over a ledge, they just end up stuck right in front of me. Or they end up on the ceiling.

I'm also getting kind of sick of getting instantly ambushed and losing half to 3/4 of my armor every time I turn a corner. I mean ambushes are one thing, but the second you stick your head around a corner, you're instantly hit with a stream of bullets. I know the entire game isn't realistic, but come on! It's like all the fanatics and prophets are aiming right at the corner just waiting for you to appear. No reaction time, you just instantly get hit the second you clear the corner. In most games, you can strafe out, fire a shot and strafe back without getting hit. Not in this game!

The orb's alt fire would be ideal to use to get enemies around the corner, but of course they made it so that Caleb can't use it! And if you use a character who can, you don't get the cutscenes! ARGH! Whose bright idea was it to restrict you from using all the weapons/modes? Probably the same idiot who put the quicksave/quickload keys right next to each other. 😠

The game was very rushed and using the new lithtech engine, full of bugs, and incomplete really. There's really nothing you can do about all the problems this game has, and that's why it's not very memorable 😁

The first game is MUCH better imo!

I remember having suffered those crashes when I played through Blood 2 many years ago. I noticed that the game tried to allocate more and more RAM due to some memory leak, until it exhausted all available virtual memory and crashed. Sort of fixed it by using a much larger paging file, or allowing it unlimited growth. That would not prevent game from crashing, but made possible to play for about an hour or so without problems.

Is it a copy protection issue?
Ive allways played blood2 with a nocd.exe and i remember it being rock solid ?

Try running it at a resolution with more than 1000 height pixels. You won't get past the main menu.