You might recall some weeks back I mentioned I was in touch with Rik Schaffer of Womb Music who composed all the non-licenced music for Bloodlines. The interview is finally complete. Rik did have a lot to say so the interview has been broken up into two parts. Go take a look at part one and find out more about the man behind the music.

Rik came through with more than just answers, though. Thanks to him PlanetVampire has secured some exclusive, previously unreleased tracks he composed for Bloodlines. The first track is linked in the preamble of the interview so go download it!

And now for some good news. GumDisease sends word that RPGDot has awarded Bloodlines with Best RPG in their Game of the Year awards for 2004.

"Bloodlines dripped with a dark, suspenseful atmosphere and featured some of the most memorable characters to appear in an RPG"

In addition to that, Bloodlines also won their categories for Best Graphics, Best Music & Sound and Biggest Surprise. Oh my!

A news release from GameSpy has confirmed what we've been suspecting all along. Leonard Boyarsky has made it official - Troika are closing shop. He writes:

"As many of you may have already heard, Troika has laid off all of its employees and is closing its doors due to our inability to secure funding for future projects ... We want to thank all of our fans for their support these past seven years, it has really meant a lot to us..."

On behalf of myself and I'm sure the rest of the online Vampire community I would like to thank Leon and the others from Troika for their hard work and wish them the best of luck in their future endeavors.

You might be interested in checking out the new IC roleplaying forum on PlanetVampire called the Interactive Storyboard. It's the continuation of the roleplaying forum we had on dilapidation.com and this time around it's being moderated by Roman K.

I'm sure many of you know what these are all about but if you're new to the concept there's a FAQ there to help you out.

Enjoy!

GameSpot has posted an article about the increasingly grim portents emerging for Troika's future. At this stage it has all but been offically stated that the independent developer behind Bloodlines, Temple of Elemental Evil and Arcanum will be closing down.

A statement is expected from Leon Boyarsky any day now. PlanetVampire will keep you updated.

With much sadness I must inform the PlanetVampire community that one of our own, Xeltek, passed away suddenly on January 21st.

More information here.

Rik Schaffer, the composer of all the non-licenced music in Bloodlines, has agreed to participate in a Q&A; interview with PlanetVampire. He is being especially generous with his time and has offered to answer however many questions I put to him. I don't intend to get carried away but I figured why not take advantage of this opportunity and request some additional questions from the PlanetVampire community.

If you have a question for Rik Schaffer you should go an post it in this forum thread. I'll do my best to include as many as I think is reasonable.

The transcript of the January 10th live chat with Erin Layne held on #bloodlines has been posted at Vampyre Crypt.

A movement has risen on the PlanetVampire forums to build a petition and convince Activision to release a set of development tools for Bloodlines.

passionspyre writes:

Making these tools available to the public will have a positive effect on the sales of this game, and for your company in general.

... it extends replayability by having people contstantly adding to it. This gives the benefit of keeping the game new and exciting, and keeping interest in it up, while freeing your developers to move on to other projects.

I would urge everyone to sign the petition.

At the moment there is some speculation flying around about Troika's immediate future. A Fallout site called No Mutants Allowed had credited a Troika employee, David Marsh with saying: "Everyone got layed off because Activision pulled the funding."

It seems though that statement arose on the Mapcore forums which Marsh frequents but was actually made by another member who isn't affiliated with Troika. That said, it would appear that some Troika employees have begun circulating resumes however as games wrap and contracts expire this sort of thing is not uncommon in the industry. Last reports were that Troika had begun work on an untitled post-apocalyptic RPG but new information on that has been scarce.

Leonard Boyarsky made a brief comment to GameSpot in which he said "We are basically perusing some options...after the beginning of February, we'll be making a statement."

We'll just have to wait and see.

Erin Layne of Bradstreet wallpaper and PlanetVampire interview fame has launched her own Yahoo! group and we're all invited! There's been some cool discussion about VtR already and more to come.

If you're a fan of her work or were simply wooed when she expounded her awesome knowledge of gaming on the PV forum then go check out her Yahoo! group.

Cruise over to the movies section where another Bloodlines music video by Hellwolve has been added.

Hellwolve is known for his cool skinning work but did you know he moonlights as a director as well? He's put together a Bloodlines music video and I must say that I'm a fan.

Some new reviews of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines have popped up recently, so sink your teeth into these:

• Deadalfs Review
• Pro-G Review
• Gameguru Review
• HomeLAN Review
• Strategy Informer Review
• Fragland.net Review

Strigoi (aka TheCryptGuy) of Vampyre Crypt presents an IRC event with Erin Layne, the model for Bradstreet's Jeanette wallpaper. She will be coming to the #bloodlines IRC channel to chat with the fans on January 10th at 8pm US EST.

In addition to working on the promotional end of the game, Erin is also a knowledgeable role player so there's more than just pictures to talk to her about.

Strigoi writes:

Please prepare your questions ahead of time as it will be moderated and only about an hour in length.

Find out your local time for the chat session.