Activision sends along word that the official Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines website has launched. You can find info on the various clans in the game, concept art, and a few screenshots.

GameSpy has posted their Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines preview, taking a look at what Troika Games is coming up with using the Half-Life 2 engine.

GameSpot has posted the first Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines development diary. In this opening installment Troika's Leonard Boyarsky writes about the history of White Wolf and the Vampire: The Masquerade role-playing game.

Computer & Video Games has a Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines Q&A today, talking to someone at Troika Games about this Half-Life 2 engine powered vampire RPG. Questions are about the Half-Life 2 engine, why Los Angeles is being used as a setting, vampire feats and disciplines, NPC interaction and a few other things.

Gamers Hell has some Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines screenshots, showing us a few different locations and characters from this Source engine powered first person shooter.

Computer & Video Games has a Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines Q&A, asking Troika co-founder Leonard Boyarsky about this Half-Life 2 engine powered first person RPG. Boyarsky answers questions about said engine, the difference in gameplay between vampire clans, the experience system, blood and more.

IGN has posted a Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines movie, showing the first ingame footage from this first person action RPG. It's also our first look at Valve's Source engine in motion.

GameSpot's preview of Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines is up, taking a look at this first person action RPG in development at Troika Games. An ingame screenshot (the first) is included.

RPG Vault has posted a brief Bloodlines Q&A, asking Troika Co-Founder Leonard Boyarsky about this new Vampire: The Masquerade game. Questions are about the game's setting, characters, and use of the Valve Source engine.

Talk about unexpected news. There's going to be a Vampire: The Masquerade sequel boys and girls, according to this news item on GameSpot. Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines as it's called, will be developed by Troika Games (the company currently working on the Infogrames RPG Greyhawk: The Temple of Elemental Evil) and will mix first person action with RPG elements. Now that would be exciting enough news for fans of the original game, but there's more: it's powered by the Half-Life 2 Source engine.

In the game, players will play as a fledgling vampire who will belong to one of seven vampire clans, each of which has its own distinctive strengths and abilities, including superhuman strength and speed, invisibility, and mind control, to name a few. As players progress through the game, they'll earn experience points that they can spend on improving their powers. These abilities and the game's major vampire factions will be drawn from White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade pen-and-paper game.

Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines will ship next year.

Hey who knew, those Nihilistic guys are still around. We hadn't heard much since the release of Vampire: The Masquerade but Maarten Kraaijvanger from over there updated his .plan saying they are looking to hire a texture artist/modeler. According to Kraaijvanger, Nihilistic is working on "a next generation Action/Adventure console game based on an extremely popular property". Read the full update for more.

Over at Computer Games Online is part two of the walkthrough for Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption.

Gamasutra has a Vampire: Masquerade post-mortem article by Rob Huebner of Nihilistic looking back at the game after completion of the development. Vampire continues to sell in the top20.

If you think Vampire bites because you are stuck, Gamespot comes to the rescue with a Vampire: The Masquerade game guide. There are walkthroughs, combat info and character info.

Nihilistic has released the patch for Vampire: Masquerade which features a number of requested changes as well as a few misc bug fixes although nothing major. Top of the list being save functions and network play stuff. Thanks Frans@ BluesNews. Here is the direct link.

Over at Vampire Vault are seven Maya 3D models from the game that can be downloaded so you change them.

The playable demo of Vampire: Masquerade from Nihilistic has been released. You can grab it from 3DFiles or Meccaworld. Thanks Stomped. If you havent seen what the game looks like here is the Shack screenshot archive of it.

Thanks Gary. Steve Tietze, lead level designer at Nihilistic has told Stomped that he's leaving. Steve was lead level designer on Vampire and is a hell of a guy. From him:

Nihilistic Software and I have mutually decided to part ways, leaving me to pursue other opportunities in life. Vampire was a great learning experience for all of us in the company. Many roles had to be taken on with such a small team in order to get a game like Vampire out. I watched the company grow from 3 people to 12 during development. I think the product will speak for its self in the end and everyone will have enjoyed all the work that was put into the game.

I can be contacted at gateway@tietze.com if you would like to email me. I will also be available for contract work

Nihilistic programmer Rob Huebner made another .plan update, addressing some questions he received after his update yesterday regarding the upcoming Vampire patch.

Programmer Rob Huebner from Nihilistic made a pretty lenghty plan update talking about planned fixes for the upcoming Vampire patch. He also mentions two demos should be coming out, as well as an updated SDK which will include .MAP files from the original levels.