“Available memory less than 15MB!!! -1” when launching

Question

I swiped Vampire: The Masquerade - BLoodlines in the sale today, but when I try to launch it I get the error message above - "Available memory less than 15MB!!!!". This is definitely not true. Is there anything I can do to make it work?

Answer 1

You'll need to patch the game, and sadly, the official updates that Steam grabs only go so far. Vinay's answer has a link to a 64 bit patch for systems with > 4GB of RAM, and I'd also strongly reccomend grabbing Wesp's unofficial patch, version 7.9.

You can download it here.

It should be noted that so long as you don't enable the 'Plus' patch option, the Wesp patch does not make substantial gameplay changes, but does fix a large number of broken quests and dialogs, restore some cut content, improve performance, and generally makes for a much better gameplay experience.

Additionally, since I'm assuming based on 'the sale today' that you have the Steam version, here's a few notes on installing the Wesp patch for the Steam edition of VTM:B:

1) Run Steam as Administrator.
2) Start the unpatched game once, so it will fetch any additional Steam-files and initialize itself.
3) Quit the game.
4) Now disable "Steam Community In Game" and "Automatic Update" inside Steam (for this game).
5) Install our patch to \steamapps\common\vampire the masquerade - bloodlines on your computer.
6) Leave both "Steam Community In Game" & "Automatic Update" for Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines disabled, there won't be any new updates anyway.

Finally, if you'd like to play the game at a real, modern, widescreen resolution, you'll need to grab this file, and install it.

Answer 2

This is a problem with the game running on systems with 4 GB+ RAM. To solve it, download the patch for your game version at this link

EDIT: You can also try running the game in compatibility mode for Windows XP and see if it solves your problem. Right click on your game's .exe file, go to Properties->Compatibility tab, select "Run this program in compatibility mode for" and choose Windows XP SP2 from the drop down list.