UPDATED, See the bottom!
That's not an error, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition is now out for SteamOS/Linux and I am downloading it as I type this. This is truly a knock-out year for Linux gamers and it's only May!
Warning: Radeon graphics cards are not supported, Intel integrated graphics chipsets are also not supported. This commenter points out why. Interesting to see AMD fix their drivers so quickly, I hope more bigger games come out forcing all graphics vendors to improve.
One thing I mentioned before is the coming of "SteamOS" rather than Linux, it is becoming more frequent quickly and I am actually okay with that. Linux has been a scary word for developers for too long, but no more!
There have been hints at this happening for months and I am extremely pleased to see it turn out well for us.
Be warned it's a hefty 15.8GB download, so prepare for a wee bit of a wait. Grab a beer a relax while watching that download bar, or just play something else...
About
The player is Geralt of Rivia, a professional monster slayer, a witcher. Entangled in the political turmoil that engulfed Temeria, Geralt helped quell the rebellion of the Order of the Flaming Rose. Soon after, he saved King Foltest’s life when the monarch was attacked by a witcher-like assassin. He continues to protect the king, serving as his bodyguard as Foltest strives to bring peace to his kingdom. The Order’s last bastions have yielded to the royal army, yet one more task remains - the Baroness La Valette announced her secession from the realm, and her fortress must be taken. A month after the attempted assassination, Foltest’s armies stand at the gates of La Valette Castle, preparing for a final assault. Still at Foltest’s side, Geralt is among them, unable to begin his personal quest to discover the mysterious assassin’s origin and identity…
Thanks to the new, ultra-modern REDengine, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings features both beautiful graphics and sophisticated in-game mechanics, drawing players into the most lively and believable world ever created in a video game.
Defining new standards for realistic, non-linear game narration, The Witcher 2 spins a mature, thought-provoking tale to produce one of the most complex and unique RPGs ever released on consoles. In addition to its epic story, the game features a complex combat system that uniquely combines dynamic action and tactical depth.
The great thing is that it's also 80% off to celebrate! Get it on Steam now, seriously go get it right now.
Check out the trailer if you haven't seen it before:
Direct Link
For those who own a boxed copy of it, with GOG.com supporting Linux this year I suggest you go here and reedem your backup copy on GOG. While you won't get a Linux copy yet I imagine in future you would.
You can also thank the developers directly on their official forums post on it.
UPDATE
It's no wonder people are experiencing poor performance issues, it looks like it uses a wrapper called "eON" from Virtual Programming who did the Mac port. This porting technology is new to Linux, so perfect performance isn't going to happen right away.
Personally I am displeased by this as the performance on the lowest setting for me isn't great and my rig is pretty damned powerful. I am actually glad I didn't pay full price as it's unplayable. I don't mean to be too harsh about it (I don't like to sugar coat things either), but when there's so many people claiming the same thing then something is up, but this "eON" tech is new to Linux, so there's always room for improvement.
If you scan around the files, you will note these:
eONprecompiledShaders32.dat
witcher2.vpfs
VPFS_registry.vpfsdb
Pretty obvious it uses their eON tech. It wouldn't be so bad if it didn't run so terribly, I've said before that I am glad our purchases count for Linux rather than Windows, but for newer games it just doesn't feel right somehow.
What do you think to this information?
UPDATE 2
A developer from the porting house who worked on this has done a few posts in the Steam forum topic on it. You can see one such post here, there's also a funny one here where the developer is sadly making rather uninformed statments:
jaycee1980Remember the binary Nvidia and AMD Catalyst drivers only tend to support newer hardware.
I wish developers would research a little more before saying such things, as it doesn't do their reputation any-good.
Both teams need to do some damage control I think and get down to fixing issues ASAP. Two things to check is if Vertical Sync and UberSamping are both off as both are known to cause problems, but sadly for me I still cannot play on the lowest possible settings.
Not the best of launches.
Quoting: ZnurreQuoting: BillNyeTheBlackGuyPeople are allowed to whine about a "port" if it's supposed to work well and doesn't when it's labelled as a full completed port and not any sort of beta, quality is supposed to be expected and we haven't gotten any sort of quality here.And what is "well enough" for you?
We as in you and some other vocal others. It works well enough for me and some other people.
I expect a 3 year old game to be able to run at stable 60 fps with vsync and lowest quality on a rig with my specifications.
This +whatever.
If it runs like crap on lowest settings for a lot of people, then there is something up. Saying it runs well for a few people doesn't mean anything, it means a few people have a lucky hardware combination as the majority are saying it runs poorly.
Quoting: Anonymouswith primusrun:Quoting: mintguyI forgot to mention that I am using an Optimus setup and tried to play with bumblebee command "primusrun".Did you try it with optirun?
I sometimes have different results with the two commands.
[r0ck3r@localhost the witcher 2]$ primusrun ./witcher2
./witcher2: /lib/libcurl-gnutls.so.4: no version information available (required by ./witcher2)
primus: fatal: failed to load any of the libraries: /usr/lib64/nvidia-bumblebee/libGL.so.1:/usr/lib/nvidia-bumblebee/libGL.so.1:/usr/lib64/libGL.so.1:/usr/lib/libGL.so.1
dlopen: invalid caller
dlopen: invalid caller
dlopen: invalid caller
dlopen: invalid callerwith optirun:
[r0ck3r@localhost the witcher 2]$ optirun ./witcher2
ERROR: ld.so: object 'libdlfaker.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.
ERROR: ld.so: object 'librrfaker.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.
./witcher2: /usr/lib/libcurl-gnutls.so.4: no version information available (required by ./witcher2)
primus: fatal: failed to load any of the libraries: /usr/lib64/nvidia-bumblebee/libGL.so.1:/usr/lib/nvidia-bumblebee/libGL.so.1:/usr/lib64/libGL.so.1:/usr/lib/libGL.so.1
dlopen: invalid caller
dlopen: invalid caller
dlopen: invalid caller
dlopen: invalid caller
Quoting: ShmerlDetails from developer about eON: http://steamcommunity.com/app/20920/discussions/0/522728086957775869/#c522728180901709821
QuoteI wish to note that while I am one of the developers from VP who has worked on this game, I am posting to this forum offering my support entirely on my own time, and of my own volition.
I've been asked to respond about the post concerning "WINE uses Windows drivers and we use Linux drivers". This was a misunderstanding by a non-technical member of VP. He confused WINE with OS X Boot Camp, and has been corrected now
We are aware there's going to be potential rough spots with our port as this is our first big Linux release, but we are looking to improve the technology wherever possible. I've also been authorised to explain a bit further about our eON system, and why this has been used to port Witcher 2 to Linux. So here goes.
eON is a middle ground idea between what WINE does, and a native port. It is tuned and customised to each game we port - we do not simply slap a Windows binary into it and ship the game. For example, we often customise the D3D9->GL code path in various ways to cater for the title. Shaders are often rewritten to native GLSL, etc.
There are various reasons why a 100% native port is not feasible or possible - middleware, financial and technical constraints etc. This does not mean that a non-native port is always going to be inferior. The alternative would often be no port at all.
Personally I am excited that VP are looking to help bring more games to Linux - not just because I get paid to do it!!
which means it is native code, yes, they rewrote direct3d functions to wrap it to gl. and since one solution in gl is performing differently on how the games use d3d they rewrite some parts for the games. i see nothing wrong with that...
I'm about 5 hours into the game so far and it's been a pretty superb experience. No issues with keyboard either, which is weird, since it seems to affect a LOT of people.
Obviously I've been very lucky.
Folk need to stop going on about the wrapper too. It's utterly irrelevant. What's relevant is the quality of the final product and in this case, for a lot of people, that's what's been lacking.
Quoting: scaineFolk need to stop going on about the wrapper too. It's utterly irrelevant. What's relevant is the quality of the final product and in this case, for a lot of people, that's what's been lacking.
I have to disagree, the tools used are exactly what causes the issues so it is entirely relevant.
Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: scaineFolk need to stop going on about the wrapper too. It's utterly irrelevant. What's relevant is the quality of the final product and in this case, for a lot of people, that's what's been lacking.I have to disagree, the tools used are exactly what causes the issues so it is entirely relevant.
Any chance they replace the eON version with a 100% native one down the line?
Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: scaineFolk need to stop going on about the wrapper too. It's utterly irrelevant. What's relevant is the quality of the final product and in this case, for a lot of people, that's what's been lacking.I have to disagree, the tools used are exactly what causes the issues so it is entirely relevant.
Nah, mate. If you buy a pizza and it tastes absolutely delicious, do you care that it wasn't actually made in a stone oven? Of course not. You have a delicious pizza and that's what counts. Job done.
The only reason you care about how THIS pizza was made is that you got a bad one. You're focussing, unnecessarily, on an unimportant detail. Focus on the result.
And don't put up with shoddy pizza. We're agreed on that. CD Projekt RED didn't test properly, but we need to stop getting bogged down in details like eON vs VOGL vs native. No one who isn't a geek cares about that stuff. All they care about is the experience.
Quoting: GuestQuoting: wleoncioAny chance they replace the eON version with a 100% native one down the line?Pretty much no. I could give reasons...but no, that won't happen (I mean 100% native won't happen, not about me giving reasons).
Well, hopefully they're chalking it up to being the port of an older game potentially aimed at testing sales volume and, if all goes well, Witcher 3 will go through a more thorough port.
Quoting: GuestQuoting: wleoncioPretty much no. I could give reasons...but no, that won't happen (I mean 100% native won't happen, not about me giving reasons).Quoting: liamdaweAny chance they replace the eON version with a 100% native one down the line?Quoting: scaineFolk need to stop going on about the wrapper too. It's utterly irrelevant. What's relevant is the quality of the final product and in this case, for a lot of people, that's what's been lacking.I have to disagree, the tools used are exactly what causes the issues so it is entirely relevant.
But maybe this paves the way for a better "The Witcher 3". Probably too soon to impact that project, but you never know. Maybe The Witcher 3 will be delayed a little because they replace badly compatible middleware for a more generic, cross platform alternative, requiring less impact from eON? We can certainly hope so.
This is more like cooking a pizza with a lightbulb, the tools ALWAYS matter when the tool isn't up for the job. The point is a lightbulb isn't meant to cook a pizza. In the same way that a Windows game isn't meant to be run on Linux, it's meant to be ported in-code.
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