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.
May 23, 2014
Quoting: liamdaweIt matters to me, that's my point. We all have our opinions and you clearly don't mind where as I do.
Will have to agree to disagree on this as the toolkit IS the source of my and others issues.
I'm just trying to understand why you care. The result is what matters. I saw the same outrage with Limbo, but for me - it worked perfectly and we wouldn't have that game otherwise so...
But sure. Let's drop it.
Quoting: GuestActually at first there were very many positive comments.
Then people finished downloading the game.
Then came the outrage.
But from how many? Of tens of thousands (guessing) downloads, we have a few hundred posts on here, from maybe twenty or so folk who have problems. Same on Steam, slightly bigger scale there (about 700 messages so far over two threads), but we're talking hundreds of disgruntled buyers, a tiny percentage of the overall target.
So is this wrapper really the root of evil? There must surely be thousands and thousands of configurations running out there near-flawlessly. Not as good as Windows performance, sure, but good enough to play the game, like my own experience. And going back to my Limbo point above - let's be clear here. If they didn't use eON, we wouldn't have this game, simple as that.
Quoting: GuestSo yes, the blame for the technical issues is from the wrapper, in my opinion.
And again with the wrapper! Are you in cahoots with Liam? :)
Standards are being applied to this that no other industry has to deal with. In my pizza example, you'd demand to know HOW the pizza was made. In the car industry, you'd ask the salesman how the welds were joined. In the fashion industry, you'd demand to know the stitching method.
It's not the HOW that is important. It's the end result. There are exceptions to this, such as DRM, of course. But using eON is not an example of this.
Good points about my faulty extrapolation on Steam sales though. There will be many Windows users buying this of course. I hadn't taken into account the fact that they'd put it on Sale at the same time as the Linux launch. And true, not everyone will complain but the countpoint was that almost no-one will champion it.
Quoting: scaineUmm... what else can be blamed but the wrapper? The game uses a wrapper and on Linux the performance sucks. On Windows on the other hand it doesn't suck. Let's put 1 and 1 together and we find out that the wrapper IS CAUSING PROBLEMS.Quoting: GuestSo yes, the blame for the technical issues is from the wrapper, in my opinion.And again with the wrapper! Are you in cahoots with Liam? :)
Standards are being applied to this that no other industry has to deal with. In my pizza example, you'd demand to know HOW the pizza was made. In the car industry, you'd ask the salesman how the welds were joined. In the fashion industry, you'd demand to know the stitching method.
It's not the HOW that is important. It's the end result. There are exceptions to this, such as DRM, of course. But using eON is not an example of this.
Good points about my faulty extrapolation on Steam sales though. There will be many Windows users buying this of course. I hadn't taken into account the fact that they'd put it on Sale at the same time as the Linux launch. And true, not everyone will complain but the countpoint was that almost no-one will champion it.
Quoting: SamsaiUmm... what else can be blamed but the wrapper? The game uses a wrapper and on Linux the performance sucks. On Windows on the other hand it doesn't suck. Let's put 1 and 1 together and we find out that the wrapper IS CAUSING PROBLEMS.
Just gonna hijack this discussion...
That statement is just really generalizing.
Jus because it performs better on Windos in comparison does not indicate that the wrapper is shit.
MetroLL, to my knowledge, was a completely native port that still performed and looked worse on Linux/Mac than it did on Windows, as did plenty other games for me, like Psychonauts.
In fact, on a related note, the Pychonauts native port on Mac performed much worse than the App Store version which used a Crossover solution.
What Im saying is, running the game using a wrapper is not indicative of a bad port and a native conversion does not always indicate a good port and good performance.
MAYBE it's their shoddy wrapper that's causing the performance issues, but it's not like them doing a fully native port would fix every problem, especially since this seems to be their first time dealing with Linux.
If they fix their wrapper to adress all the issues/optimize it (which the clearly should've done a better job at), then I see no issues with them using a wrapper. In fact, Valve kinda showed them how it should be done with Source and togl.
As scaine said, it's the outcome that should matter, not what technique they're using to get there, at least in my opinion.
Quoting: SilviuThank You!Quoting: Anonymous> 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.Probably. The best solution is to get a build of wine with the CSMT patch. The PlayOnLinux/Mac project does provide one.
Will it be better to play Witcher 2 under Wine than "natively"?
If you have a wimpy machine, don't bother.
In days i'm going to buy new motherboard and CPU (i already bought new GPU). Then first i'll try the game "natively" because i don't like to use Steam under Wine. Then maybe i'll try the game under Wine and compare results.
Quoting: dimo2I am not against wrappers in general. But there is a huge gap between a good wrapper release like System Shock 2 and Witcher 2. If a wrapped game works nicely then I'm okay with that. Like I said, I am not blaming every single wrapper out there. However Witcher 2's wrapper is obviously not doing a good job of presenting this game.Quoting: SamsaiUmm... what else can be blamed but the wrapper? The game uses a wrapper and on Linux the performance sucks. On Windows on the other hand it doesn't suck. Let's put 1 and 1 together and we find out that the wrapper IS CAUSING PROBLEMS.Just gonna hijack this discussion...
That statement is just really generalizing.
Jus because it performs better on Windos in comparison does not indicate that the wrapper is shit.
MetroLL, to my knowledge, was a completely native port that still performed and looked worse on Linux/Mac than it did on Windows, as did plenty other games for me, like Psychonauts.
In fact, on a related note, the Pychonauts native port on Mac performed much worse than the App Store version which used a Crossover solution.
What Im saying is, running the game using a wrapper is not indicative of a bad port and a native conversion does not always indicate a good port and good performance.
MAYBE it's their shoddy wrapper that's causing the performance issues, but it's not like them doing a fully native port would fix every problem, especially since this seems to be their first time dealing with Linux.
If they fix their wrapper to adress all the issues/optimize it (which the clearly should've done a better job at), then I see no issues with them using a wrapper. In fact, Valve kinda showed them how it should be done with Source and togl.
As scaine said, it's the outcome that should matter, not what technique they're using to get there, at least in my opinion.
BabaoWhisky May 23, 2014
I have a Nvidia GTX770 + Intel I5-4570 + Nvidia driver 337.19 and after to disable only Ubersampling, the game runs without problems...
Quoting: berillionsHow to show the FPS in-game ?Strange. Same rig here, and running damn well fine! openSUSE!
I have a Nvidia GTX770 + Intel I5-4570 + Nvidia driver 337.19 and after to disable only Ubersampling, the game runs without problems...
BabaoWhisky May 23, 2014
[
I would like to show the FPS in-game. An application like "Fraps" on Windows exist for Linux ?
PS : I use Debian Wheezy too.
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me