Quoting: KelsTo be honest, the biggest complaint I have with the game is the incomprehensible naming of the spells. "Igni" I kinda get, but outside the tutorial there's nothing that actually tells you what each of them does. It's very confusing.

As to performance, works fine for me on a 4-year old system with an nVidia GTX750ti in it running on high graphics setting.

Spells' names (called "signs" ) don't come from the game, but originate from the Witcher books on which the settings of the games are based. I agree that they could do some better job of explaining their meaning (the tutorial info is available in your journal by the way at any time later in the game).

If you want more in depth review, see: http://witcher.gamepedia.com/Signs [External Link]

About comparing to Elder Scrolls - I can't even compare. Witcher games are true masterpieces of adventure/RPG genre. Elder Scrolls games (the latest ones) are much weaker on the depth of the story and consequences of one's actions. They are more about exploration than about being an adventure/RPG. Morrowind was probably the best game in those series if you value the roleplaying aspects.

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Quoting: rustybroomhandleOk, ran terribly for me, but got it smooth now (Arch/NVidia). Here's what I did:

3) Disable ubersampling

Looks good, runs well.

Oh, sure. Ubersampling has to be always disabled. It's never needed and it kills any performance. It's a brute force multipass antialiasing which is extremely resource hungry and will kill performance unless you have multiple GPUs installed (basically it renders the whole scene several times and merges the results). It's simply a huge overkill for any potential visual gain it can give (and those aren't event major).

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Quoting: GuestI tried to get confirmation somewhere about the Witcher 3, but could only find references to multiple backends. That doesn't actually rule out any sort of middleware for it. TW3 does, however, make use of DX11 - and good luck with any sort of wrapper to opengl from that. I would think, from a technical viewpoint, that they should do a proper OpenGL backend (anything else would be insane), but we'll just have to wait and see.
At the very least, this debacle shows interest in the title for Linux, and it shows that they should do a proper job of it, no matter what path they take. I think it's fairly obvious that devs have to take SteamOS fairly seriously now, so if all they do is learn from this....then I suppose it's worth it in the end.

I agree. Chances of getting a native OpenGL 4 backend for the Witcher 3 (and Cyberpunk 2077) are better than for the Witcher 2. Because those are their current projects and also because CD Projekt Red plan to start licensing their newest REDengine (used in the Witcher 3 and CP 2077) to others. So it's in their direct interest to make it performing better while supporting most platforms. Let's wait and see.

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The crash on exist seems to be a known Steam specific issue: http://en.cdprojektred.com/support/crash-exit-linux/ [External Link]

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Details from developer about eON: http://steamcommunity.com/app/20920/discussions/0/522728086957775869/#c522728180901709821 [External Link]

I 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!!

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Just a reminder, don't forget to report all these issues to developers if you care about them improving anything:

* http://forums.cdprojektred.com/forums/40-Tech-Support [External Link]
* http://en.cdprojektred.com/support/how-to-contact-the-tech-support/ [External Link]

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Did anyone try to enable Nvidia GL multithreading (using __GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS) to check if it makes any difference with this release?

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@killx_den: Ah, that's a clear difference :)

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@killx_den: It sure runs very well for me in Wine (with CSMT enabled). I can't compare to the Steam release since I'm waiting for the DRM-free version. So let's wait for someone to run such comparison.

By the way, are there any tools to measure framerate of games in Wine? And native ones too for that matter. Some games report framerate internally, but not all.

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Yes, it was expected that the port will be done by the Virtual Programming. It was a low hanging fruit for CD Projekt Red. I'm not familiar with eON framework however. Does it have a bad reputation in general? Is Wine's D3D -> OpenGL translation better performing?

On the bright side, I doubt eON can support D3D11, so if CDPR will get to porting Witcher 3, they'll have to make a proper OpenGL 4.x port of their engine first.

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