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.
Either way, this is awesome and there is a chance they will also release Witcher 3 on Linux :)
FutureSuture May 22, 2014
... but does anybody know if there's a possibility to get a Steam key although I bought the retail version (back then in my Windows days)?
Quoting: Anonymoushope that releasing it just when steam discount is on won't seem bad for linux.
I really do wonder why people think like this.
Discount != bad. Discounts are awesome.
FutureSuture May 22, 2014
Quoting: EikeGreat!Probably not via Steam, but you can via GOG. GOG is introducing Linux support later this year.
... but does anybody know if there's a possibility to get a Steam key although I bought the retail version (back then in my Windows days)?
abelthorne May 22, 2014
Quotejaycee1980 [developer] 4 minutes ago
The current AMD Catalyst driver contains a problem which stops the game from running. AMD have already fixed the problem, and the fix will be in the next driver release.
Intel is not supported simply because the driver performance is currently insufficient to run the game well enough. It will run, but the framerate is not good.
The open source Nouveau and Radeon drivers are simply not feature complete enough to run the game. Witcher 2's RED Engine is making full use of OpenGL 3.2 features.
Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: Anonymoushope that releasing it just when steam discount is on won't seem bad for linux.I really do wonder why people think like this.
Discount != bad. Discounts are awesome.
might be i said it badly,
discounts are awesome for me and for you. but, for 1st game on linux for developer who is testing viability... discount might prove as double edged sword for linux
they might come short on earnings and thus skew as linux being even lower margin market. this could affect their future decisions on how viable linux is
i paid 19.99 for the game :(
Thanks,
abelthorne May 22, 2014
Quoting: Anonymousdiscounts are awesome for me and for you. but, for 1st game on linux for developer who is testing viability... discount might prove as double edged sword for linuxOh, I guess The Witcher 2 has been "paid back" (not sure of the english term) a long time ago. It has had discounts like this several times. I don't think they'll be short on earnings with this one-time discount or believe that this sale will be representative of the Linux market.
they might come short on earnings and thus skew as linux being even lower margin market. this could affect their future decisions on how viable linux is
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