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: neffoRE: this thread. Why in fuck's name are people so upset about getting a great fucking game on Linux?
Have you actually read any of the comments on it? If you did then you would know.
The performance is utterly laughable due to not being a native port and it runs better in Wine.
I do fing the main character's "Snake Pliskin" vocal style a little odd and out of place though!
Quoting: neffoI just bought a copy for some random Linux guy on my steam friends list who had it on his wish list.
RE: this thread. Why in fu*k's name are people so upset about getting a great fu*king game on Linux?
Because the game only runs on low settings on a 2000€ gaming pc? At least for 90%. I can play it on mid settings and yes it runs fine on that level of detail. But i can run it fine on ultra settings via wine.
Quoting: AnonymousSo... has anyone got the keyboard to work?
yes, look here:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/20920/discussions/0/522728086937828976/#c522728086953857443
My rig:
CPU: i7-3930K 3.2GHz 6 cores
GPU: NVidia GeForce GTX 780
RAM: 8GB 1600MHz CL6
I can't hold 60 fps all the time, even on lowest settings.
Actually, both High and Low profiles are about as bad when it comes to FPS and stuttering.
Increasing the quality to High doesn't seem to give me worse performance than Low, it's just really sluggish in general.
What I find ridiculous is that people are abusing the devs who are trying to provide support on their own dime and time. How about a bit of "cheers for the port, but it isn't working for me/runs like balls on my mid-level 2011 video card" rather than "OMG YOU GUYS ARE LYING SCUM".
People 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.
Some people do go overboard in their comments though, but I don't think anyone here has said what you put in quotes.
Just because we are a minority OS does not mean we should be happy with bad ports or they will keep happening. This is why on GOL I always put my opinion on how the game runs in articles when I have tested it so people know what to expect.
We as in you and some other vocal others. It works well enough for me and some other people.
Quoting: 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.
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me