We know how some of you feel about wrappers, but that's an old argument now. The game is here, and the developers are still working on improving it. The Witcher 2 had a new beta a few days ago, and we took a look at just how much of an improvement it is.
I have to say this, but I am shocked at this new beta. The improvement is actually quite staggering! Testing around the same area on 1080p with high settings gives me ~20FPS more and it's astonishing how far Virtual Programming's eON has come.
The announcement (scroll down a bit) is copied below:
You can get into the new beta by selecting it from right click on the game -> properties, beta tab, and selecting it from the drop-down.
One issue to note is that there is a bit of micro-stutter at times, but unless you're trying hard to notice is, you probably won't. It doesn't happen often it seems either in my testing.
This has quite literally changed my views on it, and has made me actually think about properly playing it for the first time ever. Honestly, I would now be surprised if I got much more FPS on Windows now.
You can see screens below of the new beta first, and the old stable last with the FPS counter in the corner showing the improvement at the same place, and it will shock you too:
Once they fix up any remaining issues with the new beta and pop it to the stable branch, we may even recommend people try it out, and we certainly recommend you try the beta if you already own it, wow.
It will be very interesting to see how their next port is received now. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
I have to say this, but I am shocked at this new beta. The improvement is actually quite staggering! Testing around the same area on 1080p with high settings gives me ~20FPS more and it's astonishing how far Virtual Programming's eON has come.
The announcement (scroll down a bit) is copied below:
Quote24 Jan 2015 20:50 GMT
Latest Beta - BuildID 503099
A bit of a refresh here. We've worked more on our Direct3D 9 engine since the last beta, so everything we've done there has gone into this patch. Hopefully, that means better performance too!
We've also resolved the constant crashing on exit, removed our dependancy on libcurl, and we now ship a new CrashReporter which, while still using libcurl, should work with a variety of different versions as shipped by the many distro's out there.
We've also added a fix for the crashing caused on kernel 3.17.7 and later, even though the kernel maintainers have already agreed to amend the patch that caused the problem - it is better if our behaviour avoids the issue in the first place :)
Test and let us know how things are...
You can get into the new beta by selecting it from right click on the game -> properties, beta tab, and selecting it from the drop-down.
One issue to note is that there is a bit of micro-stutter at times, but unless you're trying hard to notice is, you probably won't. It doesn't happen often it seems either in my testing.
This has quite literally changed my views on it, and has made me actually think about properly playing it for the first time ever. Honestly, I would now be surprised if I got much more FPS on Windows now.
You can see screens below of the new beta first, and the old stable last with the FPS counter in the corner showing the improvement at the same place, and it will shock you too:
Once they fix up any remaining issues with the new beta and pop it to the stable branch, we may even recommend people try it out, and we certainly recommend you try the beta if you already own it, wow.
It will be very interesting to see how their next port is received now. Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
This is incredibly good news, and Virtual Programming has made tremendous progress. I know my issues lie elsewhere (NVidia...) but as an owner of GTX660 SLI, I can't quite move my Witcher 2 installation to my Gentoo OS yet. In Windows 7 with ultra settings and uber-sampling, I maintain 45-55 fps avg. With uber-sampling off, it shoots to 100fps. Co'mon now, NVidia (and OpenGL).
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Quoting: mouacykThis is incredibly good news, and Virtual Programming has made tremendous progress. I know my issues lie elsewhere (NVidia...) but as an owner of GTX660 SLI, I can't quite move my Witcher 2 installation to my Gentoo OS yet. In Windows 7 with ultra settings and uber-sampling, I maintain 45-55 fps avg. With uber-sampling off, it shoots to 100fps. Co'mon now, NVidia (and OpenGL).
What FPS do you get on Gentoo then?
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They've really come a long way with that wrapper - the new release is a surprise, thought they'd given up. I might have to start this game again. I was really enjoying it, but the threat of randomly crashing just killed it for me. For now I'm kinda burned out on RPGs after playing DA:Inquisition.
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So I indeed had to restart a couple times, but other than that Witcher 1 runs very well, and I'm really enjoying it. However, I do wish it was a shorter game; I wanna get to the pretty sequel with the refined mechanics :D
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Last time I tried I only hit 20fps, let's see in the eve' how this is after the patch.
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View video on youtube.com
At times in some busy areas it briefly drops to around 50 FPS, but most of the time goes around 100 FPS.
At times in some busy areas it briefly drops to around 50 FPS, but most of the time goes around 100 FPS.
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How can I determine if I use correct version of the Witcher 2? I've already had linux_public_beta selected in betas tab, there is no other beta that I can select and there was no big update downloaded by steam. Is there somewhere any information about game version?
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Quoting: wojtek88How can I determine if I use correct version of the Witcher 2? I've already had linux_public_beta selected in betas tab, there is no other beta that I can select and there was no big update downloaded by steam. Is there somewhere any information about game version?
In the properties, there's a build number: RMB, properties, local files. Mine shows: 503570.
The last but one update was a very small one with big impact, by the way. So perhaps, the last one was as well.
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oldrocker99 Feb 3, 2015
I was as dismayed as the next guy at the first release of VP's eON wrapper, but VP has worked diligently to improve it, to the point where the game ran very well indeed with their last patch. If they've improved it since then, HUZZAH!
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I have Witcher 2 build 503570, but I see a lot of crashes. If I turn the settings to "high", I'm able to start the game, and start loading a save, but it seems once the save loads (the spinning snake at the bottom right stops), I never leave the load screen, and the loading music plays indefinitely.
I put the settings on medium, and it worked, but I got the stuttering every few seconds and it's very noticeable and extremely annoying. From the posts I've read here, I think people are seeing varying amounts of stuttering. The amount of stuttering I see and how bad the stutters are would make the game unplayable for most if not all people I think.
I set the launch options in steam to "__GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 %command%", the game starts up but now I can't even load my saves even on medium settings (same exact symptoms as above).
However, maybe my issues are in fact driver related. I have GTX 980 and nvidia drivers 346.35. Is anyone else having trouble with a Maxwell based GPU and/or the same (or close) driver revision?
My specs aren't exactly low end, so the stutter isn't related to my hardware. Here's my specs for reference:
i7 5960x
GTX 980
32GB ram
Kernel 3.18.5
I'm going to try an older kernel when I have some time, maybe the kernel related issue (something related to the LDT, right?) hasn't been entirely fixed (neither in the game nor on the kernel side).
I put the settings on medium, and it worked, but I got the stuttering every few seconds and it's very noticeable and extremely annoying. From the posts I've read here, I think people are seeing varying amounts of stuttering. The amount of stuttering I see and how bad the stutters are would make the game unplayable for most if not all people I think.
I set the launch options in steam to "__GL_THREADED_OPTIMIZATIONS=1 %command%", the game starts up but now I can't even load my saves even on medium settings (same exact symptoms as above).
However, maybe my issues are in fact driver related. I have GTX 980 and nvidia drivers 346.35. Is anyone else having trouble with a Maxwell based GPU and/or the same (or close) driver revision?
My specs aren't exactly low end, so the stutter isn't related to my hardware. Here's my specs for reference:
i7 5960x
GTX 980
32GB ram
Kernel 3.18.5
I'm going to try an older kernel when I have some time, maybe the kernel related issue (something related to the LDT, right?) hasn't been entirely fixed (neither in the game nor on the kernel side).
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