CD PROJEKT RED replied to me about The Witcher 3 and Linux, flat-out denying to answer any questions

They retracted the statement that it wasn't planned. GOG rep who said that wasn't correct.

FYI: Wine 1.9.18-staging already includes the patch for bigger size of virtual heap, and you can get up until the main menu.

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: wojtek88Is it correctly animated?

I'm not sure what is considered correct there (since I have nothing to compare to), but it is animated, yes. You can see sparks flying from the fire, branches moved by the wind and etc. There are no intro videos however or anything like that when you open the game, and some suggested they should be before the main menu screen.

I've uploaded for you a PS4 version. I understand that can differ a lot, but I don't have Windows version (and as you can guess, I don't have Windows at all :P).
Here is how Witcher 3 behaves from start to menu on PS4:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYEDEE3zUZA
P.S. I assume you are a polish native speaker as well ;)

All those intro logos / sword animation are missing. It goes straight into the main menu. It looks different, but I suppose it's because PS4 version has different art. Also, main menu has more options. After starting the new game, it hangs. Lot's of functions are missing implementation here:

https://source.winehq.org/git/wine.git/blob/HEAD:/dlls/d3d11/device.c

Such as:

d3d11_immediate_context_CSSetConstantBuffers
d3d11_immediate_context_CSSetShader
d3d11_immediate_context_CSSetShaderResources
d3d11_immediate_context_CSSetUnorderedAccessViews
d3d11_immediate_context_Dispatch
d3d11_immediate_context_DSSetConstantBuffers
d3d11_immediate_context_HSSetConstantBuffers


Last edited by Shmerl on 11 September 2016 at 9:14 am UTC

Quoting: Shmerl(...)It looks different, but I suppose it's because PS4 version has different art.(...)

It's related to the in-game progress and number of DLC installed.
What's more your images show version 1.10 of the game which is pretty old I must say.


Last edited by wojtek88 on 11 September 2016 at 9:25 am UTC

Yeah, I made that screenshot before applying patches.

And I just realized that I'm running it without latest patches again, so may be staging doesn't include heap fix after all.


Last edited by Shmerl on 11 September 2016 at 9:22 am UTC

@Shmerl Could you share video from the menu or share the picture with the fps in menu?
What's more - is in-menu control fluent? Is there an input lag?

It is fluent, and there is no lag. It doesn't mean much - that render doesn't seem intensive. And starting the game fails anyway with many d3d11 functions missing.


Last edited by Shmerl on 11 September 2016 at 9:32 am UTC

Quoting: ShmerlIt is fluent, and there is no lag.

Sounds promising. I have my hope in Wine team. Having DX11 support in Wine will be golden.

Yep. Keep an eye on this changelog: https://source.winehq.org/git/wine.git/history/HEAD:/dlls/d3d11/device.c

Quoting: ShmerlYep. Keep an eye on this changelog: https://source.winehq.org/git/wine.git/history/HEAD:/dlls/d3d11/device.c

I will, definitely. Of course thanks Shmerl for testing, I really admit work of both - active developers and all the community that gives feedback.

Why they need 10 years for D3D11?

Quoting: meracoWhy they need 10 years for D3D11?

I hate such a comments. But I will answer your question anyway.

Why?
1) First of all, DirectX11 was released in 2009. So it's been 7 years since the day of release.
2) When DirectX 11 was released, we did not even had correct support for DirectX 9 (previous major release, that most of the games and programs used to use). What's more - we still don't have golden support for DirectX 9 in Wine.
3) DirectX is not open-sourced, so develpers have to somehow achieve the same functionality as DirectX. According to wikipedia, Wine uses Black box testing. It is hard and time consuming. Even if some contributors decompile DirectX code, the code that is decompiled is hard to work with, because it is not the same code like the code that was written by the programmer - it is a decompiled version, that has not meaningful variable names, has some code optimizations that normally compiler does (developer does not have to write it explicitly), has no comments etc. And it is illegal in some cases.
4) All the programmers that code in Wine project are just a contributors - they have other jobs, it's not their primary job (Of course, there are a companies, like CodeWeavers, that have commercial interest in Wine evolution, so it's safe to assume that many contributors are paid / employed by this company, but in general Wine is developed by people who are not paid for it).

And even if it takes them 20 years, if they manage to achieve their goal, you should be thankful, because they do it for community (including you).

Quoting: wojtek88

Quoting: meracoWhy they need 10 years for D3D11?

I hate such a comments. But I will answer your question anyway.

Why?
1) First of all, DirectX11 was released in 2009. So it's been 7 years since the day of release.
2) When DirectX 11 was released, we did not even had correct support for DirectX 9 (previous major release, that most of the games and programs used to use). What's more - we still don't have golden support for DirectX 9 in Wine.
3) DirectX is not open-sourced, so develpers have to somehow achieve the same functionality as DirectX. According to wikipedia, Wine uses Black box testing. It is hard and time consuming. Even if some contributors decompile DirectX code, the code that is decompiled is hard to work with, because it is not the same code like the code that was written by the programmer - it is a decompiled version, that has not meaningful variable names, has some code optimizations that normally compiler does (developer does not have to write it explicitly), has no comments etc. And it is illegal in some cases.
4) All the programmers that code in Wine project are just a contributors - they have other jobs, it's not their primary job (Of course, there are a companies, like CodeWeavers, that have commercial interest in Wine evolution, so it's safe to assume that many contributors are paid / employed by this company, but in general Wine is developed by people who are not paid for it).

And even if it takes them 20 years, if they manage to achieve their goal, you should be thankful, because they do it for community (including you).

It's 'meraco'. He's a troll. Ignore him.

Quoting: wojtek88

Quoting: meracoWhy they need 10 years for D3D11?

I hate such a comments. But I will answer your question anyway.

Why?
1) First of all, DirectX11 was released in 2009. So it's been 7 years since the day of release.
2) When DirectX 11 was released, we did not even had correct support for DirectX 9 (previous major release, that most of the games and programs used to use). What's more - we still don't have golden support for DirectX 9 in Wine.
3) DirectX is not open-sourced, so develpers have to somehow achieve the same functionality as DirectX. According to wikipedia, Wine uses Black box testing. It is hard and time consuming. Even if some contributors decompile DirectX code, the code that is decompiled is hard to work with, because it is not the same code like the code that was written by the programmer - it is a decompiled version, that has not meaningful variable names, has some code optimizations that normally compiler does (developer does not have to write it explicitly), has no comments etc. And it is illegal in some cases.
4) All the programmers that code in Wine project are just a contributors - they have other jobs, it's not their primary job (Of course, there are a companies, like CodeWeavers, that have commercial interest in Wine evolution, so it's safe to assume that many contributors are paid / employed by this company, but in general Wine is developed by people who are not paid for it).

And even if it takes them 20 years, if they manage to achieve their goal, you should be thankful, because they do it for community (including you).

There was also a rewrite of the Wine D3D structure to allow themselves to go fairly cleanly from D3D10 to 11 since the API changed a lot from D3D9. Took time, and was also why CSMT wasn't implemented sooner.


Anyway, about the heap size thing: Basically TW3 crashes as post-patch the game tries to allocate more than Wine's virtual heap size allows. Unless the function is updated to allocate dynamically or the size is doubled this will be a barrier to success even once D3D11 support improves enough to render more of the game properly.

Is there a way to request this increased virtual heap patch to be included in wine-staging?


Last edited by Shmerl on 13 September 2016 at 3:33 pm UTC

This game is made with DX11, so if their engine was not capable of supporting OpenGL at the moment of development (which I really doubt) then Linux port would take a tremendous amount of time (and thus money) to make. Using Wine wrapper or whatever is also not an option, because it would lag like hell( and not only lag). So maybe one day we will see Cyberpunk 2077 on Linux, but definitely not Witcher 3.

I don't think Wine will lag. They expect DX11 performance in their translation not to be any worse than their DX9 one. Of course implementing it all is a major task.


Last edited by Shmerl on 15 September 2016 at 4:49 pm UTC

Maybe they are working on adding Vulkan support to their engine.

Quoting: AryvandaarMaybe they are working on adding Vulkan support to their engine.

It's possible for CP2077, but it won't help TW3 already. Because the whole huge amount of their shaders is in HLSL, and translation for that into SPIR-V isn't ready yet.


Last edited by Shmerl on 15 September 2016 at 5:11 pm UTC