As for the sound - it's likely a hardware problem. Hopefully once you'll get a new motherboard, it won't happen again.

As for the sound - it's likely a hardware problem. Hopefully once you'll get a new motherboard, it won't happen again.

It's very similar to this report: https://forum.manjaro.org/t/solved-crackling-sound/113943
Except I can't get it working, and despite following the steps mentioned there, restarting pulseaudio does not work with that command. Well, it's running according to htop. But when running the status commands mentioned, I'm told

Start request repeated too quickly.
Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Failed to start Sound Service.

Then something about
pulseaudio.socket: Failed with result 'service-start-limit-hit'.
[pulseaudio] bluez5-util.c: GetManagedObjects() failed: org.freedesktop. (with a long error message about did not receive a reply)
[pulseaudio] pid.c: Daemon already running.

However, the odd thing (to me) is that everything else works sound-wise. I've not had this crackling issue in any other games or when playing music or videos. It has only happened in the Witcher 3.


It's not a major issue because I can just restart the game and that sorts it out, but it's annoying when it happens in long cutscenes or during tough fights.


If it really is a hardware problem and not drivers or settings, then I can only cross my fingers it will be fixed when I buy a new computer at some undefined point in the future.

As an aside, a proper rake seller could make a fortune in Velen. Broken rakes in every other house and container it seems :D


Edit: I've not tried level scaling either. I dislike options like that in general, as it often makes leveling up futile. I prefer that enemies are at the level the developers intended. But if things get easy towards the end of the game, when we're basically overleveled against everything, maybe I will try it out. We'll see... For now I'm enjoying the 'normal' Death March. Crowds are definitely the worst and has been when I've been closest to dying (got the archgriffin, woot).

Gaining less XP throughout should mean the overleveling thing isn't as big of a problem, though. There is a 80% modifier on Death March, vs 90% for Blood and broken bones. Doesn't sound like much, but it should add up (or not, heh) for main quest rewards.

Last edited by Pangaea on 19 Jan 2020 at 3:00 pm UTC

I recently started noticing a number of games having issues with crackling sound on my system. In my case it seems to be Firefox's fault, as it only happens if I leave Firefox running in the background & closing Firefox fixes it.

It's not the first time I've run into issues with leaving Firefox running in the background either: some time ago games using Esync started crashing regularly on my system with "eventfd: Too many open files" (despite the limit being increased to 1048576), and that turned out to be Firefox's fault too.

I recently started noticing a number of games having issues with crackling sound on my system. In my case it seems to be Firefox's fault, as it only happens if I leave Firefox running in the background & closing Firefox fixes it.

It's not the first time I've run into issues with leaving Firefox running in the background either: some time ago games using Esync started crashing regularly on my system with "eventfd: Too many open files" (despite the limit being increased to 1048576), and that turned out to be Firefox's fault too.

Had the same thing. It stopped when I changed the default sampling rate for Pulseaudio to 48000.

I suspect it also depends on the CPU. On weaker systems pulseaudio starves for CPU more.

Nice little bugfix mod to improve immersion: https://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/3927

I recently started noticing a number of games having issues with crackling sound on my system. In my case it seems to be Firefox's fault, as it only happens if I leave Firefox running in the background & closing Firefox fixes it.

It's not the first time I've run into issues with leaving Firefox running in the background either: some time ago games using Esync started crashing regularly on my system with "eventfd: Too many open files" (despite the limit being increased to 1048576), and that turned out to be Firefox's fault too.

Very interesting (and it's good to see you over here). Usually I have Firefox open when I play games, so it's easy to check something if I want, or take small pauses. Firefox (etc) in one workspace, and the game in the other. Today I tried with nothing else open, only the game. Not 100% conclusive, but I did play for many hours without any hick-ups. Eventually the sound started crackling again, but I reckon it took much longer than usual.

Will try to play some other days with Firefox closed as well, and see if today's experience persists. Thanks for the tip in any case :)

Is there a mod that only puts icons for the various merchants and blacksmiths+armourers on the map?

I often forget what's where, which is a massive pain when I need to craft new gear, or try to offload another load of weapons and armour. Really annoying that most of them only show when Geralt is close enough to spit on the stores :(

I've seen some mod that shows all marks on the maps, but I'm not using it. I use the wiki to look up general location if I can't find it :)

Last edited by Shmerl on 22 Jan 2020 at 2:25 am UTC

I was looking for free camera option, to take better screenshots for the wiki, but found a more flexible than xy(x, y) teleportation console command! Just for fun, don't use it to cheat the game :)

tptopos(x, y, z)

Now you can control Z axis as well! You can teleport somewhere to mesosphere :)



Last edited by Shmerl on 22 Jan 2020 at 4:20 am UTC

I've seen some mod that shows all marks on the maps, but I'm not using it. I use the wiki to look up general location if I can't find it :)

Came across probably the same mod when looking for solutions earlier, but I don't want the map littered with quest markers either, so that one is out. Previously I've had Firefox and the wiki up, so I can quickly check something (or see if I can add something to the wiki while playing), but since Firefox seems to be tied to the sound issues I've been having, I'm now playing with it closed, which naturally means that option is out. Would therefore have been great with such a mod, but doesn't look like one exists :-/

Less of a problem once a certain master is unlocked in Novigrad, but until that time it's a huge pain to find places to unload weapons and armour. And especially to craft weapons since I need a journeyman+, and there are very few about.

Honestly don't understand why they did it like this. Would have been much better to have the blacksmiths and armourers always visible on the world map once you have found them. Like happens for Crow's Perch and suchlike locations. Quality of life.

Last edited by Pangaea on 22 Jan 2020 at 10:57 am UTC

I forgot to turn off the UI here, but I just love to dive in this location. Such a cool feeling :)


Oh, sure. I use Hattori there a lot, due to solving related quest early (pretty hard fights there on lower levels). He also is practically the only blacksmith, who can make greater runestones.

Last edited by Shmerl on 22 Jan 2020 at 3:23 pm UTC

Currently the game is 70% off on GOG.com, so this is a great time to buy it if you haven't done so already.


---


I continue to be concerned about what's been going on behind the scenes with the wiki, and thanks for raising it with game widow. I can't help to wonder if there is something she can't say in writing, and it's more diplomatic to say she has stepped down as wiki manager due to lack of time.

Kinda surprised and sad too, for different reasons. Recently I've checked out the bandom wiki a bit, and although the design is atrocious in the extreme, there is actually often more information there about quests and suchlike. Not always very professionally written, but it's info people are after. Kinda just highlights my earlier comment that there are things on the official gamepedia wiki that could have been improved.

Doing that now, though, so many years after the game's release and with the wiki possibly getting co-opted into wikia? Feck it. Would be sooooooo much work. Just the thought of starting to whack my head against templates again makes my heart ache :(

If you have the xml bundle uncooked, can you check if it's reasonably easy to get info from the files? For difficulty, XP, items, abilities, and suchlike?

I have tried to look into some of the script files (they are freely available), but didn't manage to find the information I was after.

Oh, sure. I use Hattori there a lot, due to solving related quest early (pretty hard fights there on lower levels). He also is practically the only blacksmith, who can make greater runestones.

I'm only level 14 in the new playthrough, so will take a while before it's reasonably possible to unlock Hattori. That quest/combat was not easy from what I recall, and impossible against red-skull enemies. Even more so on Death March, I imagine.

But I've made a mental note of the blacksmith in the fish market now, so I can go there at least. Shame he has no money, and it seems to take forever before merchants get more, but at least he'll be able to craft feline swords, when I do that quest and hit level 17.

If you have the xml bundle uncooked, can you check if it's reasonably easy to get info from the files? For difficulty, XP, items, abilities, and suchlike?

I didn't really delve into uncooked files besides for the soundtrack info (you can uncook only the files you need), so I'm not that familiar with their layout. But I can look around. Do you know which files specifically do you need resources from?

You can try uncooking yourself too with ModKit in Wine. It's actually doable from the regular Linux terminal, no need to use cmd.

Last edited by Shmerl on 24 Jan 2020 at 4:32 am UTC

Kinda surprised and sad too, for different reasons. Recently I've checked out the bandom wiki a bit, and although the design is atrocious in the extreme, there is actually often more information there about quests and suchlike. Not always very professionally written, but it's info people are after. Kinda just highlights my earlier comment that there are things on the official gamepedia wiki that could have been improved.

And now as Game Widow said, Fandom gets paid backing due to the deal with Netflix. So they get unproportional amount of attention. Netflix can also skew search results through some deals.

Doing that now, though, so many years after the game's release and with the wiki possibly getting co-opted into wikia? Feck it. Would be sooooooo much work. Just the thought of starting to whack my head against templates again makes my heart ache :(

I just edit as it goes. Don't feel intimidated by Fandom throwing heavy weight behind the other wiki. Gradual improvements help.

Last edited by Shmerl on 24 Jan 2020 at 4:33 am UTC

Just for the reference, I wanted to compare performance of The Witcher 2 in eON and Wine+dxvk, and just managed to run it using Wine+dxvk for the first time. Before it was failing, and I realized that I didn't install d3dcompiler blob, that's still needed in some cases due to bugs in Wine's implementation. After installing d3dcompiler_47 with winetricks, the game started!

Interestingly, when settings are maxed out (ubersamping disabled), dxvk is pretty close to eON, depending on shader compiler.

Sapphire Pulse RX 5700 XT, 2560x1440.

eON (radeonsi): ~ 124 fps

Wine+dxvk (radv/llvm): ~ 120 fps

Wine+dxvk (radv/aco): ~ 128 fps

Though I'm using stable Mesa due to the game being 32-bit. I'll give it another try with Mesa master later (still need to work on my script to cross compile it).

It's also interesting to see, how demanding TW2 is on max settings, even though it's not a very recent game. Though it could be due to Mesa 19.3.2 missing many optimizations for Navi.

Last edited by Shmerl on 24 Jan 2020 at 6:00 am UTC

It's also interesting to see, how demanding TW2 is on max settings, even though it's not a very recent game.

It was always a very heavy (and pretty) game. I would have expected d9vk to have a bigger gap compared to the eon version. Also note that you took this shot in the tutorial area, which has the worst performance of the entire game. I think they just didn't bother to optimise that bit.