The Witcher

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Thad
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The Witcher

Postby Thad » Thu Jul 10, 2014 2:15 pm

I've got a spare beta key for The Witcher Adventure Game, which appears to be some sort of online board game. Anybody want?

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Re: The Witcher

Postby Thad » Mon Sep 08, 2014 7:49 pm

Oh wow, Witcher 2's been ported to Linux.

EDIT: Oh, apparently it's been available for months on Steam but just got added to GOG. That's why I missed it.

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Re: The Witcher

Postby Thad » Thu May 21, 2015 11:44 pm

Downloading Witcher 3 now. Trying out the Galaxy client. (If you're not installing to your system drive -- and I'm not, because I have an SSD that's just for games --, make sure and set your download/install directory before starting the download. There's a gear icon in the lower left of the window.)

The Galaxy FAQ says that the client will automatically detect GOG games you've already installed. If that's the case, it's not working for me (and if it's not the case, well, it's still a beta). However, you can add games manually; if you go to your library and hover a game, a dropdown arrow will appear. Click Configure, which will take you to another screen; click More -> Manage -> Import Folder and you can point it at a directory where a game is already installed.

Haven't actually done anything with it but start one download and add some directories for already-installed games. Assume there's probably a cloud sync for save games; that's kind of the main thing I'm interested in here.

Which reminds me, I still want to find that Witcher 2 save file. I think I know what drive it's on.

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Re: The Witcher

Postby Classic » Thu May 21, 2015 11:54 pm

The system is... well, it didn't work in my environment... basically at all. I tried it a few times and each time I think I observed a different kind of failure.

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Re: The Witcher

Postby Thad » Sat May 23, 2015 1:06 pm

...yeah, looks like I'll be using the Simulated Choices option after all; the only saves I could find were from chapter 1.

I suspect it's one of a few things that I thought I'd backed up from my cloud drive before wiping it but must not have. (I should probably try and rebuild the damaged drive that I didn't erase and reuse. It's also got some comic inventory stuff on it that I thought was on a different hard drive; the bulk of my inventory is fine but it's got a list of stuff that's not in Comic Collector Pro.)

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Re: The Witcher

Postby Thad » Mon May 25, 2015 2:09 am

Ha! No, wait, totally forgot, for some reason I was having some kind of permissions issue so partway through chapter 1 I started playing the game under my admin account. My endgame save is indeed on the same drive I thought it was, just in a different user's Documents directory.

Which is good, because I'm having no luck on this hard drive recovery (it appears I really did have two drives in the same array experiencing hardware failures at the same time, as improbable as that is), and while there are guides online for recapping your choices from the first game, I can't remember half this shit. Aryan and Anais? Okay, I'll take your word that those were characters in The Witcher 2. It's been five years and mostly I just remember getting fired from PetSmart.

Seriously, fuck PetSmart.

(I also found an old version of my comic book inventory file, but it's really old, like 2009 old. It may have a complete list of all the comics I own that are not listed in Comic Collector Pro -- I sure can't remember having any problems finding books I've bought in the past few years -- but the thing's six years old and it's hard to be sure it's up-to-date even on the outliers in my collection. What a pain.)



ETA: Since Witcher 3 is 27 damn GB, and since I frequently move back and forth between playing in my office (where I have a keyboard and mouse and can play at 2560x1440 if I set all the graphics to low) and my living room (where I have a controller and a 51" screen where I can play at 1920x1080 with the video settings cranked up much higher), I thought to check whether Galaxy works like Steam and lets you just copy an entire game directory straight across from one computer to another.

tl;dr no; if I'm reading it correctly there's a way to make it keep the installer files (you know, if you've got 27GB lying around for fucking installer files) which you can then copy over to another computer, but if you don't check that box then you have to re-download the entire thing again from scratch.

In fairness, Galaxy IS still beta, and setting up whatever Valve's got to bypass the registry entirely is probably a pretty tall order (and would mean you'd have to use Galaxy on every computer you wanted to copy the directory over to -- which is fine but might make Galaxy feel a little less optional).

...I should also really check whether Galaxy does cloud saves. Because if it doesn't, I'm fucking-well going to set up my own, because I do not want to go digging through old hard drives in four years.

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Re: The Witcher

Postby Mothra » Wed May 27, 2015 4:47 pm


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Re: The Witcher

Postby Thad » Wed May 27, 2015 9:07 pm

Well now the damn thing's just sputtering no matter how much I lower the resolution and detail. Wonder what the fuck's causing it; it's pretty much unplayable.

Also: hey guys, not being able to bring up the menu in the middle of a dialogue tree? What the fuck is this, 1998? Especially bad idea considering how many dialogue trees are stacked right on top of one another in the beginning of the game, you know, the time when everybody's trying to fucking tweak their settings.

At any rate, I finally got my Witcher 2 save imported. I can tell because Geralt's got his neck tattoo.

Why does he have his neck tattoo in a flashback that clearly takes place years before the previous two games? I don't know. Maybe it'll turn out to be a dream or something. I don't know; I can't even get the game to stop twitching.

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Re: The Witcher

Postby Thad » Wed May 27, 2015 9:36 pm

Seriously, this is unplayable, even at the lowest settings, even with the latest patch (which I had to download from the GOG site because Galaxy keeps choking -- but again, it's a beta, that's to be expected). I know my graphics card is 4 years old, but it should be able to play the game at 1280x720, dammit. (Minimum requirements are GTX 660. I've got a 570, which is...pretty similar to a 660. It's one model higher and one generation lower, which should be about a wash.)

Guess I'll wait until the next patch or until I can get a job and buy a new graphics card.

Or maybe just try rebooting a couple times. I swear it was running better than this the first time I ran it.



EDIT: Okay yeah I'm seeing gameplay videos of people running Witcher 3 on the same card I've got, and it working much better than it is on mine, at higher settings. Wonder what the problem is. Maybe it's just the beginning of the game gives it too much shit all at once? I can see that it renders the entirety of Kaer Moerhen right out the window; I can tell because I tried jumping off my balcony and I fell all the way to the bottom.

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Re: The Witcher

Postby Thad » Thu Jun 04, 2015 4:16 pm

It occurs to me that I've been intentionally using really old graphics drivers, because the newer ones were causing stability issues. Maybe a driver update would help.

Still thinking I'll probably buy a 970 once I start getting paid.

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Re: The Witcher

Postby Classic » Thu Jun 04, 2015 4:56 pm

I keep hearing about some hair snafu.
Maybe if your card is old, that is causing the problem?

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Re: The Witcher

Postby Thad » Thu Jun 04, 2015 6:04 pm

Classic wrote:I keep hearing about some hair snafu.


Yeah, nVidia's got some kind of hair physics engine that requires a lot of overhead and apparently really dicks performance on AMD cards. But I've got that (and everything else) turned off; it shouldn't be a problem.

Classic wrote:Maybe if your card is old, that is causing the problem?


That is definitely PART of the problem. But I'm seeing videos on YouTube from people who have the same card I do and can run the game smoothly at 1080p. Not maxed-out settings or anything, but playable. I'm not getting playable speeds even at the minimum resolution with every effect set to its minimum or turned off.

Like I say, I'll be drawing a paycheck soon and figure I'll get me a new card anyway. But the old one shouldn't be performing quite as badly as it is.

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Re: The Witcher

Postby Thad » Wed Jun 17, 2015 11:08 pm

Awright, got me a brand new $350 graphics card and...
...
...
...
...and the game is still running like my sweaty, sweaty balls.

Not amused.

Clearly something is not right. Going to go search for witcher 3 runs like sweaty sweaty balls fix now.



EDIT: Seeing quite a few complaints. Tom's Hardware, GOG, GameSkinny, Reddit all have suggestions. I'm going to start with the ones that DON'T involve uninstalling and reinstalling the whole fucking 25GB game.

...wait.

Turning off Vsync was making it stutter MORE?

That's...unexpected.

...okay, with Vsync turned on it's at least playable. Still pretty irritating that it's as choppy as this given how much damn money I just spent, and I'm probably going to keep monkeying with it. But I may at least finally be done starting the game over.

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Re: The Witcher

Postby Doom » Wed Jun 17, 2015 11:54 pm

would you say this witch won't hunt monsignor
Image

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Re: The Witcher

Postby Thad » Thu Jun 18, 2015 12:37 am

Full driver uninstall (with Guru3D Display Driver Uninstaller) followed by reinstall appears to have everything working correctly. Should have done that in the first place. As it is I've got it sorted just in time to walk the dog and go to bed. Ah well. Always tomorrow.

Now to reboot back to OpenSUSE. Which will hopefully boot without issue. I did have the presence of mind to install the driver for the new card before I shut down.


EDIT: Nope! Well hopefully running a zypper up will fix it. Really don't want to be up dealing with this right now; think I'll probably go brush my teeth, maybe decide whether I should just go to bed. (Am on laptop now. I guess, push come to shove, I should be able to access any files I need off the desktop over the network.)

Dog did not want to walk any farther than across the street and back. It's still like 95 degrees out even though it's 10 o'clock at night. The dog has an excellent grasp of sweaty sweaty balls weather, despite her limited sweat glands and complete lack of Rocky Mountain Oysters past or present.

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Re: The Witcher

Postby Thad » Mon Jun 22, 2015 10:05 pm

So now it runs fine for a minute or two and then goes back to stuttering as soon as it has to load a new setting. Weird shit.

Other apps are running in the background but shouldn't be taking too much overhead. Could try uninstalling the Galaxy Client (which is eating about 90MB of RAM just sitting still) and playing without it but the game's already got a bunch of patches and DLC that I'd really rather not have to install individually.

Could close out Steam (which is eating 200MB of RAM just sitting still), but it's downloading Arkham Knight.

And it's not like I'm starved for RAM. Witcher 3 takes about 2GB, but even with everything else I've got running at the same time I've still got about 4GB free. CPU's got plenty of juice to spare too. Sure wish I could figure out what the fuck is going on here.

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Re: The Witcher

Postby Thad » Mon Jun 22, 2015 10:34 pm

...huh.

In fact, my CPU utilization looks TOO low. Like, under 10%, all the time. I've got a good processor, but I don't think it's THAT good; that really doesn't seem right.

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Re: The Witcher

Postby Classic » Mon Jun 22, 2015 11:28 pm

Is your OS throttling your CPU way down for some reason?

Edit:
Have you posted a spec of your current machine recently?

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Re: The Witcher

Postby Wheels » Tue Jun 23, 2015 2:50 pm

Reading over the work you have done on this Thad... Don't take this the wrong way, but it may just be a lot less work and certainly a lot easier to have a Windows partition at this point. 7 and 10 are really not that bad.
Una salus victis nullam sperare salutem

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Re: The Witcher

Postby Thad » Tue Jun 23, 2015 7:42 pm

...uh?

I was trying to run it in Windows 7 last week.

I replaced my Windows 7 boot with Windows 10 over the weekend.

What, you thought I was trying to run a just-released game in WINE?

And just put in a bunch of random non sequiturs about how I was having trouble installing Windows 10 that I didn't really mean?

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