Black screen during (in-game) cutscenes

[luc0s]

Black screen during (in-game) cutscenes

Hey folks!


The last time I played The Witcher 1: Enhanced Edition was a long time ago on my PC. But I'm mostly a Mac user now (I still got my old PC around though). So when I saw The Witcher 1: Enhanced Edtion for the Mac on Steam, I was exited to play this game again (this time on my Mac)!

So I downloaded and installed TW1: Enhanced Edition on my Mac from Steam (for free because I already owned the game for PC) and I was exited to play. But I have a problem that makes playing this game impossible.


The Problem:

When I play TW1: Enhanced Edition on my Mac, sometimes a cutscene does not show up. I hear the audio of the scene, I see the subtitles but I do no't see any graphics, the screen is just black.
This mostly happens with in-game cutscenes, but sometimes it also happens with pre-rendered cutscenes (such as the pre-rendered video with Geralt v.s the Striga).
When my screen is black, I hear the cutscene playing, I hear all the audio, I see all the subtitles (I have subtitles turned on), but I don't see any footage or in-game graphics!

The strange thing is, as soon as the cutscene is over, everything is just fine. I can play the game fine without any lag or any problems. Everything works perfectly, it's just that the cutscenes give me a black screen.



My Apple Mac's specs:

- iMac 27inch, mid 2010 build
- 2.93Ghz Intel Core i7 processor
- ATI Radeon HD 5750 graphics
- 8GB DDR3 RAM memory
- 1TB 7200RPM HDD

 

[eleve]

What happens here (MacPro3,1, ATI Radeon HD 5800) is that I start up the game and load a save or start a new game. The first 2 or 3 cutscenes will probably play normally though the likelihood sinks with each cutscene. After that, the movie part of the cutscenes is missing (sound, sub titles, etc are all there but all I see is a black screen). After the cutscene, the games resume playing normally though if I keep on playing the game will eventually crash reliably at the beginning of a new cutscene (The Witcher crashes in the Wine environment, Wine itself keeps on running). I did find a log reporting an error:

File name: ~Library\Application Support\Steam\SteamApps\common\the witcher enhanced edition\The Witcher.app\Contents\Resources\drive_c\users\Wineskin\Local Settings\Application Data\The Witcher\logs\gfxcard.txt
Error msg: Unable to connect to LightFX.dll. Path: 'lightfx\wxp\LightFX.dll', GetLastError() returned: 0x7e

This error is generated every time I run The Witcher.

 

[luc0s]

It seems eleve and I have exactly the same problem. What eleve describes is exactly what happens to me too.


I uninstalled the game , rebooted my iMac and re-installed it, but it didn't help.

 

[tommy5761]

I know absolutely squat about about Mac .
Look in the witcher/system folder and see if there is a lightFX folder . If so open it and see if there is a wxp folder with the LightFX.dll and what size is the LightFX.dll ?

 

[eleve]

Sorry for the delay; real life took over.

There is no wxp folder. It seems that function is handled by Wine. I could play around with the graphic settings in Wine and see whether I can get it to work that way but even if I manage to fix it Steam will overwrite my fix as soon as it realises that I changed something...it does that even if I just eg. switch from full screen to windowed mode.

Tbh, releasing the Mac version via gog would have been much better, imo