Linux issues and user solutions
LE17: GOG.com have updated toochosen to release The Witcher 2 for Linux on their store. Unfortunately, they did not have the latest version before publishing. As they have packaged the game as one huge download, VP decided that as well as sending them the latest build, they would make the new files available for public download. You can download them here: http://developer.vpltd.com/public/witcher2-gog-20140905125243.tgz http://developer.vpltd.com/public/witcher2-gog-20140905125243.tgz
LE16: If you have problems with missing speech in dialogs, it's because of misconfiguration in User.ini. For example for the English version, change Speech=EN to Speech=en
LE15: Maybe second time hits the charm, some sort of new AMD driver ( 14.201.1008 ) : http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/desktop-apu-catalyst-software.aspx
Users of kernel >3.14 should see this patch: http://is.gd/ZrNxFQ
LE14:New silent release for AMD Linux driver 14.8: http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/embedded?os=Linux+x86&rev=13.151only embedded
LE13: Plenty of updates in the Beta branch of the Steam build, go update that first:
LE12: Peter Mulholland of Virtual Programming started tackling github issues: https://github.com/vpltd-peterm?tab=activity
LE11: Linux version just got an update: @Vinthir writes:
LE10: Too many savegames might slow down the game:
LE9: Another Steam workarounds thread: http://steamcommunity.com/app/20920/discussions/0/522728268811804386/
LE8: New AMD drivers, 14.6 beta: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/latest-linux-beta-driver.aspx
LE7: How to use your Witcher 1 end-game savegames for Import on a New Game? Put them in:
(Source)
One can get ready made end-game saves here.
LE6: Keyboard issue happens because the Configurator writes values using comma as a decimal separator (detects locale and adapts it's output?!).
Wrong with comma:
And remember to do this EVERY TIME you use the Configurator or Launch->Options, or avoid using it after the first setup and use the Tweaker ( info below ) instead.
LE5: Blue shiny skin people apparently at least on nVidia binary blob get's fixed by updating to driver 331.xx or later (source)
LE4: If voices don't work, it's actually not related to audio channels, it's due to case-sensitive filenames Here is the command for english voices, go to your Steam folder for The Witcher 2, enter cookedpc:
(found here)
LE3: Apparently CDP should make some sort of announcement soon, monday maybe?
LE2: Github issues repo: https://github.com/KillaW0lf04/The-Witcher-2-Issues/issues
LE1: See the performance comparison post #6
Let's try to get them collected here, in some sort of standard format, do include specs, distro, drivers, kernel, windows manager, effects active or not, compositor active or not, pastebin of your ~/.local/cdprojektred/witcher2/GameDocuments/Witcher 2/config/User.ini and anything you have special or think might (not) help.
Specs: i5-4570/GTX660Ti/8GbRAM/Debian Sid 64bit/kernel 3.14/nvidia 337.19/i3wm/no effects or composition
Issues and commentary walking in chapter 1 village so far:
*even though Steam is started you can't run witcher2 directly as
*mouse lag in menu although my settings got tweaked in the Mouse section: MouseSmoothness=0 and Smoothness=0 and UseMouseDamp=falseIt looks like WINE/Windows has this too, forgot about it, it's worse in eON by a bit though
*copied keyboard settings from Windows version since keys did not worked as set up by the configurator, well ESC and F9 worked but not CTRL/W/A/S/D, not to mention I use a Dvorak layout that's not properly detected but yeah
*everyone with keyboard issues, try to get my config (they're the defaults afaik) and edit it your way with an editor, don't use the configurator anymore. Or if you need the configurator, you need to replace de keyboard settings again. Some users reported that adding these launch options to the game in Steam might help when using a non-US locale:
*walked a bit and there is a place near the lady that makes stew where the textures go black for 1 split-second, I could repro it at will; Steam did not screenshot it but that's another issue as it did not do any screenshot at all; game crashed walking a bit more; on a third run It did not happen.
*droped framerate to 0.3fps and had to kill the game on the second run; walking in the same section where on my first run it worked ok
*the bug reporter errors out with "JSON parse error or Base64 decode error on the server!" sometimes
*the bug reporter needs to include 'cat ~/.local/cdprojektred/witcher2/GameDocuments/Witcher 2/config/User.ini' too, I'll provide mine here: http://pastebin.com/4WZ6nt3W ( yes it has more stuff copied from my Windows one, that might work or not on this wrapped version )
*you can use, through WINE, the Tweaker: http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher2/mods/181/ to import, it can't use hidden folders like .local so linking the settings folder to your home, run in a terminal
will make it detect your current settings), configure, edit resolution by hand if needed, Accept to save those settings back, so you can bypass the somewhat broken configurator, just like we usually did it on Windows anyway. My settings above are set up like this: http://i.imgur.com/3aH1ML2.png
*compositors will hit performance as eON does not do proper fullscreen (which the compositors will detect and not affect) but they do some sort of borderless window scaled to desktop size, iirc. So using a lighter WM + disabling composition should help. phoronix has plenty of WM/DE performance tests ( http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_mint17_desktops&num=1 ) try to choose a lighter suite maybe it can help.
*game crashes in about 3 minutes or less sometimes
60 seconds voglperf plot, non-human district near the river, chapter 1: http://i.imgur.com/RPqQRw5.png
LE17: GOG.com have updated too
LE16: If you have problems with missing speech in dialogs, it's because of misconfiguration in User.ini. For example for the English version, change Speech=EN to Speech=en
LE15: Maybe second time hits the charm, some sort of new AMD driver ( 14.201.1008 ) : http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/desktop-apu-catalyst-software.aspx
Users of kernel >3.14 should see this patch: http://is.gd/ZrNxFQ
LE14:
LE13: Plenty of updates in the Beta branch of the Steam build, go update that first:
14 Aug 2014 15:59 BST
Public Beta 4 - buildID 355503
This contains the following:
OpenGL worker thread now goes to sleep when it can, freeing up a cpu core for other things. This really helps speed up level loads especially.
Optimised our use of memory barriers and using coherent buffers where appropriate
Optimised handling of fences
Use ARB_texture_storage for texture uploads. Again, should improve level loading times.
Optimised our OpenGL state cache
Most of these performance optimisations are best seen on nVidia hardware at the moment. Major performance improvements are expected in the near future through the work of AMD and Intel driver developer teams.
We're aware of two potential crash on exit bugs.. one appears to be nvidia driver related. We're still chasing the other one.
12 Aug 2014
buildID 353083
Only some minor things changed - there were a few debug calls left in that may have slowed things down a little. The biggest change was to the configuration tool - I removed the now unused "Audio" option, and added screen coordinates to the monitor selection dropdown so that identifying monitors is a bit easier.
11 Aug 2014 14:34 BST
Public Beta 3 - buildID 352258
This contains the following:
Optimised shader compilation to link OpenGL programs in waves, instead of one by one, which makes it possible to speed it up using threaded shader compilation on some cards.
Drawing of fullscreen quads optimised
Optimized out some memory barrier commands from OpenGL command queue
OpenGL rendering never lags more than one frame behind commands given by D3D, which should reduce mouse lag.
Added better reporting of missing extensions in game log, to make it more visible when the game is slow due to OpenGL not supporting various features.
Undid the regression of fullscreen monitor selection support - this should now work correctly again
Also added is a new sound backend - using openal-soft instead of SDL's audio. We've had better performance out of this with FMOD, so we added it here to see if it improves the sound situation. Note that this now means the "Audio" option in the configuration options no longer functions, and openal-soft will use an .alsoftrc if you have one. If you have any audio problems, and have a custom .alsoftrc, please attach it to any bug reports.
We're still finding out what's going on with the game and AMD cards being a lot slower than it should be.. please bear with us!
30 Jul 2014 15:33 BST
Public Beta 2 - buildID 341339
We have just updated our public beta with the first beta of our new D3D9 engine. This now employs a technique where all OpenGL work is now done by a single worker thread, which the D3D9 engine submits commands to. This means that there is only a single GL context, and this makes management a lot easier for the driver.
So far we've seen quite significant performance gains on nVidia hardware. AMD, with fglrx 14.4 rev 2 is not quite so dramatic -we're working with AMD on that.
We'd also like feedback about the MESA radeonsi driver - we've heard that this is getting good enough to run the game, and we'd like some wider news on it.
09 Jul 2014 17:46 BST
We have just set up a beta on Steam, called "linux_public_beta". This is where we're going to be posting our betas of work-in-progress so far. This first beta contains the following:
Multimonitor support
Improved support for gamepads, and workarounds for problems in xpad
Improved stability.. the game should crash a lot less now. We still see the occasional crash on exit, inside the nvidia driver. We're working on finding out if this is an issue with the 331.38 driver or with our code.
Note that this doesn't yet include any of our DX9 multithread rework, as that's still in progress. We thought we'd put this out here so that we can get some feedback from you guys on what we have done so far, and also show that we really are working on making this port better
LE12: Peter Mulholland of Virtual Programming started tackling github issues: https://github.com/vpltd-peterm?tab=activity
LE11: Linux version just got an update: @Vinthir writes:
(Source)Changelog for today's patch:
* The "Summer Solstice" content is now available for Linux
* Linux: configuration issues on certain locales have been fixed
* Linux: library support for various Linux distributions improved
LE10: Too many savegames might slow down the game:
(Source)CDP tech support says: "Collecting too many saves may lead to crashes. Delete the unneeded saves. You can do it with the Delete option in Load Game menu or straight in the folder where the saves are by default stored in home/username/.local/share/cdprojektred/witcher2/GameDocuments/Witcher 2/gamesaves unless you enabled Steam cloud which makes it impossible to remove the saves from the folder unless you disable Steam cloud then you can do it in this location: home/.steam/steam/userdata/[user id]/20920/remote .Our saves and their thumbnails are unfortunately quite large and the higher the graphics settings the more space they'll take. This unfortunately happens across all non-console platforms (on xbox there's a save number limit). Removing unneeded saves may also help with the graphics issue in the cutscene.
Also, there is a known crash happening sometimes on some graphics drivers upon quitting The Witcher 2 on Linux. The crash is related to Steam overlay. Valve are aware of it and looking at a solution."
LE9: Another Steam workarounds thread: http://steamcommunity.com/app/20920/discussions/0/522728268811804386/
LE8: New AMD drivers, 14.6 beta: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/latest-linux-beta-driver.aspx
LE7: How to use your Witcher 1 end-game savegames for Import on a New Game? Put them in:
Code:
$HOME/.local/cdprojektred/witcher2/GameDocuments/The Witcher/saves
One can get ready made end-game saves here.
LE6: Keyboard issue happens because the Configurator writes values using comma as a decimal separator (detects locale and adapts it's output?!).
Wrong with comma:
Right with period:IK_0=(Gamekey=GI_Holster,Value=1,000000)
This can be fixed, open a terminal in ~/.local/cdprojektred/witcher2/GameDocuments/Witcher 2/config/ and runIK_0=(Gamekey=GI_Holster,Value=1.000000)
Code:
sed -e 's/\,Value\=1\,000000)/\,Value\=1\.000000)/g' User.ini | sed -e 's/\,Value\=-1\,000000)/\,Value\=-1\.000000)/g' > User.ini-fix && rm -f User.ini && mv User.ini-fix User.ini
LE5: Blue shiny skin people apparently at least on nVidia binary blob get's fixed by updating to driver 331.xx or later (source)
LE4: If voices don't work, it's actually not related to audio channels, it's due to case-sensitive filenames Here is the command for english voices, go to your Steam folder for The Witcher 2, enter cookedpc:
Code:
ln -s en0.w2speech EN0.w2speech
LE3: Apparently CDP should make some sort of announcement soon, monday maybe?
@Link"Paul Lesurf, May 24 18:31:
Hi,
We appreciate your help and sensible approach. Rest assured we are paying attention and working with Valve, the video driver team and CDP to address as many issues a possible. CDP have asked us to allow them to respond officially, so we will not be responding to threads directly. But do please continue, we are totally committed to addressing the current issues.
We will continue to monitor the thread!
Best regards."
LE2: Github issues repo: https://github.com/KillaW0lf04/The-Witcher-2-Issues/issues
LE1: See the performance comparison post #6
Let's try to get them collected here, in some sort of standard format, do include specs, distro, drivers, kernel, windows manager, effects active or not, compositor active or not, pastebin of your ~/.local/cdprojektred/witcher2/GameDocuments/Witcher 2/config/User.ini and anything you have special or think might (not) help.
Specs: i5-4570/GTX660Ti/8GbRAM/Debian Sid 64bit/kernel 3.14/nvidia 337.19/i3wm/no effects or composition
Issues and commentary walking in chapter 1 village so far:
*even though Steam is started you can't run witcher2 directly as
Code:
[S_API FAIL] SteamAPI_Init() failed; Sys_LoadModule failed to load: /home/name/.steam/bin32/steamclient.so
[S_API FAIL] SteamAPI_Init() failed; unable to locate a running instance of Steam, or a local steamclient.dll.
*copied keyboard settings from Windows version since keys did not worked as set up by the configurator, well ESC and F9 worked but not CTRL/W/A/S/D, not to mention I use a Dvorak layout that's not properly detected but yeah
*everyone with keyboard issues, try to get my config (they're the defaults afaik) and edit it your way with an editor, don't use the configurator anymore. Or if you need the configurator, you need to replace de keyboard settings again. Some users reported that adding these launch options to the game in Steam might help when using a non-US locale:
Code:
LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8 %command%
*walked a bit and there is a place near the lady that makes stew where the textures go black for 1 split-second, I could repro it at will; Steam did not screenshot it but that's another issue as it did not do any screenshot at all; game crashed walking a bit more; on a third run It did not happen.
*droped framerate to 0.3fps and had to kill the game on the second run; walking in the same section where on my first run it worked ok
*the bug reporter errors out with "JSON parse error or Base64 decode error on the server!" sometimes
*the bug reporter needs to include 'cat ~/.local/cdprojektred/witcher2/GameDocuments/Witcher 2/config/User.ini' too, I'll provide mine here: http://pastebin.com/4WZ6nt3W ( yes it has more stuff copied from my Windows one, that might work or not on this wrapped version )
*you can use, through WINE, the Tweaker: http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher2/mods/181/ to import, it can't use hidden folders like .local so linking the settings folder to your home, run in a terminal
Code:
ln -s ~/.local/cdprojektred/witcher2/GameDocuments/Witcher\ 2 ~/
*compositors will hit performance as eON does not do proper fullscreen (which the compositors will detect and not affect) but they do some sort of borderless window scaled to desktop size, iirc. So using a lighter WM + disabling composition should help. phoronix has plenty of WM/DE performance tests ( http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_mint17_desktops&num=1 ) try to choose a lighter suite maybe it can help.
*game crashes in about 3 minutes or less sometimes
60 seconds voglperf plot, non-human district near the river, chapter 1: http://i.imgur.com/RPqQRw5.png
Last edited: