My Impressions on Witcher 2 Patch 1.3. , Completed Twice on Hard
NOTE: I have actually posted this on GoG Forum, but I suppose it would still be relevant to repost it here. Just hope it would help the users here in some way.
Done completing Witcher 2 version 1.3 TWICE on Hard setting--that would make it 8 times replaying the game, trying to find the best save games to be ported to Witcher 3. And no, I don't want to play insane, thank you. Maybe later. Much later.
No worth mentioning bugs or plot breaker whatnot, except maybe for the combat hickups--which was felt kinda weird at first but then I got used to after awhile, and once or twice dysfunctional keyboard shortcuts when playing dice games but was easily fixed with dice board mods from Witcher Nexus. I don't know if the mod actually did anything, but maybe due to the environment scripting it uses, made my playthrough somewhat smoother.
As a side note, I tried several other mods as well, such as the zero weight mods and better imported items, plus several self-modification files in /CookedPC/ folder. I also modified the "user.ini" file to set resolutions to 1024x740 and Fullscreen=0, to overcome FoV issue and SpaceBar QTE not registering when fighting Kayran. No negative effect whatsoever. Both playhtrough went smooth and never CTD (Crash to Desktop).
What I notice the most, though, was the significant increased FPS, very much unlike the experiences I got when playing vanilla and previous patches. Lags? Nope.
At this point I have had enough playing TW2. Too much, too close, burning my eyes and mind it starts to feel unhealthy.
My rigs:
Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 2.93GHz
RAM 3GB (Virtual Memory set to 3072)
NVIDIA 9400 GT 128bit 512MB
Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit
Monitor Widescreen 16:9 with Max. Res 1360x768 60Hz
Keyboard + Mouse, no gamepad
User.ini configurations:
[Rendering]
AllowAntialias=0
AllowBloom=1
AllowBlur=0
AllowCutsceneDOF=0
AllowDOF=1
AllowDecals=0.5
AllowMotionBlur=0
AllowRain=0
AllowSSAO=0
AllowScatterDOF=0
AllowShafts=1
AllowSharpen=1
AllowVignette=1
AtlasTextureDownscale=1
CharacterLodGameplayDownscale=1
DanglesLimiter=1
DetailTextureDownscale=1
FoliageDistanceScale=0.9
Fullscreen=0
MaxAtlasTextureSize=4096
MaxCubeShadowCount=1
MaxCubeShadowSize=256
MaxSpotShadowCount=3
MaxSpotShadowSize=512
MaxTextureSize=2048
MeshDistanceScale=1.0
ShadowQuality=3
ShadowedLights=3
TextureDownscale=1
TextureMemoryBudget=400
TextureTimeBudget=10
UberSampling=1
VSync=0
[Viewport]
Height=740
Width=1024
For those who prefer a GUI approach when editing User.ini file, the following thread is worth to look:
http://en.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?/topic/22530-the-witcher-2-tweaker/page__p__697380__fromsearch__1#entry697380
AFAIK, the only solution regarding FoV in Patch 1.3 and gaining stable improved FPS for my machine--for now, is by setting the resolutions to that particular dimensions--1024x740 or 1024x720. If I set to 1024x768 us usual, it got the truncated view, so I put the Fullscreen flag to "0" because the game doesn't exactly support custom view in fullscreen.
Depending on your monitor and GPU, you can actually experiment with resolutions to find which one does the best.
TextureMemoryBudget also plays a role. General rule of thumb, one needs to set it half the actual VRAM, so if I have 512, ideally I should set it to 256. But as you can see I set it to 400, and my machine doesn't seems to mind. So I let it be.
Basically, I mucked around the configurations in user.ini file to come up with the best possible settings for my machine. There are quite a lot of references and guides on the net for this. To that end, this particular link is the most popular--use this as the template to which you modify your own configurations:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/580627-witcher-2-performance-issues-solved.html
For windows 7 users, if ye want to increase the balance between performance and graphics even more, besides using the configurations as I've described above, set the windows' visual Performance Option settings to "Adjust for best performance".
The steps:
Start Menu--> Computer --> Right click--> Properties--> Performance Information and Tools--> Adjust Visual Effect--> "Adjust for best performance".
Also, set the followings:
ShadowQuality=0
ShadowedLights=0
PS:
I don't know if it would also work on XP, but I suppose it worth to try.
For technical troubleshooting guides, including all patches, I find this particular link to be extremely important: http://en.thewitcher.com/support/
NOTE: I have actually posted this on GoG Forum, but I suppose it would still be relevant to repost it here. Just hope it would help the users here in some way.
Done completing Witcher 2 version 1.3 TWICE on Hard setting--that would make it 8 times replaying the game, trying to find the best save games to be ported to Witcher 3. And no, I don't want to play insane, thank you. Maybe later. Much later.
No worth mentioning bugs or plot breaker whatnot, except maybe for the combat hickups--which was felt kinda weird at first but then I got used to after awhile, and once or twice dysfunctional keyboard shortcuts when playing dice games but was easily fixed with dice board mods from Witcher Nexus. I don't know if the mod actually did anything, but maybe due to the environment scripting it uses, made my playthrough somewhat smoother.
As a side note, I tried several other mods as well, such as the zero weight mods and better imported items, plus several self-modification files in /CookedPC/ folder. I also modified the "user.ini" file to set resolutions to 1024x740 and Fullscreen=0, to overcome FoV issue and SpaceBar QTE not registering when fighting Kayran. No negative effect whatsoever. Both playhtrough went smooth and never CTD (Crash to Desktop).
What I notice the most, though, was the significant increased FPS, very much unlike the experiences I got when playing vanilla and previous patches. Lags? Nope.
At this point I have had enough playing TW2. Too much, too close, burning my eyes and mind it starts to feel unhealthy.
My rigs:
Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 2.93GHz
RAM 3GB (Virtual Memory set to 3072)
NVIDIA 9400 GT 128bit 512MB
Windows 7 Ultimate 32 bit
Monitor Widescreen 16:9 with Max. Res 1360x768 60Hz
Keyboard + Mouse, no gamepad
User.ini configurations:
[Rendering]
AllowAntialias=0
AllowBloom=1
AllowBlur=0
AllowCutsceneDOF=0
AllowDOF=1
AllowDecals=0.5
AllowMotionBlur=0
AllowRain=0
AllowSSAO=0
AllowScatterDOF=0
AllowShafts=1
AllowSharpen=1
AllowVignette=1
AtlasTextureDownscale=1
CharacterLodGameplayDownscale=1
DanglesLimiter=1
DetailTextureDownscale=1
FoliageDistanceScale=0.9
Fullscreen=0
MaxAtlasTextureSize=4096
MaxCubeShadowCount=1
MaxCubeShadowSize=256
MaxSpotShadowCount=3
MaxSpotShadowSize=512
MaxTextureSize=2048
MeshDistanceScale=1.0
ShadowQuality=3
ShadowedLights=3
TextureDownscale=1
TextureMemoryBudget=400
TextureTimeBudget=10
UberSampling=1
VSync=0
[Viewport]
Height=740
Width=1024
For those who prefer a GUI approach when editing User.ini file, the following thread is worth to look:
http://en.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?/topic/22530-the-witcher-2-tweaker/page__p__697380__fromsearch__1#entry697380
AFAIK, the only solution regarding FoV in Patch 1.3 and gaining stable improved FPS for my machine--for now, is by setting the resolutions to that particular dimensions--1024x740 or 1024x720. If I set to 1024x768 us usual, it got the truncated view, so I put the Fullscreen flag to "0" because the game doesn't exactly support custom view in fullscreen.
Depending on your monitor and GPU, you can actually experiment with resolutions to find which one does the best.
TextureMemoryBudget also plays a role. General rule of thumb, one needs to set it half the actual VRAM, so if I have 512, ideally I should set it to 256. But as you can see I set it to 400, and my machine doesn't seems to mind. So I let it be.
Basically, I mucked around the configurations in user.ini file to come up with the best possible settings for my machine. There are quite a lot of references and guides on the net for this. To that end, this particular link is the most popular--use this as the template to which you modify your own configurations:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/580627-witcher-2-performance-issues-solved.html
For windows 7 users, if ye want to increase the balance between performance and graphics even more, besides using the configurations as I've described above, set the windows' visual Performance Option settings to "Adjust for best performance".
The steps:
Start Menu--> Computer --> Right click--> Properties--> Performance Information and Tools--> Adjust Visual Effect--> "Adjust for best performance".
Also, set the followings:
ShadowQuality=0
ShadowedLights=0
PS:
I don't know if it would also work on XP, but I suppose it worth to try.
For technical troubleshooting guides, including all patches, I find this particular link to be extremely important: http://en.thewitcher.com/support/