The Witcher 2 Performance Rises Again For Linux Gamers

[haplo602]

I just hope that Witcher 1 will get the same treatment once the wrapper is working fine :-)

[Guest]

A real Linux port, even if it would be a lazy port without any optimization will be 10 times better than this Wine-like port with full optimizations.

This statement couldn't be less true.

[Ekianjo]

Too much work for that result.

A real Linux port, even if it would be a lazy port without any optimization will be 10 times better than this Wine-like port with full optimizations.

Word.

I think you clearly underestimate the amount of work that goes in a proper port.

[hiryu]

Finally found the time to give it another try. The Witcher 2 definitely runs a lot better for me now. Still clearly not as well as Windows (my system can handle this game in windows with uber sampling without breaking a sweat).

During the beginning of the tutorial level, by eyeballing it, I can the game clearly runs at a solid 60 fps with vsync (with uber sampling it seems to hover around 30 fps with occasional drops).

I copied over my saves from Windows and I'm at some camp somewhere (it's been so long since I played the game, I don't even remember what's going on so I can't really say where I am), the framerate chokes a lot until it caches the level. From there, the framerate seems to stutter a fair amount. It stutters too much for me to feel comfortable eyeballing the framerate. Maybe if I find some more time and if I'm bored, I'll try with VOGL.

Once the level is cached in GPU memory, and although I'm VERY picky in general, the stutters aren't too jarring and the game is very playable now (assuming I get none of the random crashes that people have experienced in the past at least). I should try it on my laptop at some point with the haswell graphics and see how poorly it does there.

Hopefully it works with a 360 controller under Linux, I don't really feel The Witcher 2 is suitable for mouse/keyboard. I haven't bothered trying the controller under Linux just yet.

My specs for reference:
i7 4960x
GTX 780
32GB memory
KDE 4.13
Linux 3.16.1

[smitty3268]

Too much work for that result.

A real Linux port, even if it would be a lazy port without any optimization will be 10 times better than this Wine-like port with full optimizations.

Word.

Spoken like a true non-programmer.

[Ekianjo]

Hopefully it works with a 360 controller under Linux, I don't really feel The Witcher 2 is suitable for mouse/keyboard. I haven't bothered trying the controller under Linux just yet.

Yes　it does, I have been playing it from the start with the 360 controller on Linux. Make sure you connect your controller before launching steam, though. Sometimes it's not properly detected if I don't do that.

[glxextxexlg]

I think you clearly underestimate the amount of work that goes in a proper port.

I think you underestimate the importance of R&D. When a company ports a game engine natively to linux it develops the necessary means, tools and know-how to port future titles to linux. If it sticks with wrappers then it means the later ports from that company will probably suck too.

[Ekianjo]

I think you underestimate the importance of R&D. When a company ports a game engine natively to linux it develops the necessary means, tools and know-how to port future titles to linux. If it sticks with wrappers then it means the later ports from that company will probably suck too.

You don't understand what eON's business model is. eON is not about taking the source code of every single game out there, analyzing it, and converting DirectX calls to OpenGL calls. That's way too much work if you do it game by game. Their business model is to do this via a wrapper, that they can reapply to many games without too much work every time. If the wrapper is good enough this is probably a good option for engines that do not support Linux natively and for which the publisher has no interest of supporting directly.

Plus, you seem to be very critical of eON's wrapper, but the latest beta's performance is impressive to say the least. It's much, much better than the first release and now The Witcher 2 runs pretty well compared to the Windows version. Not parity, but good enough to be smooth on my config so that I don't have to care anymore about the frame rate. Look at the comments on the Beta release, it's the general sentiment that they finally got their act together.

[glxextxexlg]

Plus, you seem to be very critical of eON's wrapper, but the latest beta's performance is impressive to say the least. It's much, much better than the first release and now The Witcher 2 runs pretty well compared to the Windows version. Not parity, but good enough to be smooth on my config so that I don't have to care anymore about the frame rate. Look at the comments on the Beta release, it's the general sentiment that they finally got their act together.

I think there's a misunderstanding here.. (yeah I played the arena part of the game and it still runs sluggish at times on low settings with my GTS450 but much better than before) I'm not talking about eON when I say company.. The company is CD Projekt which developed the RED engine. They are the ones that should do the R&D work to port the engine to linux. eON's business model is of course based on parallel technologies and they'd develop the best tools to achieve the most acceptable results for the amount of cash they receive. The point is if CD Projekt does the R&D work in house, no one will need partners like eON in the first place. And they can port their future titles much easier thanks to the know-how they've achieved.

[Guest]

^
Well, when you optimize for DX, you generally make OpenGL port harder, since these APIs aren't exactly the same API's with different function names (albeit they do the same work in similar manner).
I must agree with other comments, if the linux port got the performance of latest beta from start, people wouldn't be whining.
Game is very much playable at current hardware (2011+).

And yes, If cdprojekt designed the game around OpenGL, porting it to linux would require minimal effort and performance would be comparable to windows.
The problem with that is the fact that fewer programmers work on opengl games while majority of engine programmers know DX.
So it's much costlier (and thus more risky, business wise) to decide to go for OpenGL while benefits are questionable (yeah, linux gaming market is small).