60 replies to this topic

[Hansi]

http://store.steampo....com/app/20900/

Seems Steam only for now: http://www.gog.com/g...ard/the_witcher

[Janichsan]

Niiice...

I'll wait for a non-Steam version, though.

[Wumpus]

I've had it on Steam for years, cool to see Steamplay

Of course my Steam just crapped out and won't launch, giving me weird errors. Perfect freaking timing.

[mindnoise]

GOG really goes overkill! Good for us all! And Assassins Creed goes DRM FREE.

I had the PC GOG Witcher for some time now.

[Ichigo27]

Still have the boxed copy I bought ages ago. Though, minimum requirement for the GPU is weird.

Quote

Graphics: Graphics card nVidia GeForce 320M (or better), AMD Radeon HD 6750M (or better) or Intel HD Graphics 3000

Doesn't mention minimum vram. I have half gig 6750M. Still I'd like to see a mac port of witcher 2 that doesn't require 4 gigs of ram.

[Smoke_Tetsu]

I poked around the partially downloaded .app file and they used wineskin to "port" it. So it's just wrapped... they didn't hire a programmer to hand port it or anything. Still the requirements shouldn't be that high. I'm going to give it a try and see.

[Wumpus]

Runs flawlessly on my setup, but then again it is a 5 year old game, so it should. I think the devs didn't post good minimum specs, because I only have a 5750 card, not a 6750. Also on PC the minimum vram is 256, so I imagine you could get by with that. Still to run things on medium/high you will want a 512 card or better.

[Eric5h5]

Wumpus, on 05 April 2012 - 05:57 PM, said:

I only have a 5750 card, not a 6750.

The 6750 isn't really better than the 5750.  Makes it kinda hard to tell what "6750M (or better)" actually means though, unless you're familiar with graphics card specs.  How about a naming system that makes sense....

--Eric

[The Liberator]

Eric5h5, on 05 April 2012 - 06:34 PM, said:

The 6750 isn't really better than the 5750.  Makes it kinda hard to tell what "6750M (or better)" actually means though, unless you're familiar with graphics card specs.  How about a naming system that makes sense....

--Eric

Yeah, highly confusing.

Great news about the Witcher. I really didn't expect it to go SteamPlay, as I bought it a few weeks back when it was on special.

Lib.

[clocknova]

Quite a day for Mac gaming.  King's Bounty, King's Bounty: Armored Princess, and now The Witcher: Enhanced Edition.

I bought the PC version on Steam a while back, then picked up the GOG version as well for the no-DRM, but I could never get it to work just right in Wineskin; there were always a few issues that I couldn't get around.  This new version may just be a "wrapped" one, but at least it's officially supported so everything should work just right.  After all, performance wasn't an issue; I got great framerates before, just too many graphical glitches to play it.

This is great news.  Now, if I only had time to play it right now.

EDIT:
Hmmmm.  No graphical glitches, obviously, but I got better performance with the Wineskin version.  Which is odd, because it looks like this "official" version actually <i>uses</i> Wineskin.  There's no Wineskin config app, but I should be able to swap out the Wineskin engine with a new one to see if I can improve the performance.  I'll tinker with it.  This is disappointing, though.  Looks like I may still have to wait for a new computer to play this one.

EDIT:

Here's some good news: You can launch the app bundle directly without Steam.  Just move it from the steamapps folder to wherever you want.  Nice.

EDIT:

I installed a Winskin config app from a blank Wineskin wrapper and it seems to work just fine.  The Witcher: Mac Edition is using an older version of the Wineskin engine (WS8 1.3.7).  I'm going to try replacing it with the latest version and see what happens.  They really did this port on the cheap, though.

EDIT:
Swapped out the 1.3.7 engine with the very latest 1.5 engine and performance has improved SIGNIFICANTLY.  I mean it.  And there are still no glitches, so whatever they did to fix those errors it wasn't by customizing a Wineskin engine.  It's something else in the wrapper or the game files themselves.  I don't know why they used such an old engine, but I'd be surprised if they spend much time keeping it updated.  Fortunately, it's easy enough to do myself, though I don't expect this kind of tinkering is for everyone.

Long story short: if you know how to use Wineskin, then copy the Wineskin config app from an empty wrapper into The Witcher's app bundle, launch it, then change the engine to the latest version (make sure you have the latest version downloaded and installed using Wineskin Winery first.)  Or you can copy the new engine in manually, but I much prefer to use the config app.

[Tacohead]

I posted a comment of disbelief in the News Discussion thread before I noticed this thread. Even after reading this thread and learning about it being a Wineskin port I'm still pleasantly surprised. I had toyed with the idea of getting this in the past and porting it myself but I wasn't confident it would work based on comments on the Porting Team's forums. Problem solved now it seems. And thanks for the tips Clocknova. Whenever I do get it I'll swap out the engine as well.

Perhaps this is their way of testing the Mac market? In any case $10 is a pretty good deal for a game like this and I bet it will be even cheaper when Steam has its annual Summer sale in a few months.

-PN

[clocknova]

I can't promise that some errors won't crop up later in the game.  They might have had a reason for using the old engine, but the opening fight sequences play flawlessly and at a much higher framerate on my Mac with the 1.5 engine.

[Tacohead]

clocknova, on 06 April 2012 - 09:57 AM, said:

I can't promise that some errors won't crop up later in the game.  They might have had a reason for using the old engine, but the opening fight sequences play flawlessly and at a much higher framerate on my Mac with the 1.5 engine.

I'd be willing to chance it. If any problems occur I can always blame you.

-PN

[Wumpus]

Tacohead, on 06 April 2012 - 09:49 AM, said:

Perhaps this is their way of testing the Mac market? In any case $10 is a pretty good deal for a game like this and I bet it will be even cheaper when Steam has its annual Summer sale in a few months.

-PN

If you're waiting for a $10 game to go on sale then I don't know what to say

[Tacohead]

Wumpus, on 06 April 2012 - 10:01 AM, said:

If you're waiting for a $10 game to go on sale then I don't know what to say

Oh I'm not waiting. I just mentioned that because Steam actually sold this game before for a few bucks during one of their recent sales. That said I'm really surprised they made this Steamplay. Granted it was probably ported in a few days or less but still. It's not often we see games of this stature pop up on Steam for the Mac as a Steamplay title for $10 or less (and like I said it will be less probably pretty soon). It's pretty unusual to say the least.

-PN

[clocknova]

I'm just glad that, after buying the Steam AND the GOG version, I didn't have to buy the Mac version as well.

[Thinine]

Can anyone comment on native resolution performance for a 27" iMac with 4850?

[Smoke_Tetsu]

I can but your mileage may vary. I run it at 1920x1080 max detail although I set draw distance to average and the frame rate is very good so far and is more than just "OK".

Anyway, what's odd for me is the game wasn't launching at first because somehow the .exe wasn't defined in the .plist file for it. But running the wineskin configurator inside the wrapper and setting it helped. Also I couldn't move it from where steam installed it and upgrade the WINE engine at the same time. I had to keep it where it was installed before adding in the wineskin.app file into the wrapper and changing the engine.

Also upgrading to the latest WINE engine 1.5.1 tanked the performance but 1.5 works fine and I used the custom one with rawinput patch just for the hell of it.

To be honest I'm not a huge fan of the way the combat works so far.  

[Tacohead]

Well I got The Witcher. First it launched to a black screen. Pressing Command-Q got me out of that. Second launch worked fine and I watched the entire intro but at the main menu screen there's no mouse cursor. I can see the various menu options light up and click on them when that happens but since I can't see where the mouse cursor is I'm forced to move the mouse around until I see a menu option light up to locate it. I managed to start a new game and in-game the same problem persists. I then updated the WINE engine to 1.5 and the invisible mouse cursor still persists. Any suggestions?

Edit: Fixed it by running the game in a virtual desktop (via the Wineskin config app). Runs reasonably well for me so far during the tutorial using the Wineskin 1.5 engine.

-PN

[Sneaky Snake]

Smoke_Tetsu, on 06 April 2012 - 08:20 PM, said:

To be honest I'm not a huge fan of the way the combat works so far.  

The longer you play the better it gets. Becomes very fluid and natural eventually

Eric5h5, on 05 April 2012 - 06:34 PM, said:

The 6750 isn't really better than the 5750.  Makes it kinda hard to tell what "6750M (or better)" actually means though, unless you're familiar with graphics card specs.  How about a naming system that makes sense....

--Eric

The 6750 and 5750 are actually identical GPU's. AMD updated the 66xx series, the 68xx series, and the 69xx cards, but thought the the 57xx were already positioned good in a price/performance ratio. So they just rebranded them as 67xx and called it a day.

The 6750M is a lot less powerful, the M refers to mobile, which means that the graphics card is downclocked, cored, and shadered. I'd guess the 6750M to be around the 5670 level performance, perhaps a little less. The best mobile graphics (6990M) is around the performance of a desktop 6850, which your 5870 stomps.

Thinine, on 06 April 2012 - 07:30 PM, said:

Can anyone comment on native resolution performance for a 27" iMac with 4850?

The 6770 is around the same performance as the 4870, so I'd expect the 6750/5750 to be around the same performance as the 4850. If you can find benchmarks with those cards then you should be able to get a pretty good idea of the performance.