Support NeoGAF

[Xtyle]

Here's where I got my exe and paul.dll

http://gf.wiretarget.com/the_witcher_2.htm Note: Ads may be NSFW

(This should be fine to post. It's just the exe and dll, not the game files. Not intending to break any rules with this post)

Download the first one. Be sure to back up your legit exe/paul.dll.

are these the GOG files?

Can I use these on my retail copy?

 

[Xtyle]

If all else fails, the DLC _is_ free so all you really need is the .dzip file to get it to run.

I have the collector's edition free dlc and the pre-order dlc. do these work with GOG exe?

 

[Manik]

are these the GOG files?

Can I use these on my retail copy?

Yep, just replace your witcher.exe and paul.dll with the files in the zip - that's what I've done on mine.

 

[AwesomeSauce]

Floatsam on my gtx 260 was pretty choppy when running around. Changing the texture downgrade to low fixed the choppiness, but Geralt's face looked less detailed. So i made a compromise, i lowered the streaming textures to small and put the lod to far and the results are smoother although textures kind of pop in still.

 

[BoobPhysics101]

My thread at Notebookreview.com was shut down because the mods claim that I'm promoting 'cracking the game' and 'bypassing DRM is against the forum rules.' When the developer says you can bypass the DRM and use the GOG version exe, I don't believe the forum rules apply when it's sanctioned by the creators themselves. They also deleted my posts in another thread...

Very annoying.

I've had no framerate improvement, but the first loading of a save went from 30 secs, to around 11 secs.

One negative is that the Launcher now takes 2 or 3 times as long, to pop up. Weird.


I'm just saying that modifying settings like MaxSpotShadowSize and MeshDistanceScale will only have them revert to the default numbers, after the game launches..

You can just change the User.ini to read only to make sure the game doesn't try to revert your settings... I forgot to mention that. :\ It lets you use the higher texture memory settings.

I think it's interesting that Very High only goes to 600 MB, which makes it perfect for 1 GB cards.




For anyone that wants to try out higher texture memory settings

Change your user.ini to read only. Forgot to mention this. Sorry.

 

[Arozay]

Replaced my thermal paste and overclocked to 3.6 for my next playthrough.

 

[_Xenon_]

Yep, the gog.exe trick also works on my ATI 5370 (around 5 fps boost).

 

[ManeKast]

My thread at Notebookreview.com was shut down because the mods claim that I'm promoting 'cracking the game' and 'bypassing DRM is against the forum rules.' When the developer says you can bypass the DRM and use the GOG version exe, I don't believe the forum rules apply when it's sanctioned by the creators themselves. They also deleted my posts in another thread...

Very annoying.




You can just change the User.ini to read only to make sure the game doesn't try to revert your settings... I forgot to mention that. :\ It lets you use the higher texture memory settings.

I think it's interesting that Very High only goes to 600 MB, which makes it perfect for 1 GB cards.




For anyone that wants to try out higher texture memory settings

Change your user.ini to read only. Forgot to mention this. Sorry.

I have a GTX 460m 1.5gb, what would you recommend as an .ini setting for that?

 

[burgerdog]

My game crashes whenever I set my texture memory size to something other than very small. I have a 1gb 6870. Whenever I talk to someone or there's cutscenes everything that's 5 yards from Geralt / Npc is black.

 

[BoobPhysics101]

I have a GTX 460m 1.5gb, what would you recommend as an .ini setting for that?

Try setting texture memory budget to 1000. Set user.ini to Read-only. See how the game performs. It may or may not load more smoothly for you since it'll have a huge cache for textures.

I have a theory that the texture time budget is the setting that controls how long it holds textures in VRAM cache before purging them, and I'm wondering if increasing the setting will keep the cache larger so that if you go back into an area it won't have to purge and re-cache since it's just sitting there.

It might not even make a difference since the game performs so well on High or Very High texture memory budgets, but it does seem to have a lot of highly detailed textures so there is the possibility. It really needs testing to figure out what's going on.

 

[Nekrono]

I have a GTX 460m 1.5gb, what would you recommend as an .ini setting for that?

You should try ~800, I'm using 1000 on my 2GB 6950, I'm going by the 'logic' that 600 is Very High and it's probably meant for 1GB cards.

 

[BoobPhysics101]

My game crashes whenever I set my texture memory size to something other than very small. I have a 1gb 6870. Whenever I talk to someone or there's cutscenes everything that's 5 yards from Geralt / Npc is black.

That's odd. Is antialiasing disabled in Catalyst Control Center? A 1 GB card should be able to handle Very High texture memory budget.

 

[burgerdog]

That's odd. Is antialiasing disabled in Catalyst Control Center? A 1 GB card should be able to handle Very High texture memory budget.

Yeah, it is disabled at a driver level and in-game as well.

 

[The Broken Ska Record]

So that's why no matter the setting, the game seems to have framerate issues.

I have:
Retail Edition,
8GBs RAM,
Phenom II X6,
and a Radeon HD 6570.

The game recommended High Settings, but during some cutscenes, it looks so bad. D:

 

[BoobPhysics101]

Yeah, it is disabled at a driver level and in-game as well.

Set texturememorybudget to 500 MB in User.ini, and set it to read only. Post what happens after that.

 

[koji]

Oh man, that DRM stuff is fooked up. Ah well, good we can use the GOG exe. Will try it tonight.

 

[burgerdog]

Set texturememorybudget to 500 MB in User.ini, and set it to read only. Post what happens after that.

Done. I am done playing for tonight. I will update tomorrow. Thanks.

 

[boundedseven]

My Game has been running fine so far but I get a black screen in 2nd chapter after the scene ends after

Spoiler

king resurrects and kills the witch

. The screen blacks out after the cutscene. This happens again and gain. I'm running the latest Nvidia beta driver on a GTX 450 and Intel i5 760. Even tried lowering graphics setting and reinstalling drivers but no mercy.

Please help!

 

[Gunpriest]

gog.exe might brake the game!

guru3d forum post

I think it is a little bit too late for me now :/

Anyone speak polish and can check/confirm it?

 

[Ashour]

gog.exe might brake the game!

guru3d forum post

I think it is a little bit too late for me now :/

Anyone speak polish and can check/confirm it?

I don't. but are you sure this is the right link. it opens another thread on GAF for me.

 

[Gunpriest]

I don't. but are you sure this is the right link. it opens another thread on GAF for me.

Link should work.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=3992158&postcount=143

 

[MNC]

gog.exe might brake the game!

guru3d forum post

I think it is a little bit too late for me now :/

Anyone speak polish and can check/confirm it?

Oh, fuck... That sucks :/

 

[Gunpriest]

Oh, fuck... That sucks :/

Well, until someone can post a link to the polish forum or confirms that his game broke after the exe-switch, i will remain sceptical. I think, if there were a problem with bugged quests, there would be at least a few posts already.

 

[Ashour]

Link should work.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=3992158&postcount=143

yeah it working now. good thing I didn't play much after I changed the .exe

 

[brotkasten]

Still no AMD hotfix for this?

 

[Minsc]

Well, until someone can post a link to the polish forum or confirms that his game broke after the exe-switch, i will remain sceptical. I think, if there were a problem with bugged quests, there would be at least a few posts already.

Yea, it is very unusual behavior (I've swapped exes all the time in the past, very rare for this kind of thing to happen). I'd almost call it a scare tactic, but for now I will post a warning.

 

[Sanjay]

Hello,


This issue will be solved in next week patch


best regards
Przemek Wójcik.

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=3991788&postcount=30

 

[burgerdog]

Set texturememorybudget to 500 MB in User.ini, and set it to read only. Post what happens after that.

Update! Couldn't sleep so I started playing and sure enough, no crashes, no texture pop-in anymore(thank yooooooou), and it even runs a bit smoother to boot.

 

[AwesomeSauce]

Is it just me or whenever i press start to access the menu, it takes like 10 seconds to pop up.

 

[Gunpriest]

Is it just me or whenever i press start to access the menu, it takes like 10 seconds to pop up.

Check your savegames folder. If it is too large, delete or backup the oldest ones and keep just the last 5 or 10.

 

[AwesomeSauce]

Check your savegames folder. If it is too large, delete or backup the oldest ones and keep just the last 5 or 10.

Ok, I do have a lot of saves for when i was still configuring the game. I'll go ahead and delete them and see if it'll fix my problem.

 

[Ryuuga]

gog.exe might brake the game!

guru3d forum post

I think it is a little bit too late for me now :/

Anyone speak polish and can check/confirm it?

Yeah, I'm going to need something more substantial. Then again who is to say there won't be adverse effects post patch 1.1

 

[Corky]

will using the gog.exe /dll impede future patches?

 

[L0st Id3ntity]

http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=3991788&postcount=30

I've been reading "next week" since last tuesday derp.

 

[Andrea23]

will using the gog.exe /dll impede future patches?

I think the best choice is to restore both from the backup, BEFORE patching : ).

 

[Corky]

I think the best choice is to restore both from the backup, BEFORE patching : ).

I messed up, overwrote the files without backing up.... fml...Anyways I got too anxious and want to try out the fix. Here are a couple of screens, resized.

Here's what I tried : in both scenarios I used the custom SLI bits, with the default bits the fix didn't have an affect for me on the 270.61 whql drivers.

Scenario one : A couple of days old screens, broken ass drm bullshit version. All ultra. Uber below

Scenario two : similar area : gog exe, dll, same settings ( ultra ). Uber below. 100% increase in performance... how could it get this fucked up.

 

[Corky]

Here's a bonus pic :

Uber setting on + tweaks to ultra setting ( no bloom / ssao / DoF ). The results are ridiculous.
I'm now getting around 45-50 fps in the town, vergen which is what I got pre-fix with uber disabled

 

[LiquidMetal14]

Nice pics but can you do us a favor and post pics of the early parts of the game. I haven't been that far and would like that to be a surprise. I've probably put in 10 hours and am still in Chapter 1.

 

[Corky]

Sorry mate, thought by now that there'd been tons of screens of pretty much the entire game in this thread.

Will keep that in mind though, anyways now I'm gonna try flotsam.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

Sorry mate, thought by now that there'd been tons of screens of pretty much the entire game in this thread.

Will keep that in mind though, anyways now I'm gonna try flotsam.

I'm not offended. It's not even highly spoilerish. I will take some shots of my comparison as well in a few minutes.

 

[Corky]

I'm not offended. It's not even highly spoilerish. I will take some shots of my comparison as well in a few minutes.

Cheers, looking forward to it

edit : oh also I forgot a vital part, my launch time from double click to navigating the menu ( not counting the few seconds of dev intros ) went from 45 seconds do 10ish on mechanical HDD.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

I don't know if it's because I applied new ini settings yesterday but the frame rate I noticed was totally different and highly improved. I got the same FR but on both but this is still a huge improvement over the last time I was in this particular area. I'm usually always above 60 prior to the ini settings poster yesterday. Now I get these results regardless....

Retail EXE with default ultra ini settings.....

GOG EXE with new user ini settings....

Gonna try a different area.

 

[Corky]

.

Interesting, what kind of ini settings did you change?

For the sake of experiment I tried Flotsam with the fix. I don't have the before screen but it was like usual, which was around 15 fps with uber enabled in the gallows area.

New result :

Again, ultra + uber + tweaks ( ssao/bloom/dof = off ), a staggering 3X increase in performance.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

AllowAntialias=1
AllowBloom=0
AllowBlur=1
AllowCutsceneDOF=1
AllowDOF=1
AllowDecals=1.0
AllowMotionBlur=0
AllowRain=1
AllowSSAO=1
AllowScatterDOF=1
AllowShafts=1
AllowSharpen=1
AllowVignette=1
AtlasTextureDownscale=0
DanglesLimiter=0
DetailTextureDownscale=0
FoliageDistanceScale=1.1
Fullscreen=1
MaxAtlasTextureSize=4096
MaxCubeShadowCount=2
MaxCubeShadowSize=1024
MaxSpotShadowCount=2
MaxSpotShadowSize=1024
MaxTextureSize=2048
MeshDistanceScale=1.3
ShadowQuality=3
ShadowedLights=3
TextureDownscale=0
TextureMemoryBudget=1200
UberSampling=0
VSync=0

I manually added the foliage distance. The texture budget is 1200 since I have a 2GB GPU. I was told yesterday I could set it to 1400 but I haven't tried that yet. Here's the results of my second compare. Again, oddly it's the same but still improved than to prior use of default ultra ini settings.

ORIGINAL

GOG with ini from above

It's worth going with the GOG just for the fast loads but I might be timid after reading it may break the game for some. They better patch this up.

I should try this on uber too, mine are non uber shots.

 

[LiquidMetal14]

Turned uber on and took this quick shot

I have SSAO on but motion blur and bloom off on all these shots. Also VSYNC disabled of course. Merely for preferential purposes.

I hover slightly above 30 though for the most part. I was in the teens before.

 

[cleveridea]

WTF what a disaster this launch has been. Still waiting for response from "support" to turn my CE from being a $130 doorstop, and it sounds like performance would be broken anyway.

This launch has been a bigger disappointment to me than DA2. (At least I could PLAY it).

 

[Corky]

WTF what a disaster this launch has been. Still waiting for response from "support" to turn my CE from being a $130 doorstop, and it sounds like performance would be broken anyway.

This launch has been a bigger disappointment to me than DA2. (At least I could PLAY it).

I agree to a certain extent, on one hand it has been very iffy with registration, gpu utlization, random bugs in general, drm assholery.

But on the other hand, now that I personally tried the game with both my gpus@ 100%, the game has scary good performance imo.

 

[Sanjay]

:O does it ever dip below 30 with uber? you got 580 sli right and is that @ 1080p res?

Again, ultra + uber + tweaks ( ssao/bloom/dof = off ), a staggering 3X increase in performance.

Tweaks?

 

[diztrukted]

has anyone been able to get their pre order dlc/collectors edition dlc to work?

specifically the roche commando jacket; i was able to get the ultimate swordsman suit to download but that was about it.

 

[Corky]

:O does it ever dip below 30 with uber? you got 580 sli right and is that @ 1080p res?

Tweaks?

I'll run around with fraps for a couple of minutes and get back to ya on the sub 30 part. I have 560 sli although they're both @ 900 mhz.

The tweaks are the ones I mentioned in the brackets, i.e ssao/bloom/dof off.