The Witcher: Enhance Edition

[Huw the Poo]

I have to say, I'm glad I'll be buying the EE rather than trying to patch the original!

[TiLT]

I have to say, I'm glad I'll be buying the EE rather than trying to patch the original!

It's quite silly, really. A patch should be easy to apply. We've done this hundreds of times before in other games, so why should it be so hard in this one? Just to rub salt in the wound, their download page brags about how easy it is. Yeah, thanks! It's good to know that the patch that has given me the most problems EVER is really easy to download and install.

No no, I'm not bitter. Not at all.   

[Huw the Poo]

I do feel for you and others, TiLT.  I speak as someone who has reinstalled Falcon countless times (i.e. done the dance).  It's absolutely pitiful really.  There's no excuse for not getting a patch to your own game to run properly.

[Sarkus]

What bothers me is that it could have been simple if they had wanted it to be.  The way it should work is that you run the game, tell it to look for an update, and then it should know which version you need based on the language version you have registered with them.  Simple download, one file, mirrors and alternate sites all behind the scenes.

Instead I downloaded the language part from one third-party site, the main patch from another and can barely get the official site to even load.  Even the Atari PR guy for North America (who is posting over on QT3) admits the whole thing is messed up.

[IkeVandergraaf]

It's been "modifying game files" for almost an hour and a half.  It's frustrating to not know whether it's actually working or not, but it is taking a ridiculously long time.

Oop, wait.  It just did something.

[Lee]

I don't know guys, it was pretty easy for me. Everything worked fine. Now I am stuck because it's telling me to meditate and I can't figure out how.

[TiLT]

I just uninstalled everything then reinstalled it again. Took 2.5 hours just to patch it, and it still doesn't work. This is just depressing.

Btw Lee, you can only meditate by finding a bed or a campfire, IIRC.

[Autistic Angel]

If you're in the prologue, I believe you can only meditate by speaking with Vesemir and clicking on the round "Sleepy Geralt" icon in the lower left hand corner of the screen.

From Chapter 1 onwards, you can meditate at any time to assign your skill points by buying a room at an inn or lighting up one of the campfires in the world.

I've played some more in Chapter 1 and not only is the new translation still holding up extremely well, but I've found that they've completely overhauled the gambling AI during that dice game.  I don't think this is going to be a device for earning unlimited sums of money any more -- I literally can't win a single round!

-Autistic Angel

[Lee]

Thanks, I figured it right after I typed that.

I think the patch censored my Euro version, no nudity when I bedded Triss.

[Octavious230]

I just uninstalled everything then reinstalled it again. Took 2.5 hours just to patch it, and it still doesn't work. This is just depressing.

Btw Lee, you can only meditate by finding a bed or a campfire, IIRC.

Mine crashes on trying to load. The patch took like 2 hours to install. Looks like I'll have to start over from scratch.

[Sarkus]

I had some weirdness with the download, but it seems to work.  What I ended up with was a file that my computer saw simply as a "file" type.  Once I changed the name by adding a ".exe" to the end it installed fine.

Also, I'm not sure what was up with the whole "registered" thing.  I had an active account on the website and it said I had the game registered, but the install program said it wasn't.  I went back and reregistered the game via the launch option and it worked fine.

My only complaint is that some of the voices seem to run too quickly, meaning sometimes people talk over each other a bit.

[Octavious230]

Ya I had to rename the files to get them to run as well. I'm pulling down the language file again as it appears that it might be corrupt.

[CeeKay]

Went through the registration process to discover that the digital copy activation key is invalid for registering the game. 

I'm having the same issue, but I'm trying to contact gamesplanet.com to see if they can supply the correct key.  I saw it suggested on the official forums.


BTW, for those of you wondering, the 1.2 gig Bonus pack is only the manual, a game guide, 2 maps and a bunch of making of movies if you're debating grabbing it.

[Octavious230]

Uninstalled and reinstalled and crash on startup. I think I"ll wait and try in a couple of days..

[TiLT]

Day 2: The game still doesn't run, and no fixes appear to be coming in the near future. The developers are not responding in the forums, at least.

I'm reduced to downloading the game from a P2P site just so I can get past the horrible patching process. From the little we've figured out over at the official forums, it seems the patching itself is introducing some kind of corruption to an unknown file, causing the game to fail to start.

Arr, a pirate's life for me!

[Octavious230]

Ya it's pretty obvious that the patching process wasn't tested very well. I'm away all day today so I'm not really all that upset about it. I'm trying one more time and then I'm going to just wait and see what happens if it doesn't work. I mean what the hell is with it taking 2 hours to install? That makes no sense. Oh well it's free..

[Destructor]

Modifying game files.  This may take up to two hours.  Manually interrupting this process will necessitate re-installation of the game.

Emphasis mine.

Yikes!

"If your PC is utter bunk, this may take up to two hours. On anything even remotely current (especially anything that's capable of playing the game in the first place), this will take 1/10th that, max."

I never understood why they put such insane times in warnings like that.

[CeeKay]

Modifying game files.  This may take up to two hours.  Manually interrupting this process will necessitate re-installation of the game.

Emphasis mine.

Yikes!

"If your PC is utter bunk, this may take up to two hours. On anything even remotely current (especially anything that's capable of playing the game in the first place), this will take 1/10th that, max."

I never understood why they put such insane times in warnings like that.

because people with bunk PC's would complain about them not giving any warning if they didn't.

'OMGZ, they never said it would take 2 HOURZ!!!  I'll never buy from them again!'

[warning]

I just wanted to pop in an say that I'd never played the game but now that I have a smokin' PC I bought and downloaded the Enhanced Edition from Impulse and it was a very smooth process.

[Octavious230]

Mine took 2 hours and my computer isn't bunk..
E6750 with 2 gigs of ram and a 8800gt.

Figured out my problem by reading the forums. I had to drop the audio hardware acceleration down one notch and then it works fine. It appears there's a problem with EAX on some computers that is making it crash. Maybe I'll try reinstalling the sound card drivers later or something.

[TiLT]

"If your PC is utter bunk, this may take up to two hours. On anything even remotely current (especially anything that's capable of playing the game in the first place), this will take 1/10th that, max."

I never understood why they put such insane times in warnings like that.

In this case the warnings are useful. Mine spent 2.5 hours patching, and my computer is certainly not "bunk". According to their own documentation, the process should be noticeably faster in Vista though, for some reason.

[Destructor]

"If your PC is utter bunk, this may take up to two hours. On anything even remotely current (especially anything that's capable of playing the game in the first place), this will take 1/10th that, max."

I never understood why they put such insane times in warnings like that.

In this case the warnings are useful. Mine spent 2.5 hours patching, and my computer is certainly not "bunk". According to their own documentation, the process should be noticeably faster in Vista though, for some reason.

That's insane. The patch must be unpacking and rewriting every core file of the game or something during patching, and then packing everything back up again. How big is the game before and after the patch?

[TiLT]

That's insane. The patch must be unpacking and rewriting every core file of the game or something during patching, and then packing everything back up again. How big is the game before and after the patch?

Dunno, but I guess this is one of those cases where the developer's should have licensed an already existing patching system instead of coding their own. There's probably a decrypting/encrypting thingy going on in the background that goes through the files byte for byte. That's the only reason I can think of for this to take so long.

[Sarkus]

That's insane. The patch must be unpacking and rewriting every core file of the game or something during patching, and then packing everything back up again. How big is the game before and after the patch?

Dunno, but I guess this is one of those cases where the developer's should have licensed an already existing patching system instead of coding their own. There's probably a decrypting/encrypting thingy going on in the background that goes through the files byte for byte. That's the only reason I can think of for this to take so long.

I don't think it's as simple as that.  Otherwise everyone would be talking about how long it was taking.  The whole process took less than 30 minutes on my computer, for example. 

My guess is that it's probably based on a number of factors, such as how much RAM the system has, how much free hard drive space is available (perhaps is creates a giant temporary swap file?), etc.

[TiLT]

I finally managed to get the game working. Their patching system is completely FUBAR, I discovered. I downloaded a pirate version of the full game so that I could compare files, and noticed that in the patched version I had, all the BIF-files in the Data folder were completely empty. Nothing but zeroes. I guess the patcher fails in some way (without noticing) and corrupts these files. No wonder the game would crash when I attempted to launch it. When I copied the Data folder from the pirated game into my original, patched game, it worked.

Hopefully they'll fix this ASAP. It's an obscure bug, but I still have no idea why it occured.

At least my short stint with the game so far has reminded me of how much it rocks.

[The Rocketman]

Figured out my problem by reading the forums. I had to drop the audio hardware acceleration down one notch and then it works fine. It appears there's a problem with EAX on some computers that is making it crash. Maybe I'll try reinstalling the sound card drivers later or something.

Same here, it seems to be quite common.

[IkeVandergraaf]

Modifying game files.  This may take up to two hours.  Manually interrupting this process will necessitate re-installation of the game.

Emphasis mine.

Yikes!

"If your PC is utter bunk, this may take up to two hours. On anything even remotely current (especially anything that's capable of playing the game in the first place), this will take 1/10th that, max."

I never understood why they put such insane times in warnings like that.

It took over an hour and a half to patch for me.  My PC is not "utter bunk".  It's not top of the line, but it was nearly so when I built it last November - dual core 2.66MHz processor, 2 GB memory and a 8800 GT.

That said, once it did patch, it appears to run well.  After installing the most recent video drivers, I've got the graphics set to high (pretty much all the sliders to maximum except AA, which is off) and running at 1920x1200, and it runs extremely well, fluidly but with the occasional hiccup.  I've played through the prologue with no problems and it's a beautiful game.  I'm really looking forward to the rest of it.

Is anyone aware of a good optimization guide?  Tweakguides doesn't have one.  Also, how about a strategy guide that's more strategy than the one that's downloadable with the expansion pack, which is more of a walkthrough.

[shon]

I bought it through steam and have been playing for around 6 hours and it is a great game. 

I have had some crashes to the desktop though so I would advise to use quicksave often.  It has happened about 4 times when entering a building and also if I select the EAX option
in the sound config. I have it maxed out and it is running smooth. 

[ROTC1983]

I will upload the file tonight when I have time for everyone who hasn't gotten it yet.

[Octavious230]

Played a around an hour last night with no problems aside from having to take the audio slider down a notch. I have another couple of hours before I'll hit where I stopped playing. Since I didn't play very far into the vanilla version I can't really tell what was changed so far. Love the game though either way.

[IkeVandergraaf]

Vesemir appears to have stopped calling Triss "babe".  That alone is worth the price of the download.

[CeeKay]

well, no word back from gamesplanet yet.  If I don't have a key by the end of the week I may end up just getting the Steam version.

[IceBear]

Vesemir appears to have stopped calling Triss "babe".  That alone is worth the price of the download.

Obviously a translation issue as now he calls her "child"

[IkeVandergraaf]

Still less creepy.

[CeeKay]

but Triss is a babe!

[Caine]

finally downloaded all the files, but i haven't had time to play it yet.  the music download is welcome though.  good music. 

[hepcat]

I'm playing on medium and I'm about 2 hours into Act II and the combat is just WAY too easy.  Does it ramp up?  If not, is there any way to change my difficulty setting to Hard without starting a new game?  I did have difficulty with the first act big bad, but things are falling like houses of cards before me now.   

[CeeKay]

well, Gamesplanet never responded, but I found a way to bypass the registration check on the Witcher forums and got patched up.  I giggled at Triss's new jiggle.

[Misguided]

Cross-posted from Qt3:

I finished Ch 1 earlier and really enjoying it. The game reminds me a lot of Gothic I, which is some of the highest praise I can think of since I count the first Gothic among my all-time favorites. I took the time to flip through the pdf manual a bit and that was really helpful. This is not a simplistic game and there were some things I wasn't really picking up on. The combat isn't really to my taste, but I'm getting the hang of it.

I think I'm getting the hang of the potion-crafting now. I am making it a point to keep a blizzard potion handy, which I have found very useful on two occasions thus far. I also found the cat potion to be quite helpful at one point.

I think my favorite part of the game so far is that, like the aforementioned Gothic, it does a marvelous job of placing you in a confined play space yet giving you a sense of freedom within that space. In chapter 1, I felt like I had a tremendous amount of freedom to do what I wanted, when I wanted, yet in the process I eventually got to where I needed to be, without having to struggle to figure out where that was or what I need to do. This stands in sharp contrast to games like Elder Scrolls, where I rapidly feel completely overwhelmed with too many choices (that style of design has its proponents of course, I'm simply not one of them).

I've been enjoying the music and the visuals are very nice. The story is engaging thus far, though there have been a couple of moments where it felt like I had missed something, as well as some cases where Geralt or an NPC made reference to an event/object I hadn't actually found. Those things have been minor, though, and I'm anxious to see what will happen next.

[TiLT]

I just finished the final chapter of The Witcher, and I'm completely in awe at the fantastic ending. It's unlike anything I've seen in a game before, and really made me sit back and think. This game is truly one of the greatest PC RPGs ever made, and it's very long too. Took me about 40-50 hours to complete. Well worth the time and money.

Anyone else finish it?