The Witcher Extended Edition

quarryman

My spec is:

Dell vostro
2.0GHz core duo
128 MB NVIDIA® GeForce™ 8400M GS (64 bit)
2 GB RAM
Windows Vista

Is this too modest a spec for this game?

ShiverinEskimo

The graphics card is your bottle neck, that and the fact you're running Vista with 2GB of RAM. Rather than playing around with resolutions have you switched of some of the more fancy effects?

This is a handy wee site that checks your system and makes recommendations as to where you might be falling down:

http://www.systemrequirementslab.com/referrer/srtest

quarryman

Yep as mentioned above, I went from 800x600 at low settings to 1280x800 at medium and the FPS only went from 40 to 35.

Though since i posted that i noticed it can drop >15 fps when things get busy. I've watched the slowdown and the FPS doesn't drop. Its as if the character just reacts late and can be slow to respond, just seems sluggish. I'll check some gameplay videos online and see if is just a feature of the game.

I'll try that link later when I'm on my laptop again, thanks ShiverinEskimo.

pwd

I have dell xps 2.4ghz 8600m gpu 4gb ram and I had to lower the resolution for it to run well when a lot was happening in the game, so I'm not surprised you're having issues. It seems more resource-intensive than tf2, bioshock, CoH or Quake 4 for example. (It ran well after I lowered the settings though)
I'd say it could have been made faster - the graphics are very good and all but I don't see why they should be more resource intensive than most of the games I listed above.

ShiverinEskimo

I'm not experiencing any drop in responsiveness on mine. (3ghz core duo, 2GB Ram, 8600gs) and to be honest i'd be pissed off if I was - this game is essentially a year old after all and has been re-encoded to be a better performer so should work no problem on your hardware Quarryman.

quarryman

looks like you both have the same graphics card. I used to have it in my previous laptop and it was excellent but I think the 8400 is decent step down, so that's probably my bottleneck alright. I've have a look at the witcher forums and see is it an issue for others.

ShiverinEskimo

afaik it recommends 256mb of graphics RAM which might be causing the issue. But as you said, graphically it seems to be ok in the fact that you have 35fps on a medium setting at all times.

Hard to know really. Silly question and all but I assume you have the latest drivers for your graphics card etc?

quarryman

yep, bang up to date. I might get fraps to make a video and host it to show the problem.

Have you got far into it? I spent about a half hour and got past the laboratory before the slowdown started to annoy me.

So far it really feels like NWN2 which ain't a good thing

pwd

Use the over-the-shoulder view. The strongest feature of this game is the immersiveness - I'd say that using the aerial view would detract from that.

ShiverinEskimo

I actually favour the aerial view because once you dispatch one enemy you can quickly click on the next - the OTS view means you have to turn before you can initiate the attack.

I didn't play for long last night. Just finished the lab meself. I played the original a while ago so nothing new to me yet - I actually got a good bit into it but I'm enjoying it a lot better now because the original load time really were staggering - about 2 to 3 full minutes each even for small locations. When you get to a village next you have to keep going in an out of house - that meant 2-3 mins sat waiting about 10 times in the one section. Awful tbh. Flying now though.

pwd

i found the combat a bit on the easy side on the normal difficulty tbh, though it might depend on how you spec your character. The most fun part of the combat was evading attacks, and I think that using the aerial view would really detract from it

ionapaul

Bought the Enhanced Edition over the weekend, only getting the lab battle in the starting castle now. Looks and plays great so far! Playing on medium-high settings, 1280 x 1024, using a Vista 64 quad-core machine with 4gb RAM and a GTX 260 card. Can't wait to get stuck into a good RPG

ShiverinEskimo

ionapaul wrote: »

Bought the Enhanced Edition over the weekend, only getting the lab battle in the starting castle now. Looks and plays great so far! Playing on medium-high settings, 1280 x 1024, using a Vista 64 quad-core machine with 4gb RAM and a GTX 260 card. Can't wait to get stuck into a good RPG

I'd have thought with that spec you'd be on full everything and a high res?

ionapaul

My monitor is only 19" so no real desire to pump up the resolution; might try it later to see what it looks like.

With regard the other settings, almost all at set very high, but one or two I've left at medium - believe me, it looks gorgeous as is!

ShiverinEskimo

Ah yea fair enough - Just my PC is lower spec and I'm running on high everything and at a higher res. You spent that much on your PC don't you think you should make use of all the whistles and bells?

NunianVonFuch

Just started this yesterday so I've only just finished the lab. Read the The Last Wish though (well the only book in English so far) so well up on the world. Intro video was class, really good interpretation of the short story, though sadly no Geralt chomping down on her neck at the death of the tale! Can't wait to meet Yennifer in the game though, sounds like a one spicy meatball to handle from the book.

TBH i'm pretty surprised it works on my lappy. Its a 3 year old XPS so has a 2.0 GHz Pentium M, 2 GB RAM and a Geforce Go 6800 Ultra 256MB. I've only recently come back to PC gaming with this being the first as I thought the laptop was too slow for modern games - turns out it was all Norton Antivirus's doing! Constantly eating up CPU grrrr.

Anyway I'm playing it in 1360 x 768 on a 27" HDTV on medium with a wireless mouse in one hand and an xbox controller in the other. Load times have really improved over the demo, everytime a scene started loading in the demo it felt like I was back on the C64 again, with enough time to make a cuppa before each level!

Only times I've noticed slowdown is during the cutscenes, especially when Geralt was being carried in on the cart at the start, must have been as low as 5 fps. I didn't turn on the counter but from the demo I was getting 24 fps in 1920 x 1200 and I'd say its in the region of 30 fps when all is well at 1360 x 768. Certainly playable but I'll check and tweak later on this eve if I've time.

Kiith

NunianVonFuch wrote: »

Anyway I'm playing it in 1360 x 768 on a 27" HDTV on medium with a wireless mouse in one hand and an xbox controller in the other.

Thats the strangest setup i've ever heard of.

quarryman

Kiith wrote: »

Thats the strangest setup i've ever heard of.

yeah , are you playing Halo at the same time or something?

NunianVonFuch

Kiith wrote: »

Thats the strangest setup i've ever heard of.

It's so I can play from the bed! Sitting up, not lying down. Not slobby - no! Also combats finger pains from typing on a keyboard all day, another reason I stopped PC gaming. Its pretty cool though cos you can map rumbling to the joypad too via an external program, so every time I use magic (for example) it vibrates! Would get annoying v quick if it was everytime you hack/slash. Or a single button solely so that it vibrates when you get a ladycard... :cool:

Maximilian

Picked the game up on Saturday. Really enjoying it. Great storytelling & characters.

jayteecork

Just ordered this.

Really have the urge to get my teeth into a good RPG.

Have a spectacular Pc that I should be using for gaming more often.

Menengroth™

just started playing this jaytee, didnt like it at first, but quickly grew to love it!

Wossack

Gave up on this towards the end of Chapter 2 unfortunately... the linearity of it all finally did it in for me; doing laps of areas trying to find that 1 quest to progress the story line etc

Must have run the farm area 'loop' about 20-30 times

Menengroth™

i'm nearing the end of chapter 2 =o

and yeah, i certainly get what you mean wossack =P, still though, enjoying it

Spear

Wossack wrote: »

Gave up on this towards the end of Chapter 2 unfortunately... the linearity of it all finally did it in for me; doing laps of areas trying to find that 1 quest to progress the story line etc

Must have run the farm area 'loop' about 20-30 times

It changes a fair bit in chapter 3 once you gain access to a large town.

Wossack

If theres hope for it soon, I may persevere with it that little bit longer

Spear

Wossack wrote: »

If theres hope for it soon, I may persevere with it that little bit longer

You need to also remember that decisions taken earlier don't start taking effect till much later in the game.

Griffin87

It took me 3 attempts to get through it. The first 2 times i stopped in chapter 2. On the third attempt i got really into it and played through to completion.

I can say after giving it a chance it has to be one of the top rpgs i have ever played.


I liked it so much in fact that i bought the two witcher books that have been translated into english.

The books are great aswell, Geralt is a kickass main character

Sarky

I've been playing this on and off for the last year. I decided to jump in on the hardest setting without thinking too much, and did alright until the "Boss" in chapter 2, where the autosave trapped me into confronting him with no potions. An incredibly lucky stun-then-instakill using the Aard sign got me through, and I promised myself I've never run low on potions again!

There IS some grind involved at high difficulty, you're a dead man without those potions, so you have to keep stocked up on plants and monster parts. But bugger me, it's a wonderful setting and story. The political and racial tension comes through very well (I felt sorry for the poor oppressed Squirrels in Chapter 2 and really regretted the decision when I saw where backing them led!), and there really are very few "good" choices.

Once you open up a few moves in the combat system it's actually quite good. And the difficulty always has you thinking which way is best to approach, which potions and fighting styles to use, it doesn't let up.

Still not finished, but I'm thoroughly enjoying the game. And the extra stuff included in the EE is really quite lovely.

Jilm

The Witcher is one of my favourite CRPGs. I've played it through several times and each time the experience was slightly different.

Hopefully the sequel will live up to the original.