The Witcher catch-all

Alien Love Gardener wrote:

Why not download the demo first so you know if you can get it to run on your current rig?

I'll give it a shot, but my current rig was built in 2003.

I'm having trouble keeping my group alive in Act 5. No matter how many Roses I kill, my young elves and dwarves always die, sometime Zoltan too. It's getting annoying.

So I just finished it. WOW

That was one of the most satisfying endings in a game I've played for a long time. I'd probably place this game in my top 10 games of all time.

Spoilers wrote:

[color=White]The whole Jacques being Alvin thing is something that I never expected. This is just a masterfully written tale.

"But... that sword is for monsters..."

yes it is Jacques, yes it is.[/color]

Mordiceius wrote:

So I just finished it. WOW

Wow you went fast. I just finished act 4, and keep having to take breaks from it lest I get "witchered-out". SMG provides a nice break Should be done by mid-week though.

Dysplastic wrote:
Mordiceius wrote:

So I just finished it. WOW

Wow you went fast. I just finished act 4, and keep having to take breaks from it lest I get "witchered-out". SMG provides a nice break Should be done by mid-week though.

Yeah, towards the end I was playing about 5 or so hours a day of it. I just couldn't put it down.

I think this is how the play time went:
Prologue = 2 hours
Act 1 = 12 hours
Act 2 = 14 hours
Act 3 = 11 hours
Act 4 = 9 Hours
Act 5 = 9 Hours
Epilogue = 2 Hours.

Mordiceius wrote:

So I just finished it. WOW

That was one of the most satisfying endings in a game I've played for a long time. I'd probably place this game in my top 10 games of all time.

Spoilers wrote:

[color=White]The whole Jacques being Alvin thing is something that I never expected. This is just a masterfully written tale.

"But... that sword is for monsters..."

yes it is Jacques, yes it is.[/color]

Alright, just cruised through act 5 and the epilogue today - 5 hours for both, maybe.

Spoilers wrote:

[color=White]
I never saw that coming either - all those times in act 4 when he said "i'll remember that. I'll remember that". to everything you said, I kept expecting him to show up again, right until the grand master started quoting me verbatim at the very end.
The thing that bothered me the most is that there was never really any conclusive evidence to show that Alvin/GM was actually WRONG - what if the ice age does come, and humanity is indeed screwed? After all, Alvin WAS a prophet, and Geralt's just a witcher - who is he to mess with his prophecies?
Also kinda bummed that they never tied up the whole romance angle - but that can be left to the imagination. [/color]

Dysplastic wrote:
Spoilers wrote:

[color=White]
I never saw that coming either - all those times in act 4 when he said "i'll remember that. I'll remember that". to everything you said, I kept expecting him to show up again, right until the grand master started quoting me verbatim at the very end.
The thing that bothered me the most is that there was never really any conclusive evidence to show that Alvin/GM was actually WRONG - what if the ice age does come, and humanity is indeed screwed? After all, Alvin WAS a prophet, and Geralt's just a witcher - who is he to mess with his prophecies?
Also kinda bummed that they never tied up the whole romance angle - but that can be left to the imagination. [/color]

Ending Analysis wrote:

[color=white]I think it's better this way though. Even if the iceage thing is meant to come because of humanities doing, or even if not. I took the neutral ending and Geralt had more of the opinion of wanting everyone to have the freedom of choice. Whether they choose right or wrong, he wants them to be able to have the ability choose for themself and accept the consequences. Alvin just wanted sheep that would see him as a savior.[/color]

OK, I just picked up this game last week (after seeing the reviews of it here) and am having a problem.

I'm only about halfway through Chapter 1 because the game crashes on me about every 15 minutes. It almost always crashes on the loading screen. I suspect it is crashing whenever it is trying to do an auto-save, since the only other times it crashes is when I try to do a manual save. It doesn't always crash, but enough that I have had to play sections of the game over several times. (I had to fight the Salamandra on the bridge three times before I managed to continue, for example.)

Any suggestions? I am patched up to 1.2 and my system and drivers are patched to current. I am running Vista (which may be the problem right there). Anyone else having a similar problem? The game looks good so far but continually having to restart it is getting frustrating.

1 - Are you running two monitors?
2 - Have you often minimized the game when playing it?

tanstaafl wrote:

Any suggestions? I am patched up to 1.2 and my system and drivers are patched to current. I am running Vista (which may be the problem right there). Anyone else having a similar problem? The game looks good so far but continually having to restart it is getting frustrating.

Your problem sounds like the game is having problem loading things into memory. Did you fiddle around with your precache or file swap settings? Failing that, have you already installed the "Gaming in Vista" memory leak fix?

No, not running two monitors and I usually don't minimize the game while it is running. I also haven't done anything to my cache or swap settings. On the other hand, I haven't installed a memory leak fix either, so I'll try that next.

I've only had this machine and Vista for a couple of months; any other "gotcha"s out there I should be aware of?

tanstaafl wrote:

Any suggestions? I am patched up to 1.2 and my system and drivers are patched to current. I am running Vista (which may be the problem right there). Anyone else having a similar problem? The game looks good so far but continually having to restart it is getting frustrating.

I don't know for sure if this will help, but if all else fails, try reducing your graphics settings (especially anti-aliasing, depth of field, things like that). I had crashing problems when loading cutscenes also, and it seemed to happen much less often when I had these graphics effects off.

tanstaafl wrote:

I've only had this machine and Vista for a couple of months; any other "gotcha"s out there I should be aware of?

Make sure you have all of these hotfixes installed. I think some of them rolled out with Windows Update, but you might as well install them just to be sure.

OK, I installed the various hotfixes and turned off anti-aliasing and depth of field and the game still crashed twice. Sigh. It's a comment on how good this game seems to be that I'm putting up with this.

I'll try turning the graphics settings all the way down and see if that makes any difference.

tanstaafl wrote:

OK, I installed the various hotfixes and turned off anti-aliasing and depth of field and the game still crashed twice. Sigh. It's a comment on how good this game seems to be that I'm putting up with this.

I'll try turning the graphics settings all the way down and see if that makes any difference.

I haven't had any troubles in vista 64bit.

boogle wrote:

I haven't had any troubles in vista 64bit.

Ditto.

Uhm, was going to post, but whats the code for placing text inside spoilers tags?

At risk of being a filthy skimmer, has anyone had trouble w/ the DRM not recognizing the DVD in the drive?

The Witcher forums talk about uninstalling alcohol or virtual drives, but I don't have anything like that running. I've got Nero Ultimate installed, but the DRM works 2 out of 3 tries so I doubt it is that.

I'm running XP 64 bit version and I've heard that mentioned as a contributing factor, but no solid details. Anyone else struggling w/ this?

[quote=Spoilers][color=White][/color][/quote]

If in doubt, quote the post of someone who has done it, and you can look at what code they had to use to achieve that effect.

Dysplastic wrote:
Spoilers wrote:

[color=White]
The thing that bothered me the most is that there was never really any conclusive evidence to show that Alvin/GM was actually WRONG - what if the ice age does come, and humanity is indeed screwed? After all, Alvin WAS a prophet, and Geralt's just a witcher - who is he to mess with his prophecies?
Also kinda bummed that they never tied up the whole romance angle - but that can be left to the imagination. [/color]

Spoilers wrote:

[color=White]From what Ive read (read some random threads about the story and the books its based on at the official forums), he is right about the coming of the ice age actually. The question is, if that justifies his actions.

For the lack of ending to the romance story and other stuff, its probably meant to be continued in an expansion or Witcher 2. Since its not a game where you make a random character, they might be able to pull off a continuation of the story without Amnesia 2.0. From what I could read on those forums, story-wise, Geralt is actually also supposed to having a wife/lover (not that it seems to matter much for him) running around somewhere else, believing he is dead. Maybe she will come back and spoil his fun to make it a non-issue who you picked ^^).[/color]

Shadout wrote:
Dysplastic wrote:
Spoilers wrote:

[color=White]
The thing that bothered me the most is that there was never really any conclusive evidence to show that Alvin/GM was actually WRONG - what if the ice age does come, and humanity is indeed screwed? After all, Alvin WAS a prophet, and Geralt's just a witcher - who is he to mess with his prophecies?
Also kinda bummed that they never tied up the whole romance angle - but that can be left to the imagination. [/color]

Spoilers wrote:

[color=White]From what Ive read (read some random threads about the story and the books its based on at the official forums), he is right about the coming of the ice age actually. The question is, if that justifies his actions.

For the lack of ending to the romance story and other stuff, its probably meant to be continued in an expansion or Witcher 2. Since its not a game where you make a random character, they might be able to pull off a continuation of the story without Amnesia 2.0. From what I could read on those forums, story-wise, Geralt is actually also supposed to having a wife/lover (not that it seems to matter much for him) running around somewhere else, believing he is dead. Maybe she will come back and spoil his fun to make it a non-issue who you picked ^^).[/color]

Spoilers wrote:

[color=White]His supposed "wife" is Yennifer I believe, but there has been no mention of her in the game so I don't think she will make an appearance in a sequel or expansion.

[/color]

Oso wrote:

At risk of being a filthy skimmer, has anyone had trouble w/ the DRM not recognizing the DVD in the drive?

The Witcher forums talk about uninstalling alcohol or virtual drives, but I don't have anything like that running. I've got Nero Ultimate installed, but the DRM works 2 out of 3 tries so I doubt it is that.

I'm running XP 64 bit version and I've heard that mentioned as a contributing factor, but no solid details. Anyone else struggling w/ this?

Oso, I struggle with this every time I go to play the game. I have 32 bit XP. *shakes fists at the god of DRM*

I can get past the DRM almost every time after a fresh reboot. But rebooting all the time is extremely irritating.

Recently I read a suggestion that you go into C:\Program Files\The Witcher\System and make a shortcut to witcher.exe and use that shortcut to launch the game rather than the game's built in launcher. That might help things out.

Lastly, the "Tages Driver Installer 5.5" program that they link to is actually intended for use as an uninstaller of the Tages DRM driver. You're supposed to run that, let it uninstall the drivers, and then use the shortcut you just made to run the game, and the game will reinstall Tages and it should work. A couple of nights ago I was able to use this method to launch the game without having to reboot. And this is a lot quicker.

I've un/re installed the Tages Driver, and it has not really had an effect I can measure. I'll try the alternate shortcut, thanks for the suggestion.

Grr.. that Tages DRM just gave me a Blue Screen of Death on the file ATKSGT.SYS. Argh!

CD Projekt Red says they will have a major announcement on February 18th. I'm intrigued.

Also, nice to read that it is selling well. 600k units in 3 months. I won't be surprised if they hit their million unit goal by the end of the year.

I say the major announcement will be The Witcher coming to 360 or an expansion pack in the works. Probably the former.

kuddles wrote:

I say the major announcement will be The Witcher coming to 360 or an expansion pack in the works. Probably the former.

I suspect it will be a new downloadable translation for NA owners, something they've been hinting at since release.

Lord, I need to get on this once school lightens up. I'm still messing around in act 1.

Sinatar wrote:
kuddles wrote:

I say the major announcement will be The Witcher coming to 360 or an expansion pack in the works. Probably the former.

I suspect it will be a new downloadable translation for NA owners, something they've been hinting at since release.

I somehow doubt that this would be the "big surprise" for Witcher fans. Gamers in other markets, e.g. Germany or Poland, where the game probably sold best, wouldn't really care about that.

I hope it's an expansion!