Anonymous edits have been disabled on the wiki. If you want to contribute please login or create an account.

The Witcher

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Revision as of 13:24, 23 June 2020 by FlameMan (talk | contribs) (→‎Logitech GamePanel: attaching to Input section)
The Witcher
The Witcher cover
Developers
CD Projekt Red
macOS (OS X) Virtual Programming
Publishers
Atari
Poland CD Projekt
Engines
Aurora
Release dates
Windows October 26, 2007
macOS (OS X) April 5, 2012
Reception
Metacritic 81
IGDB 88
Taxonomy
Series The Witcher
The Witcher on HowLongToBeat
The Witcher on IGDB
The Witcher guide on StrategyWiki
The Witcher on MobyGames
The Witcher on Wikipedia
The Witcher
The Witcher 2007
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings 2011
The Witcher Adventure Game 2014
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt 2015
Gwent: The Witcher Card Game 2018
Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales 2018
Gwent: Rogue Mage 2022
The Witcher: Remake TBA

Key points

Any version of the game, including retail, can be redeemed for a DRM-free copy on GOG.com; see here for details.

General information

Official Forums
Official Witcher Wikia
Official Wiki
GOG.com Community Discussions
GOG.com Support Page
Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
DRM-free
TAGES Solidshield v1.9.5.1 and TAGES v5.5.2.8 DRM. DRM removed in the latest Patches.
GOG.com key
Windows
GamersGate
DRM-free after installation (requires an internet connection during installation)
Windows
macOS (OS X)
GOG.com
DRM-free
Provides high quality bonus goodies.[1]
Windows
Humble Store
GOG.com key
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Origin
Origin
Windows
Steam
Icon overlay.png
Enhanced Edition Director's Cut.
GOG.com key
Windows
macOS (OS X)
All versions can be registered on GOG.com even if a product key was not included; see here for details.

Essential improvements

Patches

There are two patches available for download on the official page:

  • Patch 1.4 upgraded the game to the Enhanced Edition.
  • Patch 1.5 removed the DRM and fixed bugs introduced by patch 1.4. It also contains five community-made adventures.

Modifications

Skip intro videos

Walking in OTS view

In the base game, there is no option or toggle for walking, as opposed to running in the over the shoulder camera view. A small mod addressing this is available here. The download also contains installation instructions.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\CD Projekt RED\Witcher\Settings\
macOS (OS X)
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/20900/pfx/[Note 1]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows %USERPROFILE%\Documents\The Witcher\saves\
macOS (OS X) ~/Library/Application Support/com.cdprojektred.TheWitcher/GameDocuments/The Witcher/saves/
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/20900/pfx/[Note 1]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
Origin
OneDrive
Requires enabling backup of the Documents folder in OneDrive on all computers.
Steam Cloud
Approx. 954 MB available.

Video

Video settings.
Video settings.
Graphical settings.
Graphical settings.

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
Use the aspect ratio fix for the cutscenes.
4K Ultra HD
In-game AA must be disabled.
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
Borderless fullscreen windowed
Use Borderless Gaming with Auto-Maximize disabled.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Up to 4x MSAA; 8x MSAA can be forced in the graphics card control panel.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
See Force Vsync.
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
No frame rate or refresh rate cap.[2]
High dynamic range display (HDR)
See the glossary page for potential alternatives.

HBAO+

Use Nvidia Profile Inspector[3]
  1. Open The Witcher driver profile via Nvidia Profile Inspector.
  2. Change Ambient Occlusion compatibility to 0x0000002D (MechWarrior Online).
  3. Change Ambient Occlusion usage to Enabled.
  4. Change Ambient Occlusion setting to whichever quality desired.
  5. Apply changes.

Input

Input settings.
Input settings.

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration
Negative acceleration cannot be turned off.[citation needed]
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Controller types

Logitech GamePanel

Information such as statistics, ammunition, health and items the player is currently holding can be displayed on the LCD panel or smartphone application.
Display Notes
Arx Control application Native support in Enhanced Edition.
G19 color screen Native support in Enhanced Edition.
G15 monochrome screen Native support in Enhanced Edition.

Audio

Audio settings.
Audio settings.
General settings.
General settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Music, battle music, SFX and voice.
Surround sound
Requires EAX
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
EAX support
EAX 5.0.[4]

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Traditional Chinese
Czech
French
German
Hungarian
Italian
Polish
Brazilian Portuguese
Fan translation, Download.
Russian
Spanish

VR support

3D modes State Notes
vorpX
G3D
Officially supported game, see official vorpx game list.

Issues fixed

"Fixes to Common Problems" - A comprehensive list of known issues and potential fixes

Crash at launch

Recent Steam Beta clients may cause the Steam version of the game to crash.
Only applies to the Steam version of the game. Refer to "Fixes to Common Problems" for other solutions.
Opt out from Steam Beta client[citation needed]
  1. Open Steam settings and select the "Account" tab.
  2. In "Beta participation" click "Change..." and select "NONE".
  3. Steam should ask you to restart the client and download the latest stable release of the client.

Minimum system requirements not met

Disable the system requirements check[5]
This fix is known to cause other issues. You might be unable to change the game's resolution above a certain limit, and the texture quality and antialiasing settings might be locked to the lowest settings. To avoid this, try the optional step or the registry edit solution below.
  1. Create a shortcut to witcher.exe (the game itself, NOT the game's launcher).
  2. Right-click the shortcut and choose Properties.
  3. Add -dontforceminreqs to the end of the Target field.
Use replacement TexSettings.d2a
  1. Download TexSettings.d2a.
  2. Move the file to <path-to-game>\Data\Override.

Notes

If the Override folder does not exist, create the folder and then move the file to that folder.

No mouse in the main menu

Press Shift[citation needed]

In some cases (when the intro cinematic is skipped or if opening the Steam overlay) the mouse cursor does not function on the main menu. This can be fixed by holding the key that releases the mouse in Over the Shoulder view(Shift by default).

Frequent game crashes

Allocate more virtual memory to the program[6]
  1. Download NTCore's 4GB Patch.
  2. Run the program, apply the patch to the witcher.exe located in <path-to-game>\System\witcher.exe.
Set the game to run in windowed mode[citation needed]

Use a program such as Borderless Gaming to force the game to run in a borderless window.

Disable Steam overlay

Disabling Steam overlay fixes the crashing.

Pre-rendered cutscenes don't display

Audio will still play, but the video will freeze to the last displayed frame.
Lower the lighting setting
  1. Go to Advanced Settings.
  2. Set Lighting to low. Cutscenes should now display correctly.
You can revert the lighting setting afterwards. However, the setting will need to be altered before each pre-rendered cutscene.

In-game cut-scenes appear pixelated

Use any 16:9 resolution[citation needed]
  1. Go to Options, Video Options.
  2. Choose a 16:9 resolution (1280x720, 1366x768, 1600x900, 1920x1080, 2560x1440, 3840x2160 or 4096x2160, etc.)

Lights visible through walls

On some systems with SLI enabled, light sources are sometimes visible through walls.
Change SLI rendering mode[citation needed]
  1. In the Nvidia control panel go to "Manage 3D settings."
  2. Hit the tab "Program settings" and add <path-to-game>\system\witcher.exe
  3. Scroll down through the settings to the one called "Multi-GPU rendering mode" and change it to Force Alternate frame rendering 2.
  4. Click Apply.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 9
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows
macOS (OS X)
[7]

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) XP, Vista
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz
AMD Athlon 64 2800+
System memory (RAM) 1 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 15 GB
Video card (GPU) Nvidia GeForce 6600
ATI Radeon 9800
DirectX 9.0c compatible
Sound (audio device) DirectX version 9.0c-compatible sound card
macOS (OS X)
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 10.8
Processor (CPU) Intel Core i5
System memory (RAM) 4 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 14.5 GB
Video card (GPU) Nvidia GeForce GT 650M
AMD Radeon HD 6750M
Intel HD Graphics 5000
256 MB of VRAM
Other Not recommended to use native Retina resolutions


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/20900/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (20900) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References