The Witcher:Enhanced Edition on MAC!

Unstable

I remember seeing this game years ago and thinking that it looked wonderful. I was pleased to find it on the Mac. Bought it last night, and only a few hours in, I'm having crashing issues. I've suffered three now: one while experimenting with changing graphics settings; one while leaving a house (exiting to Vizima, chapter I); one after a cinematic scene where the camera angles seemed to be off (after fighting off some Salamandra in Vizima, chapter I).

Based on some advice, I followed some instructions on changing the WINE engine version to run the game. The third crash that I mentioned occurred with the changed engine. Based on a thread in the Steam forums, I'll try the WS8WineCX11.0.0 engine, but this is pretty frustrating. I've been saving every few minutes to try and avoid losing progress, but it's a major downer to constantly be worrying about the game crashing.

I'm using a late 2011 Macbook Pro with Radeon HD 6750M 512 MB, with 16 GB of system RAM, OS X 10.8.1. If anyone has any other tips or suggestions, I'd be happy to hear them.

I did all that you mentioned and in that steam forum post. Nothing worked. By Act III the game was unplayable.

I gave up, installed Windows 8, and have never had a crash in the 20+ hours since.

And it runs better. You'll save time in the long-run doing it this way.

That's really disappointing to hear. I was hoping to avoid having to use Bootcamp... I'll give this new Wine engine a try and see how it goes before I resort to that.

Ledgem said:

That's really disappointing to hear. I was hoping to avoid having to use Bootcamp... I'll give this new Wine engine a try and see how it goes before I resort to that.

Click to expand...

I was too, and I also tried the new Wine engine, to no avail.

While installing bootcamp was something I wish I needn't had to do, it's nice to play the game without constant fear of crashing and losing progress. In the first three chapters I think the game crashed about 200 hundred times.

Not worth it.

I emailed CD Projekt Red's support to let them know that there were issues. They stated that much of the instability was derived from the game being more demanding on Macs (presumably because it's working through WINE) and Apple's usage of mobility graphics chips, both of which contribute to heat build-up and problems. To me, that is one of those long explanations that sounds good but is incorrect.

Regardless, they had two things to try:

1) Decrease the screen resolution. Because this can't be done within the game, changing the resolution of the screen has to be done from the System Preferences before running the game. Instead of 1440x900, they suggested 1280x720 or less. The idea here would be to decrease the demand on the system. (Interestingly, they didn't say anything about lowering the graphics settings within the game.)

2) Try running the game directly, instead of launching it through Steam.

I haven't tried them yet, but I figured I'd put it out there for the benefit of others. I'll report back after I've had a chance to try them out.

Reporting back, I didn't try reducing the screen resolution yet, but running the program outside of Steam (presumably to further free up system resources) didn't seem to help. I played for close to three hours, and experienced two crashes during that time. I don't remember how many crashes per hour I was experiencing before, but it doesn't matter: we're still crashing, seemingly at random.

Now there's a worse issue for me, though. After updating to OS X 10.8.2, I'm suffering from the "black screen syndrome" that some others had described months ago. Starting the game results in a black screen and no sound. I've tried changing the WINE engine and it didn't make a difference. It's possible that the timing of this problem with the update to OS X 10.8.2 is just a coincidence and that something else got screwed up before then...

I'll keep working at it because I enjoy the game, but I'll be avoiding any non-native games in the future.

Edit: I couldn't resolve the black screen issue, so I loaded Steam with the intent of trying to validate my files. Before I could validate, it began to download an update. Finder indicates that the version went from 1.6.0 to 1.6.1, and the Wine engine was changed. The update totalled a bit over 150 MB. Unfortunately, this didn't fix my issue. If anything, things became worse: instead of getting a black screen, I didn't get anything - I was just starting at my desktop as before. I tried validating through Steam and it would tell me that 11 files were problematic and would be re-downloaded, then 7. It seemed to find problems after each attempted launch. Finally, it said there were no problems, but the issues persisted.

I'm now reverting to a backup of the game that I made before I changed the Wine engine. If it works, great - I'll do the update through Steam, and pray that it fixes everything for good. Will report back again.

Edit: No changes, however I discovered a post on the Witcher forums mentioning the patch, and also mentioning that OS X 10.8.2 causes major problems with Wine. So, while the patch is supposed to do some wonderful things, it doesn't do anything for the OS X 10.8.2 problem. I guess I'll have to wait for Wine and/or Apple to make some fixes before I can play at all.

Edit 9/22/2012: The problem with OS X 10.8.2 and Wine was patched. I upgraded Wineskin to 2.5.8, but couldn't get The Witcher 1.6.1 to work even with updates and engine changes. I restored my Witcher to version 1.6.0, then updated the wrapper from 2.5.7 to 2.5.8 and changed the engine. The game plays! It seemed more stable at first; I went for an hour and a half without a crash... but it was a crash. The 1.6.1 update to The Witcher uses a different Wine engine; whenever CD Projekt Red releases 1.6.2 with the updated Wine wrapper, I'll be eager to see if their new engine provides better stability.

Edit 10/18/2012: Version 1.6.2 was released some time last week, and I'm afraid to say that it's a major disappointment. To give a sense of how bad it is, I'll say that I played through chapter 2 with an unofficial Wine engine and wrapper, and only experienced a crash roughly every one to one and a half hours. The timing was such that the crashes became somewhat predictable. Chapter 3 brought about more frequent crashes, but the game was still playable. With version 1.6.2, it seems like there's a 50/50 chance of a crash whenever there's a scene change (which includes entering into a poker match). It seems like it worsens in the Trade Quarter, but the crashes are still frequent in the Temple Quarter that was originally so stable back in chapter 2.

To ensure that I was getting it as stable as possible, I deleted the entire game and re-downloaded it from Steam, and also made sure to do a fresh reboot before playing. I might have to go back to using one of the unofficial engines, but I'll admit that I'm not hopeful. I could deal with a crash every one to two hours, but worrying about a crash every time I try to enter or exit a house really ruins the experience. Saving every few seconds, and then having to reopen the game and reload the save, feels like a huge waste of time. I'd like to avoid setting up Boot Camp, but if the stability only gets worse from here, it may be the only choice.

Old thread, but hope this helps someone on da Inturweb.

At first, the game worked fine, but in chapter II i started getting black screens. Sometimes, I could start the game, but objects would be unrendered and it would crash almost immediately. I tried changing engines and all that, but this is what finally solved it for me:

• Right-click the Witcher app --> "show package contents"
• Navigate to Contents/Resources
• Open system.reg in TextEdit (or other simple editor)
• Locate Software\\Wine\\Direct3D
• Change value to 256 (or something lower, just ensure it is lower than your total VRAM)

I have no idea why this worked, but it solved the problem for me. I ended up changing it back to 380 (I have a 384MB Intel HD 3000), but if I change it to anything higher, the problems occur again.

throwaway1 said:

Old thread, but hope this helps someone on da Inturweb.

At first, the game worked fine, but in chapter II i started getting black screens. Sometimes, I could start the game, but objects would be unrendered and it would crash almost immediately. I tried changing engines and all that, but this is what finally solved it for me:

• Right-click the Witcher app --> "show package contents"
• Navigate to Contents/Resources
• Open system.reg in TextEdit (or other simple editor)
• Locate Software\\Wine\\Direct3D
• Change value to 256 (or something lower, just ensure it is lower than your total VRAM)

I have no idea why this worked, but it solved the problem for me. I ended up changing it back to 380 (I have a 384MB Intel HD 3000), but if I change it to anything higher, the problems occur again.

Click to expand...

I didn't find this entry in system.reg...... The only one present is Software\\Wine\\Drives. However I found it in user.reg. Hopefully it is THE solution once and for all!

throwaway1 said:

Old thread, but hope this helps someone on da Inturweb.

At first, the game worked fine, but in chapter II i started getting black screens. Sometimes, I could start the game, but objects would be unrendered and it would crash almost immediately. I tried changing engines and all that, but this is what finally solved it for me:

• Right-click the Witcher app --> "show package contents"
• Navigate to Contents/Resources
• Open system.reg in TextEdit (or other simple editor)
• Locate Software\\Wine\\Direct3D
• Change value to 256 (or something lower, just ensure it is lower than your total VRAM)

I have no idea why this worked, but it solved the problem for me. I ended up changing it back to 380 (I have a 384MB Intel HD 3000), but if I change it to anything higher, the problems occur again.

Click to expand...

Unfortunately this doesn't solve the problem for me. I can play for one hour and a half without encountering any issue but unfortunately the crash will ultimately happen... Sad

Same here, been trying everything but cannot run the application outside of Steam. I am now in Act II and it crashes whenever it tries to save. Have tried removing save games from the game folder but this does not work. Cannot remove them manually because the game crashes upon removal.

This is really sad, I was enjoying this sequel as much as the first one.

pgharavi said:

I was too, and I also tried the new Wine engine, to no avail.

While installing bootcamp was something I wish I needn't had to do, it's nice to play the game without constant fear of crashing and losing progress. In the first three chapters I think the game crashed about 200 hundred times.

Not worth it.

Click to expand...

Just do this.

Got a response from the support if anyone else has problems saving/loading

Collecting too many saves may lead to crashes. Delete the unneeded saves. You can do it with the Delete option in Load Game menu if you are not going to switch the Steam cloud off.

Or you could disable Steam cloud and just delete them straight from the folder. The Steam cloud saves have their mirrors on your disk. Disable Steam cloud for the game in main menu and in the game's Properties on Steam. Then delete the unneeded saves.

You will find the saves in: Users/<user>/Library/Application Support/Steam/userdata/<user>/20920/remote . You couldn't delete them before because of Steam cloud being enabled - it will each time overwrite what's on the disk with the contents of the cloud if it is not switched off. You can back the saves up to a different folder but make sure to leave only the ones you really need in this one.