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General discussion (archive)Witcher Mac Port Sys Reqs - WTF?!(13 posts)(13 posts)
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Posted November 19, 2014
What on earth is going on with the system requirements for the new Mac port of The Witcher? Anyone else notice this? Unless another explanation can be provided, all I can think of is:

1. They used the Witcher 2 engine. Though the requirements are still higher than that game.
2. The port was done by programmers who have never worked on OSX (maybe their first game project ever) and did zero optimization.

These requirements for a game from 2007 is ridiculous. Yes, Mac ports usually require higher specs than the original Windows version, but come on. A GeForce 6600 vs. GT 650m? Thats absurd.

Windows
Windows XP, Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz or AMD Athlon 64 +2800, 1 GB RAM for Windows XP, 1.5 GB for Vista, NVIDIA GeForce 6600 or ATI Radeon 9800 or better, 8.5 GB available hard drive space, DirectX 9.0c compliant soundcard

Mac
OS X 10.8, 10.9, 10.10 Processor: Intel Core i5 Memory: 4 GB of RAM Graphics: nVidia GeForce GT 650m (1440x900), AMD Radeon HD 6750M (1440x900) or Intel HD 5000 (1366x768). Hard Drive: 14.25 GB free space.
Posted November 19, 2014
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CrowTRobo: What on earth is going on with the system requirements for the new Mac port of The Witcher? Anyone else notice this? Unless another explanation can be provided, all I can think of is:

1. They used the Witcher 2 engine. Though the requirements are still higher than that game.
2. The port was done by programmers who have never worked on OSX (maybe their first game project ever) and did zero optimization.

These requirements for a game from 2007 is ridiculous. Yes, Mac ports usually require higher specs than the original Windows version, but come on. A GeForce 6600 vs. GT 650m? Thats absurd.

Windows
Windows XP, Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz or AMD Athlon 64 +2800, 1 GB RAM for Windows XP, 1.5 GB for Vista, NVIDIA GeForce 6600 or ATI Radeon 9800 or better, 8.5 GB available hard drive space, DirectX 9.0c compliant soundcard

Mac
OS X 10.8, 10.9, 10.10 Processor: Intel Core i5 Memory: 4 GB of RAM Graphics: nVidia GeForce GT 650m (1440x900), AMD Radeon HD 6750M (1440x900) or Intel HD 5000 (1366x768). Hard Drive: 14.25 GB free space.
IIRC, the port for The Witcher uses WINE, so that always adds some additional overhead. It's also worth noting that their Mac system requirements reflect the tested configurations that they have in their labs, so I'd say that it's quite possible that a Mac with lower specs would be able to run it comfortably, especially if you're willing to trade off graphical fidelity for performance.

Edit: Some research on Google (e.g. http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1354119) suggests that the game simply doesn't seem to like WINE very much, with galling performance issues also reported for Linux users trying to run it in WINE too (see https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=6019).
Post edited November 19, 2014 by rampancy
Posted November 19, 2014
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rampancy: IIRC, the port for The Witcher uses WINE
It used to until an update today.

Source

Post with information about old specs (which that thread also points to this thread... full circle)
Post edited November 19, 2014 by adambiser
Posted November 19, 2014
Is it running a wrapper or a native port now?

I don't have a Mac so can't exactly investigate :-(
Posted November 19, 2014
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rampancy: IIRC, the port for The Witcher uses WINE
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adambiser: It used to until an update today.

Source

Post with information about old specs (which that thread also points to this thread... full circle)
...huh. No way.

Still, the fact that a native port would be worse in terms of system requirements (and performance) is something I haven't expected, and have never seen before. I'm really at a loss, though I'm curious to see how the "new" Witcher would perform on hardware that met the old version's system requirements.
Posted November 19, 2014
They might not use WINE, but that doesn't mean they are going completely native. They might use another WINE-like wrapper developed inhouse. That's what they did with Linux port.
Posted November 19, 2014
They use eON
http://www.vpltd.com/services/

Unlike Wine, which does the translation at runtime, eON does the translation at compile time. The port is native. It is important to understand that being native does not guarantee top performance, although the reverse is true, not being native does prevent top performance. It doesn't matter how native your code is, if your code is not well written it will run poorly.
Post edited November 19, 2014 by HiPhish
Posted November 19, 2014
I don't think that's really native. Do you know what winelib is? Winelib comes with wine and allows for compilation into a native binary format on Linux and Mac. But the resulting binary is not completely native because it still emulates Windows APIs (inludes the wine core implemented in winelib) and does DirectX to OpenGL translation. I think this is the same with eON.

The native port would use OpenGL directly and Mac/Linux APIs. So it's a native binary, but not a native port. There's a difference. A large one. :)
Post edited November 19, 2014 by astropup
Posted November 19, 2014
After http://www.gog.com/forum/aliens_versus_predator_classic_2000/why_are_the_requirements_so_high it might just be that nobody bothered to test on anything less.
Posted November 20, 2014
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HiPhish: They use eON
http://www.vpltd.com/services/
I'm thinking Virtual Programming simply dropped support of older hardware in their eON library. Based on their website, they also handled Witcher 2. Could be why the requirements are similar, though a bit higher (guessing its a newer version of eON in this one).

Frankly, I think this is a shitty decision on Virtual Programming's part and kind of stinks of laziness. Can't be bothered to support hardware which would handle this game fine. "Lets just hardcode our eON library to only specific configs so we have much less work to do."

Oh well, thankfully there is bootcamp. My original plan was to run the Windows version in bootcamp whenever I got around to starting it and this will have to still be the case.
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VanishedOne: http://www.gog.com/forum/aliens_versus_predator_classic_2000/why_are_the_requirements_so_high it might just be that nobody bothered to test on anything less.
Unfortunately this is not one of those cases. Users with older hardware have confirmed it won't even start - the eON library gives an error.
Post edited November 20, 2014 by CrowTRobo
Posted November 20, 2014
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HiPhish: They use eON
http://www.vpltd.com/services/
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CrowTRobo: I'm thinking Virtual Programming simply dropped support of older hardware in their eON library. Based on their website, they also handled Witcher 2. Could be why the requirements are similar, though a bit higher (guessing its a newer version of eON in this one).

Frankly, I think this is a shitty decision on Virtual Programming's part and kind of stinks of laziness. Can't be bothered to support hardware which would handle this game fine. "Lets just hardcode our eON library to only specific configs so we have much less work to do."
To be fair though, Virtual Programming hasn't had exactly the best track record when it comes to handling Mac ports. IIRC, they used to (still do?) distribute games purchased off of their own store with a restrictive proprietary DRM system (much like Aspyr). I still remember them because they handled the (Ciderized) Mac ports of Egosoft's X series, which were notorious for having insane system requirements, rotten performance, and near-unplayable levels of instability (especially X2: The Threat).
Posted November 20, 2014
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rampancy: I still remember them because they handled the (Ciderized) Mac ports of Egosoft's X series, which were notorious for having insane system requirements, rotten performance, and near-unplayable levels of instability (especially X2: The Threat).
This eON might not be much different than that.

They also use eON for their Linux port of Witcher 2 which was famous for bad performance and high requirements. They did ironed it out a bit, but it's still a monstrosity.
Posted November 21, 2014
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rampancy: To be fair though, Virtual Programming hasn't had exactly the best track record when it comes to handling Mac ports. IIRC, they used to (still do?) distribute games purchased off of their own store with a restrictive proprietary DRM system (much like Aspyr). I still remember them because they handled the (Ciderized) Mac ports of Egosoft's X series, which were notorious for having insane system requirements, rotten performance, and near-unplayable levels of instability (especially X2: The Threat).
Yeah, I didn't have a high opinion of VP before this either. Mostly because of Europa Universalis 3. It was the game that made me finally create a Steam account. I bought Chronicles which has all expansion packs. It had Steam Play so I thought perfect, Mac support. Except only two of the four expansions are available on Mac. Was fairly pissed when I found this out. To get the other two, I would have to go to VP's own store and pay more than what I paid for the whole bundle on Steam.

Needless to say I am not buying from their store. I am running the Windows version in bootcamp.
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General discussion (archive)Witcher Mac Port Sys Reqs - WTF?!(13 posts)(13 posts)
(13 posts)