New Beta Of Witcher 2 Aims For Greater Performance

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Gaming on 28 January 2015 at 07:53 AM EST. 48 Comments
LINUX GAMING
A new beta of the Linux port of The Witcher 2 was released this weekend and it aims to deliver improved performance.

The Witcher 2 for Linux was released last May but many Linux gamers remain frustrated with the initial quality of the game port. The Linux port was done using Virtual Programming's eON layer to ease the developer's process in porting from Windows to Linux, but it's caused major performance issues.

In the months since the release, The Witcher 2 Linux performance has improved with the performance being much better, but it's not yet at parity to Windows for most Linux gamers. Fortunately, those porting it remain committed to the work.

A beta update sent down the wire on 24 January features more improvements to the Direct3D 9 engine and should end up working better on Linux via eON. This beta also has removed its dependency on libcurl, worked around a crash on modern versions of the kernel, etc. This is the game's first Linux update since September. More details on this new beta can be found from this GitHub page.


Meanwhile, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is coming out for at least Windows and the PlayStation 4 / Xbox One in May. It looks like The Witcher 3 is coming to Linux / SteamOS but we don't know yet when it is expected to see its alternative OS debut and whether it too will rely on Virtual Programming eON. Witcher 3 will be using version three of the REDengine, which is 64-bit only and brings a variety of rendering improvements.
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Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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