The Witcher 3 Discussion Thread!

Witcher 3 vegetation would look so much better with some ambient occlusion and if it didn't glow unnaturally

 

I don't know why they didn't simply recycle the TW2 renderer and engine. TW3 isn't that greatly scaleable either.

Definition of a scaleable game: graphical fidelity settings at their lowest wouldn't look great, but would have nearly 60 FPS on more scrub computers. Jack everything up, and it will look beautiful, but frame rates will be killed on potato PCs.

TW3 on the other hand, looks very similar throughout the range of graphical settings, but frame rates are terrible throughout (except on really high-end desktop hardware).

 

Because REDengine 2 didn't work for rendering an open world with streamed loading.

 

Gotta say, I'm loving the game so far... fun story with tons to do, and despite the fuss, I think it looks fantastic! Combat is fun, characters are interesting, and boss fights kick my ass as I seem to be under ranked each time but still fun (game warns me in quest menu but I'm stubborn ha).

Very impressed and immersed, more so than 1 or 2.

 

The new engine is based in TW2, you can see it in the terrible pathfinding. Plus TW2 also ran poorly and didn't scale well. Just look at this comparison of maximum default LOD I made before:

http://imgur.com/a/cvIty

Dynamic LOD and pop-in has always been jarring to me, I'd much rather be able to turn some features off completely and have separate settings for the player character, NPCs, buildings etc. I tried messing with the user.settings file to turn shadows completely off but always end up with about 4 by 4 metres square around the character where shadows become visible...

 

Maybe not in other areas, but in terms of technical competency CDPR is basically Ubisoft or Bethesda. Just look at CDPR's body of work.

Witcher 1 stutters every few seconds cuz of that awful Aurora Engine (same problem in NWN). Cutscenes run sub-30 FPS (doesn't matter the rig) when DoF is enabled. Light bleed in SLI. Guess we could forgive them somewhat as they were just starting out.

Then they build in-house REDengine and release Witcher 2. Sure, impressive graphics for the time, but it was a system pig, poorly optimized and not scalable. Mainly renowned for Ubersampling, an SSAA setting which barely worked yet reduced FPS by 75% (by default--you could increase sampling rate by another factor of 4 via .ini tweak for a whopping 94% perf hit ). And ironically hearkening back to Witcher 1 was the return of a Cinematic DoF setting which slaughtered frame rate during cutscenes.

When TW2 EE came out a year later, CDPR never bothered to backport the optimizations and improved lighting of REDengine 2 from the Xbox 360 version to PC, which is still on REDengine 1. Results in 360 version being superior in some aspects:

PC vs. 360
PC vs. 360

Lastly comes Witcher 3, a game embroiled in a downgrade controversy before release due to dishonest marketing and poor dev communication. Then when the game does come out, not only is the downgrade confirmed but it runs like to ass to boot, renewing the he said she said between Nvidia and AMD regarding GameWorks and adding fuel to the fire of the "Nvidia is purposely crippling Kepler" conspiracy theory.

What a mess.

 

But but but...

 

"They call me The White Wolf"

 

It definitely looks better than W2 so far, but I can't negate the whole downgrade subject.

At this point I no longer care about it, and likewise I just started playing the game maxed out at 60fps capped without vsync. Runs and looks smooth. Much more than with the original patch.

 

A "downgrade" from a tech demo before the whole game got refactored as an open world experience.

Meanwhile, all those pointing at how wonderful GTA V is, how much better it is, a shining example of how to optimize a game? Serious texture load and pop-in problems on PCs due to poorly optimized CPU/GPU balance. Rockstar's first go at a fix? An actual visual downgrade to balance out the load so that the CPU can keep up.

Of course, none of these folks are commenting on what Witcher 3 has that the demo lacks. Forests full of trees that move in the wind, that move independently of each other. Skies that are... I swear I could stare at Witcher 3's skies for hours and never see the same thing twice, never fall into the uncanny valley. Dynamic weather that no game I know of can match. Sharp and clear details on sets and props that are blurred shapes in the demo. All of this and more without loading screens and without obvious pop-in.

The CES demo footage is very nice in that dog and pony show kind of way. The actual game? It's alive.

 

Funny you say that because pop-in was an obvious issue in prerelease Witcher 3 footage and seems to have made it into the final product:







"Unity 2.0" almost had me in tears.

You know which open world game has the least pop-in? Sleeping Dogs.

It also seems to be quite CPU-heavy in the cities, for example here it's almost maxing out an i5-4690K.

 

Okay, I'll give you the NPCs by the road. They're probably a bug, though, and should be patched. I'm split on the sails because the LOD demarcation is clear but animating realistic-looking fabric is really hard. I don't know if this one can be fixed. I probably wouldn't have noticed the others if they weren't pointed out thus not obvious. But compare that to this:



This from the game that you've held up as a gold standard. If GTA V is gold then The Witcher 3 is unobtainium.

 

I said Sleeping Dogs has the least pop-in of any open world game.

This is like the 10th time you've confused me for @SRSR333. I think your memory is failing you, old sport.

 

@ratinox - Yes, GTA V has pop-in. But the only thing that pops in is litter on the roads, as far as I can see.

However, you miss my main point: for approximately the same apparent visual quality, TW3 performs a lot worse. What I'm saying is that GTA V and TW3 don't look very different to justify that 25 FPS drop in TW3 as compared to GTA V, at least on my setup.

If I got ambient occlusion on plants, greatly increased tessellation as seen in the 35-minute-long 2014 gameplay video and maybe even ray-traced lighting that looked ultra-realistic, then I wouldn't complain about the FPS drop.

I honestly couldn't care less for swaying trees (which happens to be ridiculously unnatural - only constantly changing gale-force winds would cause moderately large trees to sway that much as shown in the game). I also disagree with you on the skies - I think Skyrim skies are better (i.e. darker), especially at night.

Finally, "sharp and clear details on props"? The only things I can clearly see are bad texture maps in several places, especially on the edges of wooden beams in houses - look out for these during cut-scenes.

Don't even get me started on the terrible UI design in the inventory menu - the grid is ridiculously difficult to organise.

@octiceps I haven't played Sleeping Dogs, so I can't comment.

P.S. I still enjoy and am playing the game quite regularly. It just leaves quite a lot to be desired.

 

All three games were massively fun, and the characters are fantastic. The games are better than the sum of their parts, so graphics nitpicking is pretty much moot unless that's all you care about.

 

Not graphics nitpicking, more performance/optimization. I simply gave up on Witcher 1, could never finish it due to the stuttering.

 

Go watch the video I linked. That's not trash on the roads popping in and out. It's the roads popping in and out.

Yes you would, because you don't have a Quadro 6000, currently the only GPU in the world capable of ray tracing in real time at 60 frames per second at 1080p. You have, what, a GTX 860M? You'd be lucky to get 10 frames per second and you'd complain about how poorly optimized the game is.

Soft wood trees do sway in the wind. I think the only unnatural thing is that they're not ripped out of the ground when they are hit by gale-force winds.

There's a slow motion side by side on YouTube. I suggest you watch it. In particular, the scene of the armored fellow walking in front of the burning building. The CES trailer has sparks all over but the whole scene looks like Vaseline was smeared on the camera lens. The actual game version lacks the sparks but everything in the scene is in clear focus.

So what?

Anway, sorry for the conflation and the snide commentary, @octiceps. Those were uncalled for and I will try not to do it again.

 

That's a shame. I'm playing it now (finishing up the quests in Vizima's temple district) and I haven't noticed any egregious problems. But then, I'm playing on what amounts to ~2.5 Skynets according to Penny Arcade and I have DOF turned off (I hate artificial depth of field) so that may have something to do with it. Also, my threshold of "unplayable" frame rates is probably much lower than yours.

TW1 is flawed. No argument here. Badly in some ways. The inventory system in particular is one of the worst I've ever seen. But if you can bring yourself to look past the flaws then I think it's worth playing. At least I hope it is; this is actually my first time playing it.

 

We've all seen the comparison. The first scene in the VGX trailer when the Wild Hunt moves through the burning village. Probably the most famous downgrade example because of the richness of the particle effects, dynamic fur on the villager's coat, lighting, SSR, etc. that were altered/removed in the final game. What you call Vaseline was the depth of field and cinematic focus in, focus out on the closeup of the Wild Hunt King. Even his character model was completely changed and not lit by the surrounding fires in the release.

The stutter is a known problem of the Aurora Engine. NWN had it too, and if you Google around you'll see it's widely reported. There's a momentary frame time spike every few seconds. If I have an FPS counter enabled, I can see it suddenly dip from 60 down to the low 50's and back. If I'm moving or fighting, Geralt will hitch in his get along for a split second. Anyway, both my 650M SLI and 980M laptops tear the game to pieces but the stutter and uneven frame pacing it causes drives me nuts. It goes away if I cap the game at 30 FPS but I can't play like that.

 

The CES trailer looks like some wannabe art film director turning up to 11 every possible visual effect he could get his hands on. Even your description reads like a bullet point list of visual effects. Honestly, it looks horrible. Okay, it looks nice from a tech demo, dog and pony show perspective, but for something to actually sit back and watch? It's terrible. If it were an actual film that I paid to see? I'd walk out and demand a refund. The actual game looks so much better because all of that crap is toned down or removed entirely. You can see what's going on. You can see the Wild Hunt. You can see that he is the Wild Hunt (okay, I didn't recognize him but that's me). That's not a downgrade; it's a massive improvement.

Sure you can. Stop analyzing the game and just play the game. Okay, maybe easier said than done but if I can adjust to what I might call unnecessarily high frame rates in games then I think you can adjust to what you would call unplayable low frame rates. To quote a certain Overseer, "get used to it."

 

The DoF and out-of-focus shots in that scene may be too artsy-fartsy for you but it doesn't change the fact that the VGX trailer assets are of superior quality to the in-game ones we got. It's really apparent if you watch the rest of the trailer or look at the screenshots I previously posted at the bottom here.

 

This is what I'm talking about. How can you enjoy playing a game when you invest so much emotion into picking at everything you think is wrong?

 

Eh? You're reaching again.

 

Do you think there is anything better in the actual game than was in the demo reel? Can you list enough of them to even the score with the deficiencies you've pointed out? If you can't do this for a game that will take 200+ hours of play time to see and do everything compared to a 30-minute demo then I'd say you're putting more time and effort looking at problems than enjoying the game.

 

Take a deep breath before you blow a fuse. Wipe the foam off the corners of your mouth. Read my previous response to this. Kapeesh?

 

I'll say the same thing as I say when I hear people having a tabletop RPG edition war... SHUT UP AND PLAY.

 

Taking a deep breath.

Let me rephrase the question. Can you be as specific about the good things about the game as you have been about the bad things. I'm not expecting an actual list. This is just a thought experiment of sorts. That's all.

 

Sure, if you gift me a copy I'll tell ya.

 

btw maybe its a stupid question but can someone explain me what icafe drivers are?do they exist for notebook?cause i read that some user got a nice boost using latest icafe drivers in witcher 3 but they were probably desktop users

 

iCafe = Internet cafe

http://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2012/09/25/why-a-new-gpu-can-mean-a-greener-china/

 

Wait.. you're doing all this arguing and you haven't even PLAYED IT?

 

+1. @octiceps, yes, graphics have been downgraded. I don't care for the VGX trailer, but I'm comparing it to the 35 min gameplay demo from August last year. The colours have changed and tessellation is messed up but it is a decent game, at least for the storyline and quests. If you haven't played it yet, then you don't have much of a point.

 

A point about what, the downgrade? Am I blind? I never said it was a bad game. Just that it needs optimization and the visuals are somewhat disappointing and that CDPR shouldn't have lied to us.

 

Of course you didn't say it's a bad game. But stop harping on the downgraded visuals and "CDPR lied to us, bad marketing and hype train" yadda yadda. It's getting mildly annoying.

Can we please focus on the gameplay, quests, Gwent, the hot ladies and the storyline instead? There's much more to the game than graphics.

 

You missed the last part of my post. I'm mainly annoyed that CDPR lied to us. Not the first time either, see the Xbox 360 port of TW2 and "no paid DLC" for TW3 then they shove a $25 expansion on us at the last minute. And I don't get the gamer psychology which glorifies CDPR for doing the same things that Ubisoft gets vilified for.

 

Haha its sounds absurd I know, but since the games release I've been a quiet observer in these forums and I'd have to agree with @octiceps. The "downgrade" is quite apparent. From what I've gathered this downgrade was necessary because CDProjectRed doesn't have the technical prowess to create a highly scalable engine.

The Wticher 3 preforms poorly when one considers the actually graphical fidelity of the game. Sure it's technically impressive in other aspects, such as the lack of loading, but if most users are only gaining a few fps dropping from high/ultra to low then the scaling is atrocious. Imagine how the game would run with the current engine and its 2013 graphical fidelity. You'd need 980 SLI to run the game at 1080p low settings haha


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It's only a game

 

$25 expansion - up to 30 hours extra gaming. I don't remember Dragonborn/Hearthfire/Dawnguard having that much content.

 

You made valid points and yes it does not make them that much different from ubi in some aspects but the matter has been addressed and cdpr even commented on it plus cdpr is anti drm ubi is very much drm and their games have had much more issues. What they did was wrong but its still a decent game and the least you can do is actually try it before making so many wild judgements. Revealing you did not play it was a shot in the foot pal. Downgraded yes but it still looks good, promising one thing and delivering something else is wrong but no game company has perfect records when it comes to that.

 

This is a good point. As far as I can tell, CDPR is still quite small compared to the multiple studios at EA/Ubisoft/ R* that work on DA/AC/GTA. EA even spun Frostbite off into its own separate division to work on nothing but the engine. It's pretty amazing that a small Polish dev can make an open world game of this magnitude, but the rough patches have shown in all 3 Witcher games. I'm not sure CDPR has the resources in terms of manpower and talent to pull off both game and in-house engine development at the same time. CDPR is already using a lot of middleware in TW3 such as SpeedTree, Scaleform, Umbra, GameWorks, and PhysX. Maybe if they also licensed their engine from Epic or Crytek, the game wouldn't have been delayed or downgraded, or been better optimized. Who knows.

 

OK but "no paid DLC"

 

Maybe they were referring to useless paid stuff like Horse Armour?

Nevertheless, I highly agree with your previous post - they might as well have licensed the entirety of CryEngine/Unreal Engine instead of bolting together tens of middleware. Yet the scale of the game relative to CDPR's small size is an incredible feat, even more that it has sold so well. All I hope is that CyberPunk 2077 is done better.

 

Are CryEngine and Unreal Engine capable of a rendering a large detailed world with no loading times? Not being snark just curious.


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Personally I am more impressed with GTA V engine, Witcher 3 still looks good though.

 

Now this is getting into the whole semantics discussion about what does or doesn't constitute DLC. My personal take on it is any paid content which requires the presence of the base game is DLC. Wolfenstein: The Old Blood and Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon are expandalones, not DLC. The 2 expansion packs for TW3 are DLC.

Well most of those middleware are industry standard and present in CryEngine and Unreal Engine as well, I'm just saying REDengine is clearly suboptimal as evidenced by both Witcher 2 and 3 so maybe results would have turned out better with one of the licensed commercial engines.

CyberPunk 2077 will still be on REDengine 3 like TW3, which isn't too comforting but hopefully CDPR gets their tech ironed out and TW3 to CP2077 is like GTA IV to Max Payne 3. Anyway that's still a ways off as CDPR said it'll stay mum about CP2077 until 2017 and is focusing on TW3 exclusively for the next 2 years. Funny because CP2077 was announced way back in 2012, even before TW3 I think.

For sure, they can definitely get the job done. Some of the UE/CE open world tech demos out there are amazing. Although most open world games have used in-house engines. See Ubisoft with Dunia/AnvilNext/Disrupt/SnowDrop, EA with Frostbite, Bethesda with Gamebryo/Creation, Rockstar with RAGE (after licensing RenderWare and Gamebryo for years), and recognition to UFG for their proprietary engine used in Sleeping Dogs which is optimized amazingly well.

The thing you have to realize about the big players like Unreal, CryEngine, and Frostbite is that they have huge resources and are always on the bleeding edge. I mean, how many Unreal or CryEngine tech demos have we seen in the last few years whenever a new GPU launched or something. Remember the UE3 Samaritan demo that launched the GTX 580 and 680 and the UE4 Apollo moon landing demo which showcased the VXGI capability of Maxwell 2?

Not to mention these guys were the first to add support for new APIs like Mantle/Vulkan and DX12 since they have the closest relationship with IHVs and ISVs. Which I think is pretty important for a genre like open world which tends to be CPU-bound.

 

To be fair, I don't think CDPR could afford to spend $250M+ like R* did for GTA V. Last I read TW3 budget was $40M total ($15M dev, $25M marketing).

 

That is quiet impressive considering what they achieved

 

Keep in mind Rockstar is a larger company and developed GTA V for 5 platforms (last-gen, current-gen, and PC) while TW3 was current-gen consoles and PC only

 

Fair enough, @octiceps.

But please, can we discuss the game itself now? Pretty please with a witcher medallion on top.