The Witcher

The Witcher 1.5 is coming soon, and it will eliminate the copy protection and DVD check, so you should no longer need a cracked exe to play this game on wine. ;)

I have the original game of the Witcher that is PC compatible and i have a MAc OS X. Though Wine could run it but it keeps telling me I don't have the administrator rights or something like that even though i do! I'm new to Wine so maybe I'm doing this wrong. I know my request will be annoying but could someone walk me through getting the Witcher to work? I've been waiting to play this game for months and now I can't get it to work :(

This message comes from the copy protection (Tages). You must find a way to "disable" the copy protection.

Hello, I'm a new wine user and I'm trying to run The Witcher under mac Os X 10.5.6
The installation is fine, but I can't start the game. I downloaded some no cd files, but it doesn't work... Can anyone help me?
Thank you!!

Hi,
Do you get any error output when you run it from a terminal?

Nope.
If i run the setup, the icon shows up on the bar for a while and the it disappear.
If I run the file witcher.exe, it appears to be loaded for a while but then nothing happens...

Hi,
i have only DSL Lite. Will the game also work with the patches? The latest seems to be 1.3 . Do i need also to install the patches before? I'm asking, cuz the patches are some hundred MB big...

Thanks in advance,
Tuerklinke

I had the game running on my computer: Core2Duo E1200 @ 2,67GHz, 2GB DDR2 800 dual-channel, GF 8600GT.

However, in some locations the performance was so poor that the game became unplayable (4-6fps), even with all settings low.
Recently I switched my graphic card to GF 9600GT, which I expected to give a significant performance boost. This is not the case, however. The performance with 9600GT is as poor as it was before. The framerate didn't improve at all. I tried all possible regedit and winecfg settings, but with no effect.

Any ideas what might be the problem?

i dont think that the performance difference between those two cards is that big

In every possible benchmark or test the 9600GT has results more than twice better than 8600GT. In fact in most cases it is comparable to 8800GT. So what do you mean by writing that's not a "big difference"?

I tried to run the game on Windows XP on the same setup. It runs completely smooth (more than 30fps) in ALL locations with ALL settings high. So obviously there is a significant problem either with WINE D3D performance, or with the linux nVidia drivers.

1-Make a fresh install of your ORIGINAL game The Witcher with wine.

2-Download all needed files from The Witcher Website, this mean :
"TWEE_Upgrade.exe" (a ~900mb patch file)
"TWEE_YOUR-LANGUAGE_language_pack.exe"
"TWEE_adventure_Side_Effects.exe" (optional bonus quest)
"TWEE_adventure_The_Price_of_Neutrality.exe" (optional bonus quest)

3-Find yourself witcher.v1.4.5.1282.nodvd.rar and replace the exe of the game with the one in this archive.

4-Now double click on "TWEE_Upgrade.exe" and install the update. You'll notice that it bypassed the registration message and the copy protection system checked.

5-Replace the game exe with a working NO-DVD to bypass the protection requirement (remenber it curently DO NOT WORK with wine, see bug report on the game page)

6-Enjoy the Enhanced Edition of the witcher.

Let's hope Wine dev will soon find a way to make the game protection working so there wil be no need of those crap No-DVD files anymore...

Another way is to install The witcher under linux , install and patch The Witcher under Windows and then erase the linux files with windows ones so at least you can register your game...Still crappy way and you still need a no-dvd crack...

Problem fixed with wine 1.1.6, you can now update your game without problem, thx wine dev :)

Your No-CD patch probably contains a trojan. You need to find another one.

Have it running @ 1440x900 forcing a window...settings on Med, 16xAF 4xAA. Lighting Low (Seems lighting is the key to fps). Still tweaking to see how high I can push it.

Requires some tweaking to registry, some minor texture issues, (Sword swing from other chars "black wave") Health Bar iffy, it works then doesnt

Hi a have the same GFX card - X1950 Pro.

The same for me.
Latest drivers v. 8.3 .

But I have menu, can choose saved games.
And can't start level because of unlimited "loading ..." w/o progress bar.

these were alreasdy installed but I reinstalled them
Install msvc2005 runtime with winetricks:

$ wget www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
$ sh winetricks vcrun2005

and I get this now

fixme:ntoskrnl:KeInitializeTimerEx 0x110ad8 0
fixme:spoolsv:serv_main (0 (nil))
fixme:ntdll:RtlNtStatusToDosErrorNoTeb no mapping for 8000000a
fixme:actctx:parse_depend_manifests Could not find dependent assembly L"Microsoft.VC80.CRT"
err:module:import_dll Library MSVCP80.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\The Witcher\\System\\witcher.exe") not found
err:module:import_dll Library MSVCR80.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\The Witcher\\System\\witcher.exe") not found
fixme:actctx:parse_depend_manifests Could not find dependent assembly L"Microsoft.VC80.CRT"
err:module:import_dll Library MSVCR80.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\The Witcher\\System\\CommonLibs.dll") not found
err:module:import_dll Library MSVCP80.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\The Witcher\\System\\CommonLibs.dll") not found
err:module:import_dll Library CommonLibs.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\The Witcher\\System\\witcher.exe") not found
err:module:LdrInitializeThunk Main exe initialization for L"C:\\Program Files\\The Witcher\\System\\witcher.exe" failed, status c0000135

Have the same error just copied all dirs with Microsoft.VC80.CRT from real windows xp Windows\WinSxS (also manifest and profiles) to the same folder of wine.

Looks like vcrun2005 (vcrun2005sp1) doesn't install as needed.

Did you install DirectX to wine like it is described here? www.wine-reviews.net/wine-reviews/microsoft/directx-90c-march-2008-redistributable-on-linux-with-wine.html
Be sure NOT to do that. Try a clean .wine folder and install the vcrun2005 redist. I got the same error when I had DirectX installed to wine.

Install this www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=200b2fd9-ae1a-4a14-984d-389c36f85647&DisplayLang=en

and also copy d3dx9_35.dll from your windows directory(or download www.dll-files.com/dllindex/dll-files.shtml?d3dx9_35) to system32 in wine.

Sorry it was supposed to be a reply to post below....

I did that and now I get this

dallas@Shane:~/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/The Witcher/System$ wine witcher.exe
fixme:ntoskrnl:KeInitializeTimerEx 0x110ad8 0
fixme:spoolsv:serv_main (0 (nil))
fixme:ntdll:RtlNtStatusToDosErrorNoTeb no mapping for 8000000a
fixme:actctx:parse_depend_manifests Could not find dependent assembly L"Microsoft.VC80.CRT"
err:module:import_dll Library MSVCP80.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\The Witcher\\System\\witcher.exe") not found
err:module:import_dll Library MSVCR80.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\The Witcher\\System\\witcher.exe") not found
fixme:actctx:parse_depend_manifests Could not find dependent assembly L"Microsoft.VC80.CRT"
err:module:import_dll Library MSVCR80.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\The Witcher\\System\\CommonLibs.dll") not found
err:module:import_dll Library MSVCP80.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\The Witcher\\System\\CommonLibs.dll") not found
err:module:import_dll Library CommonLibs.dll (which is needed by L"C:\\Program Files\\The Witcher\\System\\witcher.exe") not found
err:module:LdrInitializeThunk Main exe initialization for L"C:\\Program Files\\The Witcher\\System\\witcher.exe" failed, status c0000135

Install msvc2005 runtime with winetricks:

$ wget www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
$ sh winetricks vcrun2005

ok, The Witcher crash randomly when playing almost after an hour or more.

i had the same problem on Ms windows and the fix was/is to set the grafik to low it was then playable for hours and hours.

if you are going for a NOCD there is another crash that occure when you are dropping thing from you inventory, the best way to go around this is to sell the items.

other than that this game performs poorly under wine and even to some extent under ms windows. i don't think the developers of this game took thier time to actually complete this game.

hope this is fixed with some major patches.

how did you get this to run in the first place I installed it but when I try to run it I just see the Witcher game launcher on the bottom task bar

I just installed the game, then ran it with a NOCD the russian v1.0
it loaded fine then i played, it was very laggy even at low settings.
so the thing i did was just to install. maybe i just got lucky who knows. it probably run smother on another version i just tried the v1.0.

The crash after an hour is with 99,9% probability caused by GPU overheating. You have to clean the inside of your computer and check for anything that could increase the temperature inside the case (e.g. airflow obstructed by cables), and if you have a notebook, invest in a cooling base with extra fans. This is not a Wine issue.

I tried today's nightly of Wine with Witcher 1.2.

The installation went fine. Patch applying was also easy.

I tried to apply the russian nocd patch from 1.1, but it didn't work properly. It launched the game, but instead of normal play screen, it gave me a choice between "normal Witcher" and "Additional modules". I could not click on either.

If anyone spots a nocd for 1.2, let me know pls.

There is a new Russian NoCd patch at the usual place available. I tried it today together with the official 1.2 patch. Unfortunately the 'Rag Doll Effect' is still in effect. I do not see any improvement compared to the previous versions (fortunately no deterioration either). I am using wine-0.9.52 + a set of today's git patches. Frankly I did not expect any rendering improvement as the official 1.2 patch basically seems to address the game logic issues rather then provide any significant modifications of the rendering engine.

You should install MSVC++ library using winetricks:
www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks

Then copy d3dx9_35.dll into C:\Windows\System32 on virtual wine drive (e.g. into ~/.wine/drive_c/windows/system32).

After that it should start.

I've installed vcredist_x86.exe from game disc, also i have copied d3dx9_35.dll to right place and... still the same. I think it's faulty no-cd witcher.exe, under windoze it say that "the program has terminated unexpectly" (or something like this). Is there is any way to make tages working with wine? Later i'll try to search for other no-cd/dvd crack...

Download no-cd crack from gamecopyworld - the russian version seems to work good. You can check native version too. I've got only demo version with no tages, but I can't check how the game works - 512MB ram is to small amount for that, even on low details :)

Yes, i've got this crack from gamecopyworld, both for 1.0 and 1.1(a). And it seems that they won't work for me... I've got an mini-image for demontools, this is working more than fine (and quick!) :) And it's too bad there is no similar soft for linux:/
With 512mb game works quite nice, but game takes looong time to load... That's why i've bought additional 1gb :D

I have also GeForce 6200 TurboCache. That card takes up to 256MB of RAM, so 512 is too small amount - with 1 GB of swap the game don't load (it uses all of memory that I have).

Any road, I won't play it because of wrong rendering. I only want to test that :)

With new Wine - 0.9.51, I removed ~/.wine, and tried to reinstall the game.

Result is an error with "unhandled exception"

Error No.: 0x80040707
Desc: Call to the unhandled function DLL failed: ISRT._EnableStatus

at the early beginning of installer process.

This is a regressions as it didn't happen with earlier Wine.

Can anyone confirm that?

Steps to reproduce:
1) Wipe out ~/.wine
2) Launch wine setup.exe
3) Choose custom directory
4) Press Ok
5) Bang

Ok, it's fixed on trunk

this was with the 1.1a patch installed.

Well, I can run it in 0.9.50 after copying d3dx9_35.dll and using a no-cd patch.

However framerate is *really* bad (esp. compared to native), even though it starts in a very small window and my computer is quite good: Intel Core 2 Duo E6550, 2GB RAM, Geforce 8800GTS 640MB graphics card, 320GB 16m SATA hard drive.

I've enabled winedevices.exe and build new wine without 3Dmark patch that I've attached when I was fighting with call of duty 4.. And still nothing :| I can't see any of 3d models, no background, have white or black screen when intro's on.. But. I have some new errors:

fixme:d3d_texture:apply_wrap >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> GL_INVALID_OPERATION (0x502) from glTexParameteri(..., type, wrapParm) @ basetexture.c / 368

err:d3d:state_colorwrite (WINED3DRS_COLORWRITEENABLE1/2/3,0,15,15) not yet implemented. Missing of cap D3DPMISCCAPS_INDEPENDENTWRITEMASKS wasn't honored?

the last one was found only in exception of Pro Evolution Soccer 2008 but wasn't solved.

I've tried other software like Call Of Duty 4 [CoD2 works fine for me], Hitman 2 = same errors like the witcher.. and stil nothing..

thanks for reply :)

Did you modify Wine source? I see that there is an patch for working CoD4, and in that patch there is some modifications with D3DPMISCCAPS constants (one of your new errors is about that). Maybe that patch does not work with newest Wine version?

Ooops, you have already deleted that patch :) Did you do that right? If you can, download and extract new wine source. This may delete some trashes :)

In gentoo I've created in overlay new version of wine and compile it. When I wanted to use non patch version I've deleted it and compile portage clean ver.. and still nothing but Hitman2 run.. the witcher and CoD don't. Now i don't have OpenGL errors but all background problems stays :/ We have to convince witcher coders to linux ports ;)

Hello :) Ok. I've finally installed this game with winetools, crack 1.0. I had a lot of problems with running game before but they're all gone when I was testing new call of duty 4 demo. I've made some modification of my registry and now I have nothing :| Both witcher and cod have the same problem.. I don't have any background :/ In witcher I can see only those things in corners of screen and text telling me what to do. I can't see intros too.. when they're playing I can see only white,green and blue stripes.. I've done everything what was here and now I don't know what to do :| I have gentoo amd64, wine-0.9.50, video card: gf5200Fx [128mb], nvidia-drivers: 100.14.19 and my registry:
PixelshadowMode enabled
VertexshaderMode hardware
VideoMemorySize 128
OffscreenRenderingMode backbuffer
UseGLSL enabled
mscoree = native
winedevices.exe = disabled

and from the latest moment I got this messages on console repeating so many times so I'll post only one case of them all:
fixme:d3d:IWineD3DDeviceImpl_ValidateDevice (0x16b308) : stub

fixme:d3d:tex_bumpenvmat >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> GL_INVALID_OPERATION (0x502) from glTexEnvfv(GL_TEXTURE_SHADER_NV, GL_OFFSET_TEXTURE_MATRIX_NV, mat)

fixme:d3d:CreateContext >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> GL_INVALID_OPERATION (0x502) from glTexEnvi(GL_TEXTURE_SHADER_NV, GL_PREVIOUS_TEXTURE_INPUT_NV, ...
@ context.c / 384


The last one I had with call of duty 4 case too ... the same problem - no background at all except weapon menu, maps etc.

Thank you for all replays :)

Pozdrawiam Krzysztof Garczyński

I think that it's because of "winedevices.exe = disabled". I don't know, what it is (there is no information about it in wiki.winehq.org/UsefulRegistryKeys). Check more applications. Maybe bug occurs in more games?

I have got a couple messages from people complaining that they get the message about minimum system requirements not met. The reasons may be as the following:

1. Your version of Wine is too old. I don't know if the game runs on versions prior to 0.9.49.
2. Possibly you have the GLSL turned off. If I am right GLSL support is turned on by default starting from 0.9.49. In older versions that required adding a registry key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software/Wine/Direct3D/UseGLSL

and assingn it a text value "enabled"

3. Possibly you have the hardware pixel shader turned off. You can check this by running winecfg.
4. I think that the minimum version of Windows emulated by your Wine must be WinXP as that is what the game manual says.

I have not tried to run the game with any Ati/AMD cards as I currently don't have any at hand so I don't know if it runs with Ati at all. I think it should but still I cannot vouch for that.

Now, what if you change the renderer backend back to OpenGL. Does that faulty characters rendering change?

I don't know what exactly you mean. But setting UseGLSL to false (meaning use ARB only) causes the minimum hardware requirements not met error. Please correct me if I am wrong but I think that both ARB and GLSL are just different ways to communicate with the GPU shaders. GLSL is a higher level c like language, ARB is more like an assembler but both belong to the OpenGL standard.

Setting DirectDrawRenderer either to opengl or gdi is irrelevant for this game - both work but do not affect the image quality as the errors are due to missing 3D rather then 2D features.

Does the game itself has an option to natively use OpenGL instead of Dx3D that I have missed? That would probably solve most if not all of the problems as Windows games that use OpenGL run on Wine much better than those that rely on Dx3D only.

You didn't have to know what I meant exactly, you answared exactly what I wanted to know :) Thx, I'm holding decision to buy the game until I know it's somehow fully playable under wine.

Have you tried any previous wine versions? Maybe that's not missing 3D but a regression.

No I have not tried any earlier versions of Wine so you are right this could be a regression. But I personally doubt it as Direct3D implementation in Wine is still far from complete so missing features seem to be a more likely reason.

Ok. So you should not try the 1.1 patch. I installed the game with winetricks, dx9 and no-cd.

It did run, even on high details (but without moving character), but after upgrading the game to 1.1 (and using 1.1 no-cd patch) I cannot load the map at all. It stops on the map loading screen.

Finaly I got the game running. I posted a couple of screenshots - hope they will be accepted. Here is a short description how:

My system is Gentoo Linux ~amd64 on Intel Core2 Quad. I am using an NVidia GF 7800 GTX graphics card (a bit old but still OK for most games). Wine is git-2007-11-21. I performed the following steps:

1. created a new Wine prefix.
2. Installed the MS VC++ libiraries using this script:
www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
(many thanks to Austin English for posting this link on the Bugzilla)
3. Copied the d3dx9_35.dll into windows/system32
4. Performed a standard game installation from the Polish distribution DVD:

# wine /mnt/cdrom/setup.exe

Please note that the installer will try to create a directory with with a name with Polish diacriticals and that can you give trouble later so change the installation path to anything that does not contain any fonts with 'ogonki'.
5. Downloaded a nocd patch from the Web and replaced the original System/witcher.exe with the patched file. The only patch that I was able to find claims to be for the Russian version but it works with mine (Polish) too.
6. Started the game just typing on the console:

# wine witcher.exe

The game runs but the rendering quality is terrible. I have not tried to run this game on Windows so I may be wrong - possibly this is just the quality of the game itself - but I doubt that. But on the other hand the game is fully playable and surprisingly stable. It did not crash even once.

In my report I complained about a low frame rate and choppy motion. Then I realized that this is not necessarily due to the rendering itself but may have something to do with an enormous amount of debug information written into stdout/stderr (mostly about unimplemented D3D features). So I tried to call the program like this:

# wine witcher.exe > /dev/null 2>&1

Now the frame rate is much better. The motion smoothness is OK with me even if the quality is set to high. Unfortunately that setting does not seem to affect the actual image quality (that is all the rendering errors are unaffected) because of those unimplemented features (catch 22 situation:-) but most likely this problem will get gradually solved by the new Wine patches.

Hi,

I've just tried your instructions but I am still unable to lunch the game. It exits with message box: 'Your computer did not met minimal system requirements' (Uwaga: Minimalne wymagania sprzętowe nie zostały spełnione). It also gives some output:

err:ole:CoGetClassObject class {9a5ea990-3034-4d6f-9128-01f3c61022bc} not registered
err:ole:CoGetClassObject no class object {9a5ea990-3034-4d6f-9128-01f3c61022bc} could be created for context 0x1
fixme:heap:HeapSetInformation 0x110000 0 0x196f874 4
fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x196ea28,0x00000000), stub!


I guess that the game is unable to measure my system speed or rather to get any information about it from API. That last 'fixme' line looks to me like some unimplemented call for listing available graphic cards. I wonder if there's any way to fool the game and give it some faked information. Oh, and what is important, my system meets game requirements. It's Athlon 64 X2 4200+, 2 GB of RAM and Radeon X800 XL on latest ATI's 7.11 fglrx driver. I've tried the game on Windows which I've set up specially for The Witcher and it runs just fine (except from the bug after prologue, which crashes the game and makes further playing impossible).

Do you have any ideas?

This problem is the original debug message I sent as a bug report.

Try launching System/witcher.exe

I do launch it by typing 'wine witcher' or in upper folder by 'wine System/witcher'. It always gives me the same massage box.

I was able to launch the game through System/witcher.exe after installing those winetricks and dx8 dll (and no-cd crack)

Well, I was not. I've installed the game, later on I've installed C++ extensions (by winetricks), then I've put d3dx9_35.dll in windows/system32 and then finally I've downloaded no-cd patch, and started the game by typing 'wine witcher' while I was in System directory.

And then I've got msgbox FROM THE RUNNING GAME, which claimed that my system didn't met the minimum requirements. I know that this is normal for this game if you try to run it on old machine because it checks your hardware and permission to launch further depends from this check's result. So my guess is that WINE can't tell game what hardware exactly do I have. And I am pretty sure that it is not the Tages issue since I'm using this Russian no-cd executable.

I think that it's connected with this line from the output:

fixme:win:EnumDisplayDevicesW ((null),0,0x1adea28,0x00000000), stub!


Thanks for your time,
Ł.

Hi!
I get the same error as you. I think it's related to the ATI cards. Have someone got Witcher working on ATI?

On my machine (Athlon64 X2 5600 + 2GB RAM + GF8600GTS with Ubuntu 7.10) game with no-dvd crack run almost perfectly.

There are some small problems, but none as not animated characters.
The problems i noticed are:
soft shadows (high shadows setting) are incorrectly displayed, but hard shadows (medium setting) looks correct,
energy bars (left top on screen) aren't displayed (actually this is most annoying bug i noticed),
when texture resolution is set to highest some rendering artifacts appearing from time to time, and game runs terribly slow (setting texture resolution to mid solved this problem),
some textures sometimes render as completely black (depend on camera position/orientation).

Forgot to mention this in previous post.
Game instaled is with patch 1.1a, and running on official wine 0.9.49 release.

That's amazing!

You got different results than me.

1) It seems that you were able to run it on 1.1
2) Your characters are moving!

Can you write down a detailed steps you made in order to run the game?
(like: bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10264#c20)

and possibly send a screenshot?

All I have done is in my original post. I did not use any other tricks. I am positive that the version I used then was 1.0. Meantime I upgraded to 1.1a and this also works however does not change a thing about the rendering. I have also posted a couple of screenshots. All but one to date are mine. If you suspect I have done something funny (like creating those pictures with Gimp) you are wrong. They are genuine. As a proof I uploaded another one - a picture showing a fragment of my desk and my computer running The Witcher on Wine taken with a webcam. If by chance it gets rejected I am willing to mail that screenshot to you to convince you that I am honest.

Sorry, it seems that your questions have not been addressed to me. I just got an automatic mail and falsely assumed that you asked me....

Well, I installed game normally.
1. Install Witcher 1.0 from dvd,
2. Install missing dlls
3. Install 1.1a patch
4. Use 1.1 NoDVD Russian Crack

Steps 1-3 were done on wine 0.9.48.

As for the "dummy" character, i think that it may be related to graphic card, it's possible that due to translation from directx shaders to glsl some hardware limits were exceeded (like max instruction count, attrbute count, uniform count ..), and shader failed to compile.

Did you install the winetricks thing? Or only dx9.dll?

What graphic card do you have?

I just copied dlls from windows (not 100% sure for msvcxxx.dll)

I have GF 8600 GTS.

Can you tell me which libraries did you copy from windows?

I installed d3dx9_35.dll and nothing more, but my characters are dolls. Can you list them one by one so that someone can reproduce it?

I don't remember what exactly i did (it was couple weeks ago), only when i read that with crack game runs i just used crack, and game runs without problems.

I apologize again for misunderstanding Zbigniew's comment but here is a picture I promised (the horse is waiting in front of the fence:-)

appdb.winehq.org/appimage.php?iId=14557

This shows what my computer looks like while running The Witcher. Well this is a bit nonstandard piece of hardware but that should not affect what runs on it...