Humanoid

EA have said that as far back as Wing Commander Prophecy, which had some abandoned multiplayer code in it.

Well if it comes to the worst and all the contingencies fall over - well there's the 100% DRM free GoG version on the high seas as a final fallback.

Reports here: http://www.gog.com/en/forum/the_witcher_2/grid_shadows/post1 Looks like a limitation inherent in the engine for now, though hopefully it can be modified in future.

Finding looting is an annoyance, so much so that I rarely bother at all. Hopefully it doesn't come back to bite me with some key ingredients required for anything important. I never steal but that's a given regardless, so I don't look in any containers in town. I'm firmly in the ME2 school of loot management (or lack thereof) so it's not surprising of course. Also in chapter 1 I'm noticing some really distracting shadow dithering, particularly on character faces. Didn't really notice in the prologue but that was mostly broad daylight so most everyone was fully lit. Even on maximum quality shadows it's still there so disappointingly it looks like it's there to stay.

Presumably lawyers happened.

Yeah, this came up during the RDR pre-release time - http://forums.obsidian.net/index.php?showtopic=54583 - I imagine little has changed.

Satisfied with performance at this: [Rendering] AllowAntialias=1 AllowBloom=1 AllowBlur=1 AllowCutsceneDOF=0 AllowDOF=0 AllowDecals=1.0 AllowMotionBlur=0 AllowRain=1 AllowSSAO=1 AllowScatterDOF=0 AllowShafts=1 AllowSharpen=1 AllowVignette=1 AtlasTextureDownscale=0 DanglesLimiter=0 DetailTextureDownscale=0 Fullscreen=1 MaxAtlasTextureSize=2048 MaxCubeShadowCount=1 MaxCubeShadowSize=256 MaxSpotShadowCount=3 MaxSpotShadowSize=512 MaxTextureSize=2048 MeshDistanceScale=0.9 ShadowQuality=2 ShadowedLights=2 TextureDownscale=0 TextureMemoryBudget=300 UberSampling=0 VSync=1 [Viewport] Height=1440 Width=2560 Clarksdale 3.3GHz, 5850 as mentioned. Crossfire fix coming - http://twitter.com/#!/catalystcreator

Haven't read anything about it other than this thread, but got me vaguely interested. Hey, it could be the first game I ever play on my Xbox. Would Tex Murphy be a comparable analogue?

The horrible PC ports of past titles they have perpetrated on the unsuspecting PC audience are the greater evil however.

I can't armwrestle very well either with 30fps+, the mechanic feels laggy regardless. Either it's like that for everyone or it's just my poor dexterity. I probably won't do it ever again anyway so moot point. Anyway, found that normal was much too hard for me, nearing the end of the prologue I got stuck for about 20 minutes on a certain populous melee (minor complaint: hulking guys in full plate run as fast as unarmoured people including Geralt) and turned it down. Doubt I'll bother going back up. Only real complaint so far is that the stealth gameplay feels clunky. Hard to get the stun option to come up, and the general movement against obstacles is iffy. Just as well it's optional.

Well Bulldozer is next month. This game is making me itchy for a 2GB graphics card but with the HD7xxx series tentatively dated for Q3 I don't want to make the jump yet. Gotta say it's the first game that's really shown the shortcomings of 1GB frame buffer on 2560x1440, but admittedly before this the most graphically intensive games I've played were NV, ME2, DA and er, WoW - so nothing remotely high-end.

you need more screwdrivers than with a desktop PC, but yes it should be possible. Depends on the specific model of notebook, but it may well be soldered in. More likely than not I'd imagine. Bit of a guess but the percentage of notebooks out there with upgradable graphics is probably sub-5%. It would need to be not soldered in obviously, have a pin-compatible replacement, and have sufficient cooling as to not melt your system if you do make the upgrade.

Preliminary performance report from cutscenes and just moving around a bit without combat yet as I don't have time to play tonight. It's borderline playable but with a fair bit of slowing down on high settings. I'll probably bump down to medium then slowly add detail while trying to keep a flowing framerate. i5-750 at 3.33GHz, 1GB HD5850, 8GB RAM. Bugger all loading time on my shiny new second SSD, no idea how a spindle drive would do.

Apparently the performance hit from each setting is mostly incremental and can be toggled on and off for relatively small performance changes. Except Depth of Field and Ubersampling - each alone is capable of halving your frame rate.

Upgrading GPU in a laptop would be quite the feat.

Good to hear, dunno how my 5970 will handle it, technically it should eat the game for breakfast but as usual I'm reading reports of crossfire being unavailable...I'm going back to Nvidia on my next upgrade. I think SLI having issues as well, so it's a lose-lose proposition. I only have a 5850 and am a bit worried about the 1GB frame buffer struggling at 25x14 res. EDIT: Looks like compatibility issue is killing performance when nVidia 3D drivers installed.

Decided what the hell - bought the GoG version to go alongside my CE which is in transit from the other side of the world. Feeling generous toward the developers who are being awesome. Between the free DLC, non-DRM, fair pricing and quick workaround to distributor hijinks and government intervention, I'm happy to throw them a bit extra. I guess there's a subtle message there - I've spent more on a single game (~$135AUD total) with free DLC than I have on any other game excluding MMOs. Unlike that other RPG released this year which got none of my cash.

Combining two bad things makes a worse thing, not a better thing.

I guess some of the more illustrious didn't make it because they couldn't free enough conventional memory to get it to run. I mean, where are you going to find a mouse driver that takes less than 10kB these days?

Bought a 360 earlier this year purely to get Eurosport (minimum monthly fee accessing it via 360 being literally half the normal price for a cable package). Still haven't used it for any games, so yeah.

You people are making me semi-seriously consider placing the GoG order alongside my CE. Evil! This after I blow a couple hundred bucks on Amazon UK too, free shipping is a seductive temptress.

There was some controversy in that there was no DOS category pre-1995 (which would have ruled out WC). However I now see a whole bunch of late 80s/early 90s DOS games on that list so unless they all snuck in somehow through being multiplatform, colour me confused. EDIT: Remembered the reference - http://www.wcnews.com/news/update/10666

Tip relevant for Australians and other regionally ripped-off customers who still want to buy through GoG without having to pay the local premium at the behest of the scummy local distributor. GoG recently made a change that they'd stop geolocation tracking from your IP. All you need to do is set your location to USA (or somewhere else similarly unencumbered) and you will get the base US price, and when the time comes, presumably the uncensored download (not that that wasn't going to be a zero-day bypass anyway). EDIT: Yes I was beaten to it in the general news thread I see.

I wish I had a setup with something better than the Sound Blaster FM synth back in the glory days of DOS gaming. By the time I managed to get an AWE64, Win95 already had a foothold and made it all rather pointless. But at least I didn't have a Pro Audio Spectrum. Still, DOSBox lets me relive the old games with General MIDI support at least - though an element of nostalgia is admittedly lost when my games don't sound the way they did 20 years ago.

Clearly Shep is actually a Reaper and they are justifiably hunting him/her down.