Another Mac port gets cancelled due to Apple's poor graphics support

[Washac]

Apple killed any chance of any decent game ports when they decided NOT to give the
Apple buying public a games compliant machine as in not being able to upgrade it
yourself, killing off the upgradable Mac Pro line and not keeping the the OS game compatible
were real bad moves in my book.

Bootcamp is also one of the biggest Mac game killers.

Apple are now only interested in the phone, pad, laptops etc, then they take the OS down the road
of getting everything looking the same on screen. They give us siri and think they are doing us a
service, pah, not in my book their not.

I will run my 2009 Mac Pro until the day it dies, them no more Apple desk top, well unless they do start
to see sense. Sad sad thing to say but if Apple will not listen or keep up then its time to go to the darkside, yup I have been looking at PC rigs.

 

[Janichsan]

Apple are now only interested in the phone, pad, laptops etc, …

If they were interested in laptops, we wouldn't be waiting for 15 months for an updated rMBP…

 

[Washac]

If they were interested in laptops, we wouldn't be waiting for 15 months for an updated rMBP…

That is very true, sorry for the error there.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Because of how incredibly bad the PC port had been launched/received. (50% negative reviews from users.) If you followed that at all, it literally got pulled off Steam for several months to be patched, and everyone was offered refunds (even if you spent 50 hours or w/e on the game.) They re-released it, but the damage was done. At this point I suspect WB just wanted to stop dealing with it, so cancelled the Mac/Linux ports. I don't know if they were paying Feral, or Feral had to pay them to port it (can go both ways) but in anycase we aren't getting it.

It's a fantastic port (after the update everyone waited for). The problem here is the release date was too early and gamers are just impatient and spoilt these days.

I grew up in an era when we had to load games from cassettes or cartridges and if a triple AAA title was released too early full of bugs then that's how you got it. There were no updates.

I'm happy we can now wait for updates or buy a early access game that's still in development and needs feedback. We had nothing like that before.

 

[Janichsan]

It's a fantastic port (after the update everyone waited for). The problem here is the release date was too early and gamers are just impatient and spoilt these days.

I grew up in an era when we had to load games from cassettes or cartridges and if a triple AAA title was released too early full of bugs then that's how you got it. There were no updates.

I'm happy we can now wait for updates or buy a early access game that's still in development and needs feedback. We had nothing like that before.

Sorry, but that's bull****. It's unexusable that WB released this unfinished piece of crap as allegedly finished product. Their customers were completely right to complain. This has nothing to do with being "impatient and spoilt". The game never should have been released in this state, period.

And Early Access is something that has to die as soon aus possible. The idea might have been good, but it has become little more than an excuse to scam customers with half-assed alpha products. It's even worse when triple-A developers with multi-million budgets try to exploit their customers' gullibility this way.

 

[Ferazel]

Sure, there are incompatibilities in Metal compared with something as obnoxiously bloated as OpenGL. However, calling it "not the solution" is a little extreme. I would guess that Mr. Oliver is annoyed that he has to do the extra work. It's not like it's completely unusable. Both Unity, Unreal, and Blizzard has been able to make a renderer using the API.

 

[koyoot]

Both Unity, Unreal, and Blizzard has been able to make a renderer using the API.

Blizzard has made a renderer using the Metal? Any links, or is it "behind the scenes"?

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Sorry, but that's bull****. It's unexusable that WB released this unfinished piece of crap as allegedly finished product. Their customers were completely right to complain. This has nothing to do with being "impatient and spoilt". The game never should have been released in this state, period.

You just proved my point. Yes they shouldn't release it early but that only shows how tough development and deadlines are. Ranting like a spoilt child online about a video game can be a sign of consumer power or an expression of how mindless consumer culture is.

 

[Ferazel]

Blizzard has made a renderer using the Metal? Any links, or is it "behind the scenes"?

It is the default OS X 10.11+ World of Warcraft renderer from 7.0 Legion beta onwards.
Some additional information: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/20418713498#9

 

[jeanlain]

Sure, there are incompatibilities in Metal compared with something as obnoxiously bloated as OpenGL. However, calling it "not the solution" is a little extreme. I would guess that Mr. Oliver is annoyed that he has to do the extra work. It's not like it's completely unusable. Both Unity, Unreal, and Blizzard has been able to make a renderer using the API.

But people like Brad Oliver don't have nearly as much leeway. Than can't decide to use another rendering method if the game may no longer look and behave exactly as it does on Windows. And they are the people that make the best AAA games a reality on the Mac, so their opinions matter a lot.
[doublepost=1468447498][/doublepost]

You just proved my point. Yes they shouldn't release it early but that only shows how tough development and deadlines are. Ranting like a spoilt child online about a video game can be a sign of consumer power or an expression of how mindless consumer culture is.

It's not the gamers' fault if a game is broken.

 

[JordanNZ]

But people like Brad Oliver don't have nearly as much leeway. Than can't decide to use another rendering method if the game may no longer look and behave exactly as it does on Windows. And they are the people that make the best AAA games a reality on the Mac, so their opinions matter a lot.
[doublepost=1468447498][/doublepost]
It's not the gamers' fault if a game is broken.

Brad's pissed because the lack of certain features means he has to do more work (which is what those tweets were about). Not because he can't use Metal to port games. He's already using it for the coming ports.

 

[antonis]

I grew up in an era when we had to load games from cassettes or cartridges and if a triple AAA title was released too early full of bugs then that's how you got it. There were no updates.

I also grew up in that era of Amiga, Atari ST and 8bit home micros with cassette players. Yes, there was no internet in order to patch games, but that was also the reason that these games were released only when they were at a very decent / near perfect status. No gamer had to worry if he will be able to play the game from start to finish. Nowadays, premature, buggy and badly-made releases is not the exception, it's the rule. It's all about money now, and quality check and polishing got thrown out of the window because of that.

 

[Janichsan]

I also grew up in that era of Amiga, Atari ST and 8bit home micros with cassette players. Yes, there was no internet in order to patch games, but that was also the reason that these games were released only when they were at a very decent / near perfect status. No gamer had to worry if he will be able to play the game from start to finish. Nowadays, premature, buggy and badly-made releases is not the exception, it's the rule. It's all about money now, and quality check and polishing got thrown out of the window because of that.

Back in the 8 and 16 bit days, there were also quite a few hastily slapped together pieces of shyte. But the developers got called out for that as they did today, and were "rewarded" with bad reviews and a bad reputation. In fact, they probably had it somewhat easier to get away with this, since reviews were published in printed magazines which usually came out only weeks after the release of the game, and gamers couldn't as easily exchange their experiences with the product.

I get that it has become more difficult to produce a game without bugs and problems due to the sheer size of modern titles. But in the specific case of Arkham Knight, WB knowingly released a substantially broken product which took months to half-way fix it. This is simply in no way acceptable. They don't deserve any leeway or sympathy for their alleged plight of dealing with "spoilt" gamers. Especially since this was not the first (or the last) time they tried to screw over their customers.

 

[jeanlain]

Brad's pissed because the lack of certain features means he has to do more work (which is what those tweets were about). Not because he can't use Metal to port games. He's already using it for the coming ports.

I never said the contrary. But when a feature is missing, it may also mean lower performance. And 3D performance is not exactly stellar on the Mac.

We can discuss this forever, but the fact is that a modern game was cancelled on the Mac because of "difficulties with the platform". So Metal was apparently not adequate.

 

[Janichsan]

Not because he can't use Metal to port games. He's already using it for the coming ports.

But as he also made very clear: only because there is no real other choice. It's Metal or OpenGL. And Metal is not the better choice, it's the slightly less bad one. Obviously, Metal is not the saviour of Mac gaming as many expected it to be – i.e. "not the solution".

 

[antonis]

Back in the 8 and 16 bit days, there were also quite a few hastily slapped together pieces of shyte. But the developers got called out for that as they did today, and were "rewarded" with bad reviews and a bad reputation. In fact, they probably had it somewhat easier to get away with this, since reviews were published in printed magazines which usually came out only weeks after the release of the game, and gamers couldn't as easily exchange their experiences with the product.

I get that it has become more difficult to produce a game without bugs and problems due to the sheer size of modern titles. But in the specific case of Arkham Knight, WB knowingly released a substantially broken product which took months to half-way fix it. This is simply in no way acceptable. They don't deserve any leeway or sympathy for their alleged plight of dealing with "spoilt" gamers. Especially since this was not the first (or the last) time they tried to screw over their customers.

Yup, I can't even imagine Psygnosis or Infogrames or even Ocean releasing such broken titles back then. Game creators used to respect their good name. Now, even if you buy a brand new and - by today's standards - well-made title, a huge patch awaits you right after the installation. It goes without saying that this patch's development started way before the initial title's release. Everyone knowingly releases incomplete titles now to get the cash flowing. It's in most games' life cycle now.

 

[wubsylol]

Brad's pissed because the lack of certain features means he has to do more work (which is what those tweets were about). Not because he can't use Metal to port games. He's already using it for the coming ports.

Having to do more work to achieve the same thing just makes the whole process cost more money, which is really not something deserving of defence.

 

[Ferazel]

Having to do more work to achieve the same thing just makes the whole process cost more money, which is really not something deserving of defence.

I don't know if I entirely agree with you. Sure it sucks for the porting teams, and it will definitely add time/cost/money to the porting effort (until they can invest in writing a translator). However, if every graphics API needs to be a 1:1 mapping of each other format to format there's no benefit to having your own. Those things can add bloat and difficulty to the API implementation that can lead to driver bugs.

I'm sure this is one of the reasons why Apple is taking control of its API so that it doesn't have to have multiple slightly different ways to render dynamic geometry like what OpenGL had. Apple had a lot of bugs in their OpenGL drivers and I think one of the reasons likely was the API bloat that made it difficult to test and maintain with the small team writing the drivers. This is the strength of Direct3D API and will hopefully be a strength for Metal once it matures more fully. Having an API with fewer knobs but with much more consistent behavior and results.

Where I agree with you is when there is no access to available hardware at all (such as the lack of tessellation hardware access).

 

[marksatt]

Having to do more work to achieve the same thing just makes the whole process cost more money, which is really not something deserving of defence.

Very true, but nobody is perfect. Metal is a graphics API cut to the bone for the sake of efficiency and likely maintenance as Ferazel suggests, so some cuts were always likely to be too deep. As we saw again at this year's WWDC Apple are still building Metal's feature set out so it isn't unreasonable to think most will be rectified in time. That doesn't make the present any less difficult for Mac games developers, but I'm more positive that Metal is moving in the right direction than I ever was about OpenGL (either at the spec. level or Apple's implementation thereof).

But as he also made very clear: only because there is no real other choice. It's Metal or OpenGL. And Metal is not the better choice, it's the slightly less bad one. Obviously, Metal is not the saviour of Mac gaming as many expected it to be – i.e. "not the solution".

Metal is also typically much, much faster than OpenGL and continues to get faster. If your hope was that a brand new API would magically solve all problems with Mac gaming you were always going to be disappointed because that just isn't the whole story. Take a look over the fence at the Linux crowd who were expecting Vulkan to mystically/magically transform their OS into a rival to Windows and it simply won't because it also has entirely understandable growing pains. I'll also reiterate that Mac Vulkan would be little to no better than Metal - it'd just give us a different set of problems.

But people like Brad Oliver don't have nearly as much leeway. Than can't decide to use another rendering method if the game may no longer look and behave exactly as it does on Windows.

This is definitely where Metal suffers most. For UE4 if I can't bend Metal to fit then I can usually alter the high-level rendering code slightly and achieve the same result. It is much harder to do that if you are working on a port so I have tremendous respect for Brad & co.

 

[Exhale]

I never said the contrary. But when a feature is missing, it may also mean lower performance.

In many cases it explicitly means lower performance; certain techniques are built on others to work.

More likely though happen though - is that you'll simply not be able to use higher settings; like in WoW.

 

[wubsylol]

In many cases it explicitly means lower performance; certain techniques are built on others to work.

More likely though happen though - is that you'll simply not be able to use higher settings; like in WoW.

Is this screenshot legitimate? What device supports Metal but not Sunshafts?

 

[Janichsan]

Metal is also typically much, much faster than OpenGL and continues to get faster.

The question is how much of that performance advantage remains when the port developers have to keep working around Metal's missing features.

 

[JordanNZ]

The question is how much of that performance advantage remains when the port developers have to keep working around Metal's missing features.

Which missing features do you think impact performance? The features Brad was pissed about missing have nothing to do with performance, just how things translate with mapping between D3D.
[doublepost=1468836139][/doublepost]

Is this screenshot legitimate? What device supports Metal but not Sunshafts?

It's just a bug… The WoW metal backend isn't finished yet. OpenGL (core) isn't there yet either.

 

[wubsylol]

It's just a bug… The WoW metal backend isn't finished yet. OpenGL (core) isn't there yet either.

Both of them are considered finished enough to for release, which is happening in about 36 hours.

This is not a bug I've seen on the beta forums either, leading me to believe - as I originally insinuated - the screenshot is fake and not demonstrative of any real-world scenario.

 

[Exhale]

Is this screenshot legitimate? What device supports Metal but not Sunshafts?

I grabbed that off the Beta client at the time I posted that. The same restriction exists in the PTR client however - and thats getting released Tomorrow (July 19, 2016).
Hardware: Late 2013 RMBP (Iris GPU)

Thats not an issue with hardware support - its an issue with API capabilities. The setting can be enabled when the API is switched to OpenGL. (live & beta).

This is not a bug I've seen on the beta forums either

Because its not a bug. Graphics settings which cannot be enabled due to API or hardware limitations are greyed out; you get the same behaviour for SSAO Ultra on non-NVIDIA machines (live & beta).

The yellow exclamation mark is placed when a graphics quality setting (5+ in this case) attempts to raise a setting but cannot because the setting isn't supported.