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Major gaming news at WWDC: Metal and New games

It has come to my attention that the first stable release of Fedora Asahi is now out

www.gamingonlinux.com

Fedora Asahi Remix 39 brings Linux to Apple Silicon Macs

Have one of those fancy Apple Silicon Macs? Want to pop Linux on it? Check out Fedora Asahi Remix 39, the newly released Asahi Linux flagship distribution.
www.gamingonlinux.com www.gamingonlinux.com

Dunno how well it performs yet though since I thought Asahi Lina had more bug fixing to do on the GPU drivers. Hopefully soon it’ll be in a good enough state that we have an alternative to run games on Mac through Asahi
 
Chancha said:
It seems the App Store has come net code that is optimized for mobile downloads, or that very large apps have to be sliced into chunks in their infrastructure, or whatever the case. It just doesn’t look normal as when we can download the macOS images very quickly from direct web links off of Apple servers and they are also dozens of GBs sometimes. Apple really needs to tune this a bit if they intend the App Store to be used for large games down the road.

The lack of ray tracing is honestly disappointing. Apple spent that much PR time during both the iPhone A17pro and M3 events talking about it, yet the game that needs it the most doesn’t support it. With the timeline of developments we know it must be too late for Capcom porting team to know since the presence of RT cores must have been kept secret outside of Apple until very late, but still, all the public will see is there are literally zero RT supporting games on Apple’s platforms now, and any time soon.
Click to expand...



Wow, you haven’t looked very hard, or you would have seen that “War Thunder” has been out with a RT Metal patch for more than a week now on Steam.

It’s a free game, so you have no excuse not to try it out.
 
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loui100 said:
However... no raytracing support, that's rather disappointing.
Click to expand...

Chancha said:
The lack of ray tracing is honestly disappointing. Apple spent that much PR time during both the iPhone A17pro and M3 events talking about it, yet the game that needs it the most doesn’t support it. With the timeline of developments we know it must be too late for Capcom porting team to know since the presence of RT cores must have been kept secret outside of Apple until very late, but still, all the public will see is there are literally zero RT supporting games on Apple’s platforms now, and any time soon.
Click to expand...

Can be solved easily with a future update like Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition or Witcher 3 Next-Gen Update. Capcom said before they were working on it but had difficulties but that was before Metal 3 and M3 so I'm sure it will come.


www.cdprojekt.com

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Arrives on Next Gen this December - CD PROJEKT

CD PROJEKT RED announced today that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition will release December 14th, 2022, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. Enhanced with the power of next-gen consoles and
www.cdprojekt.com www.cdprojekt.com
 
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Steam winter sale is on, some Mac games are hitting all time low, in particular BG3 at 10% off... well it is the first and only time it has been discounted, so, lol.
 
Chancha said:
Steam winter sale is on, some Mac games are hitting all time low, in particular BG3 at 10% off... well it is the first and only time it has been discounted, so, lol.
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Don't forget to vote in the Steam Awards. You get free chat stickers for doing so

store.steampowered.com

The Steam Awards

Vote for the 2024 Steam Award nominees during the Steam Winter Sale
store.steampowered.com store.steampowered.com
 
MRMSFC said:
Does it reflect poorly on me when I always vote for games that are likely to cause people to get mad when they win an award?

Frankly, awards are always jokes.
Click to expand...

It's your vote. I have no say in what you choose or not. That's the point of democracy (or at least it's supposed to be)
 
Spaceboi Scaphandre said:
It's your vote. I have no say in what you choose or not. That's the point of democracy (or at least it's supposed to be)
Click to expand...
I was saying that more as a question of my character and not really asking to decide my vote (as Sun Tsu said: “always troll, when given the opportunity”)

Anyway, I don’t think one can truly judge a piece of media until 10 years after it’s release. Typically if people still talk about it positively then it’s probably good.
 
Andrew Tsai gave a review of Apple's recent gaming strategy


tl;dr, even he's saying macOS should have a system wide compatibility layer, saying D3DMetal in Game Porting Toolkit should be made open source and allowed to be bundled with Mac ports.
 
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Spaceboi Scaphandre said:
Andrew Tsai gave a review of Apple's recent gaming strategy


tl;dr, even he's saying macOS should have a system wide compatibility layer, saying D3DMetal in Game Porting Toolkit should be made open source and allowed to be bundled with Mac ports.
Click to expand...
Total nonsense video from Andrew. All over the place.

Compares a steam deck (x64/AMD GPU) to Apple Silicon Mac’s to show how well Proton works… Then goes on to say ‘if developers see people buying their games using a translation layer, they’ll go on to make native metal versions of their games’, which is utter nonsense. Proton killed all Native Linux ‘AAA/AA’ games development.

But in saying that, nowhere did he advocate for ‘a system wide translation layer’.
 
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JordanNZ said:
Total nonsense video from Andrew. All over the place.

Compares a steam deck (x64/AMD GPU) to Apple Silicon Mac’s to show how well Proton works… Then goes on to say ‘if developers see people buying their games using a translation layer, they’ll go on to make native metal versions of their games’, which is utter nonsense. Proton killed all Native Linux ‘AAA/AA’ games development.

But in saying that, nowhere did he advocate for ‘a system wide translation layer’.
Click to expand...

First time I gave him a dislike. It felt clickbaity, both the title and content and as if he had to come up with an idea to be able to make a video for his PC sponsor. He says ”tick the box and boom, it’s done” about bringing iOS games to Mac which isn’t really that easy. Then he says D3DMetal should be completely open source to transform Windows gaming on Mac if Apple, Codeweavers and the open source community worked together. Bugs could be fixed instantly, workarounds could be implemented and thousands more Windows games could become playable on the Mac. Once way more games would be playable then gamers would finally buy Macs for gaming. Then he mentions some downsides with this solution like the lack of native ports and the difficulty of bringing such games to iPhone and iPad. Finally he finishes by saying if D3DMetal was open source more games would be playable on Macs and more gamers would buy Macs and more developers would port their games natively to Mac when they see more people game on Macs.

It’s contradicting in many ways. As we have seen so many times in this forum even with more games PC gamers always complain about many other things like the price of Macs, the ”weak” Apple GPUs and the limited HW upgradability. So more games wouldn’t attract many gamers to Macs.

Even with Proton it’s the game developers who tweak and update their games to work, not Valve. Do we see any of them make the same effort when it comes to Crossover for Mac now in order to make their Windows games more compatible and playable on Macs? I don’t think we could rely on the open source community, Codeweavers and Apple to fix bugs in games ”instantly”. Apple as mentioned before here and in the video wouldn’t get behind such a project because they couldn’t use such a solution on iPhone and iPad. The performance isn’t there. Even open sourcing D3DMetal wouldn’t help the performance, only supposedly the compatibility with more games. We don’t need an open sourced D3DMetal to see how games run in Crossover, it’s already there and working and even without any bugs most games run worse than a native port. Such a buggy and underperforming gaming experience would be a mixed bag Apple wouldn't want to be associated with.

The last conclusion is perhaps the weirdest. He tries to make a strong case all the way and really pushes for a Proton-like solution but in the end suggests that all these efforts will lead to developers making native ports when they see more people game on Macs? Then why not do it the Apple way and make/help them port natively already from the start so they can sell it even on iPhone and iPad? That’s how Apple is doing, bringing them into the profitable iOS platform and getting the Mac port as a bonus with universal purchase instead of the other way around which would be much more difficult.
 
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According to developers Apple needs to sell more Macs. The classic chicken/egg issue WRT to marketshare. How does Apple grow its gaming marketshare in a way that entices "PC Gamers" to switch over. We know they care somewhat since they have touted big budget games on macOS (they wouldn't bother if they didn't care, right?).

The folks I work with all have either a 4090 or 4080 series GPU (I work in IT so yeah). None of them believe that Apple has hardware that can hang with theirs (and clearly they are not afraid to spend money on hardware). Maybe I am mistaken and Apple doesn't actually want that crowd (they play multiplayer games like the Finals, Ark:SA, CoD:MW/WZ, and Fortnite).
 
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Saw it over on macgaming, Bomb Squad has been updated to run natively on Apple Silicon Macs, available through the Mac App Store.

If you've never heard of it, that's fine. It originally launched on... Ouya.

 
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diamond.g said:
According to developers Apple needs to sell more Macs. The classic chicken/egg issue WRT to marketshare. How does Apple grow its gaming marketshare in a way that entices "PC Gamers" to switch over. We know they care somewhat since they have touted big budget games on macOS (they wouldn't bother if they didn't care, right?).

The folks I work with all have either a 4090 or 4080 series GPU (I work in IT so yeah). None of them believe that Apple has hardware that can hang with theirs (and clearly they are not afraid to spend money on hardware). Maybe I am mistaken and Apple doesn't actually want that crowd (they play multiplayer games like the Finals, Ark:SA, CoD:MW/WZ, and Fortnite).
Click to expand...

Which developers? Because macOS has over 20% of the global market share so there are enough Macs. Even 70% of Macs on Steam are Apple Silicon based. The number of Mac gamers is the important question and while it’s only 1.53% on Steam it still corresponds to about 2 million. Add App Store and GOG to that and we get a healthy number of Mac gamers enough for devs to target, as in the case of EVE Online.

You’re right. Apple is not targeting those 4090/4080 PC gamers. They’ve been aware of their shortcomings in this area and their first goal is just to improve things and create a better reputation. They also want to show the devs there is money in it by drawing them into the ecosystem of iPhone, iPad and Mac as we’ve seen with Capcom and the universal purchase system. Of course that will be profitable for Apple too. Perhaps Apple is also trying to please the current Mac users and even make it easier for those switchers who are close to buy their first Mac to take the final step. Remember that you don’t buy a Mac for gaming but Mac users want to play games too without having to buy a gaming PC. So for now those groups are the targets and while it remains to see how successful Apple will be it’s something that will take some years to succeed. The effort just started last year with Metal 3 and Capcom. So there’s a long way ahead.
 
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Spaceboi Scaphandre said:
Andrew Tsai gave a review of Apple's recent gaming strategy


tl;dr, even he's saying macOS should have a system wide compatibility layer, saying D3DMetal in Game Porting Toolkit should be made open source and allowed to be bundled with Mac ports.
Click to expand...

I saw it earlier.

I agree with him in that most developers avoid the Mac because of gaming market share. I also agree with him that open sourcing compatibility layers would increase the marketshare of games played on a Mac.

At that point, he did some hand waving and claimed that companies would want to make more native games once the gaming marketshare went up.

I'm of the opinion that there in no 100% solution to bringing more gaming to Macs.
 
Plutonius said:
I saw it earlier.

I agree with him in that most developers avoid the Mac because of gaming market share. I also agree with him that open sourcing compatibility layers would increase the marketshare of games played on a Mac.

At that point, he did some hand waving and claimed that companies would want to make more native games once the gaming marketshare went up.

I'm of the opinion that there in no 100% solution to bringing more gaming to Macs.
Click to expand...

A compatibility layer is the perfect solution. We already have a real world example of it with Proton causing Linux's gaming marketshare to skyrocket and overtake macOS.

"But it would kill native ports!"

And that's a bad thing? Native Linux ports aren't much of a thing anymore because there doesn't need to be native ports anymore. Compatibility layers have gotten so good that they made native Linux ports obsolete. With time and work D3DMetal could be on the same level as Proton. Just look at how amazingly Diablo 4 and Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered ran on M2 through D3DMetal.

So to be against the idea of D3DMetal being used for a system wide compatibility layer would be against the idea of full gaming on macOS.
 
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Homy said:
Which developers? Because macOS has over 20% of the global market share so there are enough Macs. Even 70% of Macs on Steam are Apple Silicon based. The number of Mac gamers is the important question and while it’s only 1.53% on Steam it still corresponds to about 2 million. Add App Store and GOG to that and we get a healthy number of Mac gamers enough for devs to target, as in the case of EVE Online.

You’re right. Apple is not targeting those 4090/4080 PC gamers. They’ve been aware of their shortcomings in this area and their first goal is just to improve things and create a better reputation. They also want to show the devs there is money in it by drawing them into the ecosystem of iPhone, iPad and Mac as we’ve seen with Capcom and the universal purchase system. Of course that will be profitable for Apple too. Perhaps Apple is also trying to please the current Mac users and even make it easier for those switchers who are close to buy their first Mac to take the final step. Remember that you don’t buy a Mac for gaming but Mac users want to play games too without having to buy a gaming PC. So for now those groups are the targets and while it remains to see how successful Apple will be it’s something that will take some years to succeed. The effort just started last year with Metal 3 and Capcom. So there’s a long way ahead.
Click to expand...
We'll see. I've seen efforts in the past from Apple that parallel your second paragraph more than once. They talk about how superior their frameworks are at gaming and trot out some CEO from a game company--and then everything languishes. I would love to be able to game successfully with AAA games like Apex Legends on my mac. To get to that point, Apple would have had to work for years to alleviate even non-direct gaming concerns like modding and how they will work with anti-cheat tech.

The other issue would be how things would run on a baseline Macbook Pro. That is the equivalent of what I bought (4060 i7 13700 16GB RAM) and if I really had to have just one machine, I would probably go with a hackintosh tower...

Instead I paid $1000 for my gaming laptop and around $1000 for my 13" MBP M1 with 16GB RAM (both refurbed/used).

(There is also the smartcard compatibility issue with Azure Virtual Desktop but that is not Apple--that's Microsoft and not gaming anyway LOL...)
 
Homy said:
Which developers? Because macOS has over 20% of the global market share so there are enough Macs. Even 70% of Macs on Steam are Apple Silicon based. The number of Mac gamers is the important question and while it’s only 1.53% on Steam it still corresponds to about 2 million. Add App Store and GOG to that and we get a healthy number of Mac gamers enough for devs to target, as in the case of EVE Online.

You’re right. Apple is not targeting those 4090/4080 PC gamers. They’ve been aware of their shortcomings in this area and their first goal is just to improve things and create a better reputation. They also want to show the devs there is money in it by drawing them into the ecosystem of iPhone, iPad and Mac as we’ve seen with Capcom and the universal purchase system. Of course that will be profitable for Apple too. Perhaps Apple is also trying to please the current Mac users and even make it easier for those switchers who are close to buy their first Mac to take the final step. Remember that you don’t buy a Mac for gaming but Mac users want to play games too without having to buy a gaming PC. So for now those groups are the targets and while it remains to see how successful Apple will be it’s something that will take some years to succeed. The effort just started last year with Metal 3 and Capcom. So there’s a long way ahead.
Click to expand...
I argue that Apple should either pay for ports or buy developers to make AAA games.
 
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