Major gaming news at WWDC: Metal and New games

[Homy]

It's been only one day and people are already running Cyberpunk 2077, Spiderman, Elden Ring, Hogwarts Legacy, Witcher 3 and Diablo IV on their Macs at high settings. As said before though the license doesn't seem to allow any commercial products being ported this way. It's only for use with Game porting toolkit so I guess Codeweavers must find their own solution.

 

[Homy]

https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/14318ri

https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/142zfa4

 

[Homy]

Link

 

[Nugat Trailers]

505Studios has made an announcement about Death Stranding for Mac, saying that it will use Metal3 and MetalFX, will have the crossover content from Half Life and Cyberpunk 2077 and that preorders via the Mac App Store begin...

9 hours ago.

‎DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR'S CUT

‎From legendary game creator Hideo Kojima comes a genre-defying experience, now expanded in this definitive DIRECTOR’S CUT. In the future, a mysterious event known as the Death Stranding has opened a doorway between the living and the dead, leading to grotesque creatures from the afterlife...

505.games

 

[goro123]

505Studios has made an announcement about Death Stranding for Mac, saying that it will use Metal3 and MetalFX, will have the crossover content from Half Life and Cyberpunk 2077 and that preorders via the Mac App Store begin...

9 hours ago.

‎DEATH STRANDING DIRECTOR'S CUT

‎From legendary game creator Hideo Kojima comes a genre-defying experience, now expanded in this definitive DIRECTOR’S CUT. In the future, a mysterious event known as the Death Stranding has opened a doorway between the living and the dead, leading to grotesque creatures from the afterlife...

505.games

Expected December 2nd. Oh my… I was expecting it much sooner.

 

[diamond.g]

https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/14318ri

https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/142zfa4

What does Composited mean in the MPHud? And I am not excited about the resolution (unless it is wrong).

 

[Numa_Numa_eh]

Link

View attachment 2214304

Hmm. I disagree with this person. People are gettting too excited. This is not how Apple is going to go I feel. We’ve already seen feral say they won’t port more games to Linux due to proton. Apple won’t want that to happen. This is for development only. Have fun but this isn’t a long yet solution.

 

[diamond.g]

Hmm. I disagree with this person. People are gettting too excited. This is not how Apple is going to go I feel. We’ve already seen feral say they won’t port more games to Linux due to proton. Apple won’t want that to happen. This is for development only. Have fun but this isn’t a long yet solution.

Apple may have to bite the bullet and make this an official means to run games (or maybe they can work with Valve to integrate this into Steam) as folks are going to just use this method in a wrapper to play games.

 

[Numa_Numa_eh]

Apple may have to bite the bullet and make this an official means to run games (or maybe they can work with Valve to integrate this into Steam) as folks are going to just use this method in a wrapper to play games.

I don't think either of those things will happen. They've been clear, it's just for porting.

 

[thenewperson]

Apple may have to bite the bullet and make this an official means to run games (or maybe they can work with Valve to integrate this into Steam) as folks are going to just use this method in a wrapper to play games.

I don't see why they'd have to make it official because of that. I think it'd be much better not straying from its intended use and people can just use GPK on their own if they want to. I don't think it'd be good for the platform steward to give up on convincing devs to port their games natively.

 

[Numa_Numa_eh]

A mastodon (tweet?) from one of the devs of the porting kit clears some things up

Gokhan Avkarogullari (@gavkar@mastodon.gamedev.place)

@yiningkarlli @aras @romainguy@androiddev.social we built a dxil to metallib converter and directx11 and directx12 to Metal runtime translator. Non graphics APIs are translated by Wine. But we don’t use any tech from moltenVK or DXVK or spirv-cross etc. The shader converter can be shipped by...

mastodon.gamedev.place

 

[diamond.g]

I don't think either of those things will happen. They've been clear, it's just for porting.

Maybe you are right, but if developers can get folks to buy their game and do their own leg work to get it running on macOS and not have to provide support, are they going to bother actually doing ports?

Don't get me wrong, this is exciting because it can show that Apple's hardware is better than folks think it is, but this can also be a way for developers/publishers to get more money and not have to do anything at all for macOS users.

 

[Numa_Numa_eh]

Maybe you are right, but if developers can get folks to buy their game and do their own leg work to get it running on macOS and not have to provide support, are they going to bother actually doing ports?

Don't get me wrong, this is exciting because it can show that Apple's hardware is better than folks think it is, but this can also be a way for developers/publishers to get more money and not have to do anything at all for macOS users.

I think getting a large number of Mac users to download homebrew, or something from GitHub will be limited to a small number. Geeks mainly. If they want sales, they’ll have to port. Time will tell I guess.

 

[Irishman]

The new Metal shader converter is very exciting news. The difference between the native port of The Medium and the translated/emulated port was also very interesting to see.

View attachment 2214234

It’s also very encouraging to see Apple adding performance improvements to Metal. It bodes well for entry level M1 and M2 remaining performant for longer.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Guys…someone got Spiderman Remastered running on macOS using the toolkit

https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/142zfa4

I repeat, WE GOT SPIDERMAN ON MAC

We need to bully Insomniac and Nixxes to do a port now

(Yes I now see the earlier post, my cellular is crap so I couldn't see it earlier before I posted)

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

Expected December 2nd. Oh my… I was expecting it much sooner.

View attachment 2214324

Playtesting takes a while, and Death Stranding is a really big game. Plus the demo we saw at WWDC looked rough so there's some more optimization to do.

 

[jeanlain]

I'm curious to know the difference between a windows game using the porting kit and its "native" Mac version. For instance, RE Village.

 

[Irishman]

Guys…someone got Spiderman Remastered running on macOS using the toolkit

https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/142zfa4

I repeat, WE GOT SPIDERMAN ON MAC

We need to bully Insomniac and Nixxes to do a port now

(Yes I now see the earlier post, my cellular is crap so I couldn't see it earlier before I posted)

I know that Discord!

All they need to do is level out the frame rate and boost it some.

Spiderman is an UE 5 game with Ray Tracing, right? We have Layers of Fear, which is UE 5 game with Ray Tracing! That hurdle has been overcome! 😊

 

[Xiao_Xi]

I'm curious to know the difference between a windows game using the porting kit and its "native" Mac version.

Apple made a comparison using The Medium.

The new Metal shader converter is very exciting news. The difference between the native port of The Medium and the translated/emulated port was also very interesting to see.

 

[diamond.g]

I know that Discord!

All they need to do is level out the frame rate and boost it some.

Spiderman is an UE 5 game with Ray Tracing, right? We have Layers of Fear, which is UE 5 game with Ray Tracing! That hurdle has been overcome! 😊

As far as I know Spiderman isn't a UE game, they use an in house engine for the game.

 

[Spaceboi Scaphandre]

As far as I know Spiderman isn't a UE game, they use an in house engine for the game.

Someone tested Hogwarts Legacy already and that game runs great right out of the box

 

[Spk1]

I'm not a dev, but the new Game Porting Toolkit they announced sounds like Apple is making some significant efforts to ensure more games are Mac OS compatible.

 

[diamond.g]

Someone tested Hogwarts Legacy already and that game runs great right out of the box

Yeah that is a UE4 game.

 

[GrumpyCoder]

What does Composited mean in the MPHud? And I am not excited about the resolution (unless it is wrong).

It means it's going through the translation environment.

While the use case for the shader converter is obvious, I'm still not sure what the purpose of the translation environment is. The guys at Apple say it's meant to help port games, by running a Windows game via the translation environment and then analyse issues. So far, everyone pointed out that performance issues can be identified. It logs a trace file which can be analysed in Instruments, but every issue there is was caused by the translation environment. I mean "no sh.., Sherlock" translation/emulation is causing performance issue... alert the news.

We tried a few games and there's obviously a performance hit, which is ok for not so demanding games, but makes more demanding games unplayable (FPS limit). Diablo 4 was among the games and in general I'd say it works well, given Blizzard recommends a GTX970/RX470, while a 40xx is needed for 4k with DLSS3. Outside of resolution (only seen up to 1080p yet), it looks somewhat "mushy" compared to the native Windows version. Could be due to different hardware/displays, but that certainly requires more testing. I will certainly try other games like Jedi Survivor, Tarkov, Apex and RE4 when I'm back home / in the office. Meanwhile I have a ton of questions I'm trying to get answered.

 

[galad]

No, "Composited" means the game window is being composited by the windows server, which is an additional pass that takes a bit of time. "Direct" means the windows server runs in an optimised mode and display the game directly bypassing the additional rendering pass.