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Popular Cat Adventure Game 'Stray' Coming to the Mac

Marbles1 said:
Agree with the post about apple's behaviour in dropping 32 bit support: It's not the minority of bleeding edge users always using the latest hardware and software that matters, it's the long tail of support which does. It's not always cost effective for a developer to update old software. And small to medium firms do rely on older software; that's just economical for them. I know I can run pretty much anything that's come out for windows in the past 20 years, even very niche calculation software, or obscure industry specific applications. I don't have that certainty with apple. So I'd never suggest using Apple as a platform unless it's very a very narrow type of use.

It's the same with games - no way would I buy a game on the Mac App Store - I like to come back to older games and I know apple will either break a game, or the developers won't support some change apple has made, or it simply will be left to rot after a few years. Whereas I've got PC games going back to 2000 that still run well. Much better to buy games on Steam or some other PC platform where you might get a Mac version as a freebie.

If apple really cared about games we'd notice it.
Click to expand...

Agree the dropped 32-bit support is sad.
One can keep a machine around that can run Mojave. I’m planning to do that.

Anyway, this is pretty cool when it comes to getting some old games to run on new Macs and new macOS versions:

Mac Source Ports

Mac Source Ports - Run old games on new Macs
macsourceports.com macsourceports.com
 
Spaceboi Scaphandre said:
Again: Windows 11 still supports 32-bit apps, so you can still use your legacy apps. You can't on Mac. The majority of Mac games just wiped out in an instant from the release of Catalina, including Valve's entire catalog except for CSGO and the Source 2 games.
Click to expand...
Maybe you should ask Valve why they charge people for apps built in outdated and deprecated tech and then refuse to support/update those apps?
 
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eatrains said:
Maybe you should ask Valve why they charge people for apps built in outdated and deprecated tech and then refuse to support/update those apps?
Click to expand...

Valve tried to update their older games to 64 bit. Half Life 2 had a beta client for a 64 bit update. The result? The game was unplayable. it ran poorly. From their attempt they learned quickly that the Source 1 engine, really does not like being 64 bit. The engine was made for 32 bit binaries in mind, and trying to update that to 64 bit breaks it completely. You noticed how the Mac version of CSGO runs so bad nowadays? That's why, because it's 64 bit. Before they were forced to make it 64 bit by Apple it ran fantastically on macOS, and it's gonna stay that way until Counter Strike 2 comes out this Summer.

So it's not as simple as "oh just update your app to be 64 bit." These games are old, really old, some of which like Team Fortress 2 is complete spaghetti code barely held together with duct tape and chewing gum. And the thing is, this is a Mac only problem. Windows and Linux doesn't have any trouble running these old games. Hell, fans have made a source port of Half Life to the god damn Nintendo 3DS, and it runs great. So since it's a lot of work to make the old games playable on a platform that is a minority compared to their others, who's platform holder has made it clear they are not a fan of the game industry, it's not worth it for Valve to update their games to 64 bit just so modern Macs can play them. It would be a waste of resources for them to do, and they're focused on actually making new games again as well as supporting their big runaway success the Steam Deck.
 
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Spaceboi Scaphandre said:
Valve tried to update their older games to 64 bit. Half Life 2 had a beta client for a 64 bit update. The result? The game was unplayable. it ran poorly. From their attempt they learned quickly that the Source 1 engine, really does not like being 64 bit. The engine was made for 32 bit binaries in mind, and trying to update that to 64 bit breaks it completely. You noticed how the Mac version of CSGO runs so bad nowadays? That's why, because it's 64 bit. Before they were forced to make it 64 bit by Apple it ran fantastically on macOS, and it's gonna stay that way until Counter Strike 2 comes out this Summer.

So it's not as simple as "oh just update your app to be 64 bit." These games are old, really old, some of which like Team Fortress 2 is complete spaghetti code barely held together with duct tape and chewing gum. And the thing is, this is a Mac only problem. Windows and Linux doesn't have any trouble running these old games. Hell, fans have made a source port of Half Life to the god damn Nintendo 3DS, and it runs great. So since it's a lot of work to make the old games playable on a platform that is a minority compared to their others, who's platform holder has made it clear they are not a fan of the game industry, it's not worth it for Valve to update their games to 64 bit just so modern Macs can play them. It would be a waste of resources for them to do, and they're focused on actually making new games again as well as supporting their big runaway success the Steam Deck.
Click to expand...
If it's so difficult I wonder how the dude behind this site manages to do it for so many games? Of course most are much simpler than Half-Life 2, but he has helped do it for Quake III (ioquake3) and I see the first Half-Lfe game is listed:

 
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eatrains said:
Game developers don’t use OpenGL and 32/64-bit is irrelevant. They use cross-platform engines.
Click to expand...

Serqetry said:
Lol. OpenGL and 32-bit? What is this, 2009? Macs are not hard to develop on, they just don't run Windows or use DirectX, so there's no way to entice developers that refuse to do proper cross-platform development.
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galad said:
Apple has got its fault. But the fact that in 15 years Valve couldn't get someone to update their games to 64bit, which isn't even an hard thing to do, and that Steam is such a train wreck is not Apple's fault.
And let's not talk about the fact that Steam still lists many 64bit games as 32bit, and says they can't be used when they just run fine.
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wyrdness said:
Apple gets a lot of things wrong, but this isn't one of them. They dropped 32 bit support in readiness for Apple Silicon. That's not insanity, it's progress. It's not Apple's fault that this company is still using old, obsolete and unsupported apps. It's up to the developer to ensure that their apps work on recent Apple systems. If the developer won't update them, or simply doesn't exist anymore, then that's nothing to do with Apple. Forget 32-bit. Those days are gone. Apple is always unafraid to drop old technology. If that's uncomfortable for you then use Windows or Linux instead. I still remember the screaming when Apple removed the floppy disk drive from Macs...
Click to expand...

eatrains said:
Huh? 32-bit support had been deprecated for a decade. Everyone knew it was coming. And OpenGL still works just as it always has.
Click to expand...

galad said:
As a programmer, what you wrote makes no sense at all.
Click to expand...

star-affinity said:
If it's so difficult I wonder how the dude behind this site manages to do it for so many games? Of course most are much simpler than Half-Life 2, but he has helped do it for Quake III (ioquake3) and I see the first Half-Lfe game is listed:

Click to expand...

I agree. The importance of 32-bit support on Mac is often exaggerated. I have a certain understanding for the players' point of view but removing 32-bit support was not much of a nightmare for the developers and haven’t stopped anyone from developing for MacOS. If it takes decades for a developer to update an app that only takes months for others to do you’d better question your software developer instead of Apple. If you look at the history and some numbers you get another picture.

Developers have had plenty of time to make the transition to 64-bit. 2003 Apple and AMD introduced the first 64-bit CPUs in personal computers with PPC 970 in Power Mac G5 and Athlon 64. 2004 Intel introduced Pentium 4. It was 20 years ago. The first truly 64-bit MacOS was Snow Leopard in 2009, 14 years ago. Apple announced at WWDC 2017 they were dropping support for 32-bit and developers had almost 2.5 years until Catalina in 2019 to update their apps. Mac gamers had also three years to finish their old games or could simply keep a compatible system around as a classic gaming Mac. I finished all Half-life games on my iMac 2011 which I kept until recently. So there has been plenty of time.

The first 64-bit game for Athlon 64 was Shadow Ops in 2005. The same year we had also 64-bit Far Cry, The Chronicles of Riddick and Unreal engine. It was 18 years ago. Many developers abandoned 32-bit years ago in the 2010s. Many old 32-bit games have also been updated to 64-bit with remasters or remakes or by the fan projects like Mac Source ports, even Half-Life, not to mention solutions like Crossover, Wine and Parallels.

Let’s look at some Steam numbers. Steam had 30,054,223 people online at most yesterday and 2.39% used Macs during May. That could be 718,295 Mac users in theory but probably it’s less. The 30 most played games yesterday are listed below.

1. CS: GO 64-bit Mac
2. Dota 2 64-bit Mac
3. Apex 64-bit
4. PUBG 64-bit
5. Rust 64-bit Mac
6. GTA V 64-bit
7. Destiny 2 64-bit
8. Wallpaper 64-bit
9. War Thunder 64-bit Mac
10. TF2 32-bit MAc
11. FIFA 23 64-bit
12. Street Fighter 64-bit
13. Unturned 64-bit Mac
14. CoD Modern WF 2 64-bit
15. FB Manager 23 64-bit Mac
16. Warframe 64-bit
17. TC Rainbow Six Siege 64-bit
18. Ark Survival Evolved 64-bit Mac
19. Naraka Bladepoint 64-bit
20. Civ VI Mac 64-bit Mac
21. DayZ 64-bit
22. Hearts of Iron VI 64-bit Mac
23. Lost Ark 64-bit
24. Dead by Daylight 64-bit
25. NBA 2K23 64-bit
26. Terraria 64-bit Mac
27. Euro Truck Sim 2 64-bit Mac
28. Garry’s mod 64-bit Mac
29. MIR4 64-bit
30. The Sims 4 64-bit Mac

14 have Mac ports. 13 are 64-bit and only 1 is 32-bit, Team Fortress 2, the only 32-bit game on that top 30 list. NBA 2K23 on App Store can be played on Mac too. Not bad for a platform with only 2.39% on Steam. TF2 had a peak at 76,683 players. That’s 0.25% of Steam users. 2.39% of that is 1832 Mac gamers in theory, but we know that’s not true because about 71% don’t have Mojave or older OS on Steam.

People always mention Valve games as a testimony to the importance of legacy 32-bit games/apps. So who/where/how many are all these Mac gamers who want to play 32-bit games but can’t? Let’s see how popular the games really are.

Left 4 Dead 2 had a peak of 33,091 players, but the rest were less popular. Portal 2 had 2493 players, HL2 900, Half-Life 740, Portal 574, Left 4 Dead 541, Day of Defeat: Source 511, HL2 Episode Two 211 and HL2 Episode One 152 players. 2,39% of those numbers would be between 3 and 861 players on Mac. Now compare those numbers to the total of Steam users, 30 million, or 718,295 Mac users.

In other words it’s about market share. Windows is keeping 32-bit support because it has 74% of the total market and 96% of the Steam market share. The numbers for Mac are 15% and 2.39%. It doesn’t make much sense for Apple to make a huge effort to keep supporting 32-bit legacy apps year after year on a modern evolving architecture because a few people want to play Valve games. That’s up to the developers. When they see a large demand based on previous numbers and user base they update their apps to 64-bit, like CSGO and Dota 2 for Mac.

Sometime you also have to force things to make technology advance, as Apple has done a few times before. Otherwise you end up in a situation like Valve. We still don’t have Half-life 3 after 16 years and it took 13 years to get Alyx. I still remember the anticlimax after I finished HL2 Episode 2 due to its ending. I enjoyed it once before the ending but didn’t touch it again. After all there are so many other games to play. Steam on Mac is still slow and not native and CSGO still uses OpenGL, the reason why it’s slower on Mac despite being 64-bit. CS:GO on Windows only supports DirectX, no Vulkan or OpenGL and Linux got Vulkan drivers only 18 months ago. So I wonder how many all these Mac gamers really are who want to play 32-bit games but can’t?
 
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Highly recommend. This was the very first title I bought for the PS5 and I also bought a PS4 copy for someone else. Probably not so much a mouse and keyboard title - you'll want a controller.
 
Homy said:
I agree. The importance of 32-bit support on Mac is often exaggerated. I have a certain understanding for the players' point of view but removing 32-bit support was not much of a nightmare for the developers and haven’t stopped anyone from developing for MacOS. If it takes decades for a developer to update an app that only takes months for others to do you’d better question your software developer instead of Apple. If you look at the history and some numbers you get another picture.

Developers have had plenty of time to make the transition to 64-bit. 2003 Apple and AMD introduced the first 64-bit CPUs in personal computers with PPC 970 in Power Mac G5 and Athlon 64. 2004 Intel introduced Pentium 4. It was 20 years ago. The first truly 64-bit MacOS was Snow Leopard in 2009, 14 years ago. Apple announced at WWDC 2017 they were dropping support for 32-bit and developers had almost 2.5 years until Catalina in 2019 to update their apps. Mac gamers had also three years to finish their old games or could simply keep a compatible system around as a classic gaming Mac. I finished all Half-life games on my iMac 2011 which I kept until recently. So there has been plenty of time.

The first 64-bit game for Athlon 64 was Shadow Ops in 2005. The same year we had also 64-bit Far Cry, The Chronicles of Riddick and Unreal engine. It was 18 years ago. Many developers abandoned 32-bit years ago in the 2010s. Many old 32-bit games have also been updated to 64-bit with remasters or remakes or by the fan projects like Mac Source ports, even Half-Life, not to mention solutions like Crossover, Wine and Parallels.

Let’s look at some Steam numbers. Steam had 30,054,223 people online at most yesterday and 2.39% used Macs during May. That could be 718,295 Mac users in theory but probably it’s less. The 30 most played games yesterday are listed below.

1. CS: GO 64-bit Mac
2. Dota 2 64-bit Mac
3. Apex 64-bit
4. PUBG 64-bit
5. Rust 64-bit Mac
6. GTA V 64-bit
7. Destiny 2 64-bit
8. Wallpaper 64-bit
9. War Thunder 64-bit Mac
10. TF2 32-bit MAc
11. FIFA 23 64-bit
12. Street Fighter 64-bit
13. Unturned 64-bit Mac
14. CoD Modern WF 2 64-bit
15. FB Manager 23 64-bit Mac
16. Warframe 64-bit
17. TC Rainbow Six Siege 64-bit
18. Ark Survival Evolved 64-bit Mac
19. Naraka Bladepoint 64-bit
20. Civ VI Mac 64-bit Mac
21. DayZ 64-bit
22. Hearts of Iron VI 64-bit Mac
23. Lost Ark 64-bit
24. Dead by Daylight 64-bit
25. NBA 2K23 64-bit
26. Terraria 64-bit Mac
27. Euro Truck Sim 2 64-bit Mac
28. Garry’s mod 64-bit Mac
29. MIR4 64-bit
30. The Sims 4 64-bit Mac

14 have Mac ports. 13 are 64-bit and only 1 is 32-bit, Team Fortress 2, the only 32-bit game on that top 30 list. NBA 2K23 on App Store can be played on Mac too. Not bad for a platform with only 2.39% on Steam. TF2 had a peak at 76,683 players. That’s 0.25% of Steam users. 2.39% of that is 1832 Mac gamers in theory, but we know that’s not true because about 71% don’t have Mojave or older OS on Steam.

People always mention Valve games as a testimony to the importance of legacy 32-bit games/apps. So who/where/how many are all these Mac gamers who want to play 32-bit games but can’t? Let’s see how popular the games really are.

Left 4 Dead 2 had a peak of 33,091 players, but the rest were less popular. Portal 2 had 2493 players, HL2 900, Half-Life 740, Portal 574, Left 4 Dead 541, Day of Defeat: Source 511, HL2 Episode Two 211 and HL2 Episode One 152 players. 2,39% of those numbers would be between 3 and 861 players on Mac. Now compare those numbers to the total of Steam users, 30 million, or 718,295 Mac users.

In other words it’s about market share. Windows is keeping 32-bit support because it has 74% of the total market and 96% of the Steam market share. The numbers for Mac are 15% and 2.39%. It doesn’t make much sense for Apple to make a huge effort to keep supporting 32-bit legacy apps year after year on a modern evolving architecture because a few people want to play Valve games. That’s up to the developers. When they see a large demand based on previous numbers and user base they update their apps to 64-bit, like CSGO and Dota 2 for Mac.

Sometime you also have to force things to make technology advance, as Apple has done a few times before. Otherwise you end up in a situation like Valve. We still don’t have Half-life 3 after 16 years and it took 13 years to get Alyx. I still remember the anticlimax after I finished HL2 Episode 2 due to its ending. I enjoyed it once before the ending but didn’t touch it again. After all there are so many other games to play. Steam on Mac is still slow and not native and CSGO still uses OpenGL, the reason why it’s slower on Mac despite being 64-bit. CS:GO on Windows only supports DirectX, no Vulkan or OpenGL and Linux got Vulkan drivers only 18 months ago. So I wonder how many all these Mac gamers really are who want to play 32-bit games but can’t?
Click to expand...
At least 3/4ths of the 100-ish Mac compatible titles in my steam library currently show a 32bit compatibility warning in Catalina. Some of the those titles with warnings are as recent as 5 years old - meaning they were only a couple years old when Catalina came out.

The launch of Catalina is when I stopped buying any games with the intent to play on Mac.
 
1madman1 said:
At least 3/4ths of the 100-ish Mac compatible titles in my steam library currently show a 32bit compatibility warning in Catalina. Some of the those titles with warnings are as recent as 5 years old - meaning they were only a couple years old when Catalina came out.

The launch of Catalina is when I stopped buying any games with the intent to play on Mac.
Click to expand...
Could you list those games that you have that are 32-bit?
 
Naraxus said:
Not without massive throttling, graphics turned all the way down to sub zero numbers and a wind tunnel for cooling it all
Click to expand...
Wind tunnel for cooling it all sounds like the Lenovo Legion 5 laptop I've been gaming a bit with.
 
You can even play as a Cattorney…

IMG_0201.jpeg
 
1madman1 said:
At least 3/4ths of the 100-ish Mac compatible titles in my steam library currently show a 32bit compatibility warning in Catalina. Some of the those titles with warnings are as recent as 5 years old - meaning they were only a couple years old when Catalina came out.

The launch of Catalina is when I stopped buying any games with the intent to play on Mac.
Click to expand...

Many of them could work fine if Steam didn't mislabeled them as 32-bit, like Metro 2033 and Last Light, Figment and many more. It's up to the devs to put a 64-bit flag but many don't care. Again the number of 32-bit games in your library is not important. What matters is how many actually play them.

If you have 5-year-old 32-bit games it means they were released one year after Apple's warning and devs haven't bothered to update them, again perhaps due to low demand. The launch of Catalina was no reason to stop making or buying Mac games. Devs could go on making new 64-bit games and people could make sure they're buying 64-bit games or prepare for the transition by finishing their old games or keep an old gaming Mac for the future. As I said many 32-bit games have also been updated, those that are popular.
 
star-affinity said:
Could you list those games that you have that are 32-bit?
Click to expand...
It seems a very recent update has Steam no longer displaying 32bit titles in Catalina - so the best I can do is a differential...

Library in Catalina:
Catalina 1

Same library in Mojave:
Mojave 1
Mojave 2
Mojave 3
Mojave 4

Most immediately surprising broken title when I first attempted an upgrade was the Kickstarter title Strafe - I was actively playing it at the time and it wasn't even that old...

Apart from Civ titles, I now just use consoles for gaming. Only reason I maintain a single system Catalina is for experimentation. My other 3 Macs are on Mojave and High Sierra as Catalina also breaks my printer, scanner, audio interface, video capture hardware, and multiple instances of photo editing software.
 
Not looking so good on the MacOS support front on the top games from April this year on Steam. :(

store.steampowered.com

Top Releases of April 2023

We're back with another round of popular monthly releases. With this list, we'll be looking at the Top 20 products released in April.
store.steampowered.com store.steampowered.com

Windows only.
 
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