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OS X Rust Performance on Mac?
- Thread starter flottenheimer
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Well i only played it on my gaming pc and the optimization for a better and lower hardware usage is not that good! But that's due to it being in alpha only.
Gameplay-wise i can absolutely recommend it! It plays like building survival game. There are NO more zombies in Rust, the devs will implement some other threat.
I can't say I'm impressed by it's performance at all.
It's very buggy, and it has a nasty bug where you get stuck on the loading screen if you don't turn all the graphics down to the lowest. Even then there are plenty of little lag spikes, and jittering.
My system specs are in my signature.
I know the game is in Alpha, but the fact that you have to pay to get access means it should offering a more acceptable experience.
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You you paying to get access to a beta, this means you are paying to help fun the completion of the game and so you can help influence the direction of the final game.
Assuming just because you have paid money means it should be massively playable is unrealistic (unless they are claiming it is up and highly playable already).
Edwin
p.s. Anyone with issues should try the following. Hit F1, then type grass.on false and turn down graphics all the way and you get good FPS.
And herein lies the problem with the very disturbing trend of early access. Jim Sterling did a video about this a few weeks ago, and he brings up some very salient points that anyone considering supporting early access games should heed.
It was already all set to the lowest bar the grass. Also as mentioned many times this issue has been on the Mac since they released the "game" alpha in December.
No sight of a fix yet.
I agree with his points entirely.
Also I feel that one should absolutely judge, and critique an Alpha and Beta. I already sent feedback, and I simply can't recommend anyone buys into this Early access or any early access.
People Paying to be testers is a mess, and just how many people actually do send back feedback? Very few I would say.
In Ireland under commercial and consumer rights law if a product or service is being sold it must be fit for its entered purpose or service.
Rust is on the Front page of steam as ' Now Available ', and being sold commercially, mixed in with other full releases.
Some quality control, and functions should be expected.
There's also the points that many early access games ever truly improve, and very rarely does the consumer/testers influence it. There are a few rare exceptions, but the majority do not.
I believe it should be pointed out how terrible this 'game' runs at the moment. Which is what the OP wanted to know as well. I don't see how anyone can justify buying this at the moment.
Especially when they say this
http://playrust.com
Most mac players can't even log into a game, because the Character wait loading screen, then they claim it's largely out of there hands.
I would not be as judging if they where not charging, and commercially selling the Alpha, and having it Advertised on the Steam front page as newly released game. Only when you go through the details do people see it's still in Alpha.
Most consumers will simply see the game know about the hype, and buy it thinking it's out.
The grass is the fix AFAIK. Seems Mac Unity struggles with this effect.
Sure, but assuming an Alpha or a Beta will be a Release Candidate quality title is unrealistic. When I am working on an Alpha at Feral it means it will let you get into the first level anything after that is a bonus! Beta means it all loads but anything else is a bonus. Release Candidate means it's more or less ready but might have a few little items left to polish out.
Based on feedback panels at SteamDevDays they get a LOT of feedback. Almost too much in most cases. The idea of a price was to keep the number of players down as only people willing to pay would play it. This means you get people more keen to play.
It must meet the definition of what you are buying, as this is advertised as an alpha you are buying into the development process so it meets the definition. If they sold it as a final piece of software then you would be correct about it potentially breaching the law.
I'd say that is more down to how Steam market Early Access than any game specific issue. Also right next to the buy button is a big huge box explaining the status of the title.
Some do, some don't it's early days so I wouldn't plump either way as their is nowhere near enough data. It doesn't crash so it has some function and control, performance is something that usually comes in beta.
Sure but there is a difference between saying "this game is really alpha right now and it runs badly on most Macs" and complaining about performance saying I was expecting more while in the same breath acknowledging it is an alpha.
As the developers say on the main page (right next to the buy button) "We are in very early development. Some things work, some things don't." That is a good indicator that performance might not be great right now.
Right next to the buy button you get all this in HUGE text. So you have to be pretty slow to miss the warning!
===
Early Access Game
Get instant access and start playing; get involved with this game as it develops.
====
Learn more about Early Access. [LINK]
What the developers say:
“We are in very early development. Some things work, some things don't. We haven't totally decided where the game is headed - so things will change. Things will change a lot. We might even make changes that you think are wrong. But we have a plan. It's in our interest to make the game awesome - so please trust us.”
=====
Also the main page of Steam is not controlled by developers (if that was possible it would list all the games I worked on
) It is controlled by Steam/Valve, they list the games etc. Once you get to the game page it is very obvious it is an Early Access title.See above, the only people doing this are the kind who don't read anything on the page and buy games their Machine cannot run etc.
I do think Early Access needs a little finessing in some ways (and I agree with some of the commentary) but I disagree that it's easy to buy it thinking it is finished and ready to play unless you ignore all the big text boxes, comments and other reviews. And if you ignore all that you likely have issues with many other things not just Early Access.
What I guess I am trying to say is Early Access does what it says on the tin, you get early access to something in development, you might be able to play right now a lot, you might have issues, the game might even fail and never be completed. Usually this all happens before the game ships and customers never know about it. By getting early access you are like kickstarting the project and have the ability to leave feedback. It's a risk and you have to make the call if you want to take that risk. But if you do't go in with your eyes open its not like you aren't warned beforehand.
Customers are not used to what development really means and that might need better communication but in this new world of indy dev and kick-starters the line between funding and beta access is getting more and more blurred.
Edwin
Hardly a fix, as even when you disable the grass you still can't log in with anything but the lowest of the low graphics wise.
In my case, it doesn't even disable any grass what so ever.
Would you at Feral start selling Alphas and betas? I doubt it, it could easily ruin Feral's reputation, as people do judge a book by its cover.
I see it as a cash grab, they've changed the game from zombie survival, to mutant survival, and have stated they want to change it again. This means they don't even have a final idea or plan. So people are paying for them to just throw out random ideas now.
It doesn't fly in Ireland, it's being sold, therefor commercially available.
It does crash, it crashed in my video. In fact it failed so horribly at first my second attempt at a video made it up because it kept freezing and crashing when other players got close to me.
Of course I expect more, it's a commercially available product. The fact that it's an Alpha does not give them a free pass to selling this. If they wanted an true alpha they would have kept it internally, or only allowed testing phases for certain parts to testers.
They shouldn't be making this commercially available then. Especially since they're still changing the core game genre.
Right next to the buy button you get all this in HUGE text. So you have to be pretty slow to miss the warning!
===
Early Access Game
Get instant access and start playing; get involved with this game as it develops.
====
Learn more about Early Access. [LINK]
What the developers say:
“We are in very early development. Some things work, some things don't. We haven't totally decided where the game is headed - so things will change. Things will change a lot. We might even make changes that you think are wrong. But we have a plan. It's in our interest to make the game awesome - so please trust us.”
=====
Also the main page of Steam is not controlled by developers (if that was possible it would list all the games I worked on
Which brings back the video that's been mentioned, and that I linked. Quality Control by Steam is needed. This 'game' should be be commercially available at all in its current state.
This isn't a kick-starter, this isn't about backing. They're commercially selling an Alpha. With a Hope it might be a survival game. People shouldn't have be Paying to be someone's tester. That's the main issue for me here.
It's just a cash grab to me. More so that they don't even have a clue as to what they want the game to be besides just a 'survival' game.
I certainly agree about, but funding a game's development, and buying an alpha or beta is very different to me.
One is a commercially available product, and the other is a concept and 'investment'
Early access seems to want to be all of the above, and it's failing miserably.
What's worse is them stating issues on the mac is "out of their hands", so why even bother releasing it then, even as an alpha?
Unity
Wait a minute? As far as I know, the pro version of Unity, which I assume they're using, allows a lot of tweaking. As far as I know, an problem(s) on Mac or Linux, should be very fixable for them, as Unity allows access to everything. To my knowledge, you can change even the rendering pipeline of the game trough the Unity engine. Anyone correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm pretty sure that's what Unity's own website says.
Also, on the point of early access:
Early access is something we can all debate, and in my opinion, it's a horrible idea. Beta and Alpha testers usually resent their work, and end up hating the final product, because they were exposed to it so much in it's **** days. Beta and alpha testers are usually paid for their work, as any worker is paid for his/her work, but now they expect consumers to, not get paid, but actually pay to test their piece of ****? That right there is the problem. Even if a consumer know that a game is in early access, I doubt that most consumers understand what that really means. I don't think that the majority of people buying early access games, realize that the game is in it's piece of **** state, rather than an unpolished diamond state. Most early access customers are probably only familiar with, at most, close to release betas, like the currently running open beta for Hearthstone (Blizzard). On one side, you could argue that as long as the consumer is willing to buy it, it's alright to sell it, but on the other hand, it's kinda like selling a half built house, telling people you'll finish it whenever... And not allowing them to built it themselves of course (Because no developer would give source code away to a product they're working on...)
Wait a minute? As far as I know, the pro version of Unity, which I assume they're using, allows a lot of tweaking. As far as I know, an problem(s) on Mac or Linux, should be very fixable for them, as Unity allows access to everything. To my knowledge, you can change even the rendering pipeline of the game trough the Unity engine. Anyone correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm pretty sure that's what Unity's own website says.
Also, on the point of early access:
Early access is something we can all debate, and in my opinion, it's a horrible idea. Beta and Alpha testers usually resent their work, and end up hating the final product, because they were exposed to it so much in it's **** days. Beta and alpha testers are usually paid for their work, as any worker is paid for his/her work, but now they expect consumers to, not get paid, but actually pay to test their piece of ****? That right there is the problem. Even if a consumer know that a game is in early access, I doubt that most consumers understand what that really means. I don't think that the majority of people buying early access games, realize that the game is in it's piece of **** state, rather than an unpolished diamond state. Most early access customers are probably only familiar with, at most, close to release betas, like the currently running open beta for Hearthstone (Blizzard). On one side, you could argue that as long as the consumer is willing to buy it, it's alright to sell it, but on the other hand, it's kinda like selling a half built house, telling people you'll finish it whenever... And not allowing them to built it themselves of course (Because no developer would give source code away to a product they're working on...)
That's 100% the case. Unity allows you access to it all, and it's extremely multi-platform capable. In fact it's designed to be the best multi platform engine around at the moment.
I was really taken aback when garry posted saying it's all out of his hands. That's a lie, or he just admitted he doesn't have the skill or knowledge to actually do this. Either way it's not a good thing.
It along with his comments on not knowing where he wants to take the game, makes be very cautious if it will ever turn out well.
OK i'll bite and play devils advocate to this part of your quote
I can say that with infinite time and resources anything is possible however when you look at different platforms, the limitations of each and the limitation of the game engine itself the picture starts to get pretty complex and isn't as black and white as you portray.
It is perhaps not wise to say something is "out of your hands" as it projects the wrong image equally it's not always simple to redesign a large part of a game engine early in the design process to solve a problem on one OS. A few of the questions I can immediately see are:
1. Will this generate bugs?
2. Will you impact performance on other OSs?
3. Will this make it harder to merge in updated versions of the engine?
4. Will this slow down development of other areas of the game?
5. Is there issue caused by a performance issue better logged with the original engine maker?
6. Is this feature (the one slowing down the game) a key feature of the game? i.e. can it be disabled?
7. Can the option itself be rewritten (instead of the engine) in a different way to avoid the engine issue? If so look at points 1,2,4,5 & 6 again.
8. Is the issue caused fundamentally by the OS and will require some specialist solution or removal of features for this platform?
I don't think it's wise to leave a large performance bug in the game even in alpha if you want good feedback on that platform and spending some time on a quickly implemented solution (like disabling grass on Mac) would be a better short term aim. You can then look at the questions above and work out what the best long term solution should be.
Edwin
I mentioned before I can't even disable the grass, no matter how many times I type that command in the console it does nothing.
It's the same for a friend as well, so that's no solution at all.
I'm extremely skeptical of the developer's skill, and personally I think it would have been better to hold off releasing the Mac client until it was at least not freezing, crashing, and suffering from severe issues.
Remember that you can't even load the game unless you force all the settings to the lowest possible. So I'd say many people might not even be able to get into the alpha.
I haven't even seen that issue been brought up by the developer on his site.
I think that is the disabling code not working on your Mac, I would recommend asking in the Steam forums as it seems most people get a good boost so I hope you can too.
I'd also leave feedback with the Rust devs with your performance details, I would hope they fix it in some way as it sucks you get poor performance.
Edwin
I certainly did leave feedback, and contact them regarding it for all the issues I came across. Sadly it seems I've not gotten anything back.
I certainly hope this "game" can get somewhere, as at the moment the developer doesn't have a final concept or plan.
It's not looking well, and I've seen far better early access and kick-starters end up nowhere or simply turning into pure cash grabs.
As it stands I'm not spending more time on Rust at all, not until a significant patch comes out. I've been having much more fun with other early Alphas, and betas, and great developers, then to knock on a current dead end.