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OS Neutral Shadow of Mordor coming this Spring for Mac/Linux

The fact it's coming out for Linux before Mac is weird and odd to me. Though with the recent announcement of all these big AAA games coming out for SteamOS, it makes me think maybe something's going on behind the scenes that none of us are aware of.
 
Renzatic said:
The fact it's coming out for Linux before Mac is weird and odd to me. Though with the recent announcement of all these big AAA games coming out for SteamOS, it makes me think maybe something's going on behind the scenes that none of us are aware of.
Click to expand...

I posted this over at IMG, but maybe Feral is waiting for Apple to get their **** together with OpenGL in 10.11. Porting next-gen games now must be a bag of hurt. Hoping 10.11 will be a Snow Leopard-style release like iOS 9 is rumored to be, and there are significant DX12-style improvements, like Vulkan support (though it's not supposed to hit til next year, I think.)
 
Dirtyharry50 said:
It is? Where did Feral announce a Mac release? I see only Linux mentioned in their announcement.
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Feral Interactive says the following on there Facebook page:

"Details about the Mac version of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor are coming later in the year."

https://www.facebook.com/feralinter...8120444879134/938612296163274/?type=1&theater

And also Twitter:

https://twitter.com/feralgames/status/573187680110051328

Also this image was posted on Inside Mac Games Forum.
Apparently it is an ad on the back of Mac Life Magazine.

Shodow_of_Mordor_Feral.png


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Cougarcat said:
I posted this over at IMG, but maybe Feral is waiting for Apple to get their **** together with OpenGL in 10.11. Porting next-gen games now must be a bag of hurt. Hoping 10.11 will be a Snow Leopard-style release like iOS 9 is rumored to be, and there are significant DX12-style improvements, like Vulkan support (though it's not supposed to hit til next year, I think.)
Click to expand...

I know they have rumoured IOS 9 will be about tweaking and improving performance (and hopefully OSX will be the same), however have any of these improvements been mentioned or confirmed for the next OSX or is it just speculation? I'm not very up to date with these things - Open GL and drivers etc.

Thanks.
 
bmac89 said:
Feral Interactive says the following on there Facebook page:

"Details about the Mac version of Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor are coming later in the year."

https://www.facebook.com/feralinter...8120444879134/938612296163274/?type=1&theater

And also Twitter:

https://twitter.com/feralgames/status/573187680110051328

Also this image was posted on Inside Mac Games Forum.
Apparently it is an ad on the back of Mac Life Magazine.

Image

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I know they have rumoured IOS 9 will be about tweaking and improving performance (and hopefully OSX will be the same), however have any of these improvements been mentioned or confirmed for the next OSX or is it just speculation? I'm not very up to date with these things - Open GL and drivers etc.

Thanks.
Click to expand...

Thanks. After posting I saw it in my Facebook feed. Silly me had read the announcement initially on the Feral web site and there, at the time earlier yesterday, there was zero mention of any Mac release or talking about a Mac release later in the year.
 
Janichsan said:
Considering the market share of desktop Linux, I strongly doubt that.
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That's true, but something's going on that's making all these developers port to SteamOS. It's been announced that Grid Autosport, Arkham Knight, Saints Row IV, Witcher III, Company of Heroes 2, and a bunch of other games are coming to the platform.

It's getting a surprising amount of big budget, AAA games for a platform that makes up roughly 2% of the market. Not that I'm complaining. I'm all for extra choice and competition. But something's up...
 
Yeah, but it could change now with SteamOS and Steam Machines coming later this year. A lot of high profile games are getting a SteamOS version, some of those games might never have a Mac version (unless they are all handled by Feral!). I have a feeling Mac is going to be the third platform to release a game for instead of second as it is now.

Not that I personally care that much, I have given up on Mac gaming a long time ago after always buying an iMac or something and realizing later it had a mobile GPU and most of the Mac ports run much slower or require much higher specs than Windows versions. I hate dual booting too. I still have my old physical Mac game boxes to look at nostalgically though... :)
 
While nobody can know for sure how things will play out next year, I have a feeling that gaming on OS X may benefit as a side effect of SteamOS being successful if it is.

It has to be considerably easier to port a SteamOS game using OpenGL to OS X than it is a Windows game using DirectX. The difficult work of moving from one graphics API to another is already done. One thing I could see as being problematic however is the speed at which Apple will introduce OpenGL changes and also graphics driver changes to support gaming in OS X versus the speed at which such changes would likely tend to be implemented in SteamOS and Linux.

That isn't to imply that porting anything is trivial but it certainly has got to be a lot easier so we might make out pretty good on Macs with more titles coming our way than might have otherwise. This all assumes that SteamOS takes off but considering Valves position with the Steam store if anybody can wrest control from Microsoft it would be them.

I've thought for a quite a while that this was a smart response on old Gabe's part in anticipation of Microsoft having their own app store built into Windows where games would be sold and may have been a potential threat to Steam. SteamOS not only addresses that but also moves Valve into the console space while at it.

Anyway, it is going to be interesting to see how all of this plays out. In the meantime, between all the Mac stuff I have and a planned Playstation purchase, I won't be hurting for excellent entertainment while I observe the show.
 
Renzatic said:
That's true, but something's going on that's making all these developers port to SteamOS.
Click to expand...
Sure: they all bought into the belief that due to Valve's push for SteamOS and Steam Boxes, Linux gaming will be the Next Big Thing™. Whether that actually happens, remains to be seen.

It's getting a surprising amount of big budget, AAA games for a platform that makes up roughly 2% of the market.
Click to expand...
Barely 1% according the Valve's own statistics.
 
Last edited:
Janichsan said:
Sure: they all bought into the believe that due to Valve's push for SteamOS and Steam Boxes, Linux gaming will be the Next Big Thing™. Whether that actually happens, remains to be seen.
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There's a lot of potential there for it to happen, but right now, SteamOS doesn't have a hook. Something that'll make people stop and think "wow, I gotta have that". They'll have to do something big if they plan on drawing even a modest amount of attention away from Windows. Which still has the best performance of all three OSes, and roughly a kajillion games available.

Barely 1% according the Valve's own statistics.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I'm not gonna write them off, because Valve is Valve. They're practically the current face of PC gaming.

...but they've got their work cut out for them.
 
Renzatic said:
There's a lot of potential there for it to happen, but right now, SteamOS doesn't have a hook. Something that'll make people stop and think "wow, I gotta have that". They'll have to do something big if they plan on drawing even a modest amount of attention away from Windows. Which still has the best performance of all three OSes, and roughly a kajillion games available.
Click to expand...
I completely agree: there simply aren't any compelling reasons to use SteamOS except maybe ideological ones.

The SteamBoxes (which are all just announced, none available) are not really different from other available small gaming PCs (in fact, some are simply already available gaming PCs with a Steam sticker slapped on).

There are no SteamOS exclusive titles.

And Steam on Windows (or OS X) with the Big Picture mode and the later available Steam Controller gives you exactly the same experience as SteamOS would – if not a better one due to the larger amount of available games.
 
Cougarcat said:
I posted this over at IMG, but maybe Feral is waiting for Apple to get their **** together with OpenGL in 10.11. Porting next-gen games now must be a bag of hurt. Hoping 10.11 will be a Snow Leopard-style release like iOS 9 is rumored to be, and there are significant DX12-style improvements, like Vulkan support (though it's not supposed to hit til next year, I think.)
Click to expand...

Is OSX likely to have improvements with gaming and graphic driver support in OSX 11 or is it purely hopes and speculations? Has anything actually been mentioned or what are some good reasons to believe that improvements in this area may occur? I'm not knowledgeable about OpenGL and graphics drivers etc.

I know IOS 9 supposedly will be about tweaking and improving performance and hopefully OSX will be the same, but I realise that doesn't mean anything in regard to gaming performance.
 
bmac89 said:
Is OSX likely to have improvements with gaming and graphic driver support in OSX 11 or is it purely hopes and speculations? Has anything actually been mentioned or what are some good reasons to believe that improvements in this area may occur? I'm not knowledgeable about OpenGL and graphics drivers etc.

I know IOS 9 supposedly will be about tweaking and improving performance and hopefully OSX will be the same, but I realise that doesn't mean anything in regard to gaming performance.
Click to expand...

Every update usually brings some minor improvements. The reason to be hopeful for the future (most likely 10.12) though is Vulkan, a spin-off of OpenGL that offers greatly improved performance in a simiar fashion that Apple's own Metal does on iOS, or DirectX 12 will on Windows. Apple is usually pretty slow with Adding new OpenGL features, though. We'll have to see.
 
Cougarcat said:
Apple is usually pretty slow with Adding new OpenGL features, though. We'll have to see.
Click to expand...

The true beauty of Vulkan lies in the fact that it closes the gap which was between the mobile world (OpenGL|ES) and the desktop world (OpenGL).

This is something Apple tries, too. But it takes a lot of work to unify to different frameworks. Just think of UIKit and UXKit in the new Photos app. It took forever until UXKit finally materialized. And it's still not an public API.

I would not be surprised if Apple offers Vulkan and Metal at the same time. Since Apple tries to unify the technological APIs between their OSX and iOS platforms, Vulkan would be a rational choice. Perhaps this happens sooner than expect. (And I would not be surprised if in that case Metal dies of slow neglect.)
 
Cougarcat said:
Every update usually brings some minor improvements. The reason to be hopeful for the future (most likely 10.12) though is Vulkan, a spin-off of OpenGL that offers greatly improved performance in a simiar fashion that Apple's own Metal does on iOS, or DirectX 12 will on Windows. Apple is usually pretty slow with Adding new OpenGL features, though. We'll have to see.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the explanation.
 
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