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I love reading the comments on Mac Rumour articles when it's negative news for Apple's platforms or services. To paraphrase: "Vulcan bad!" "Lazy Devs!" "But they support Linux?" and "What a dumb business decision!"
Yes, Apple zealots, Valve is absolutely going to support your vendor-specific graphics API on a platform that they aren't making much money from, and will continue to support and test that platform for years, operating as a charity because they love Apple so much π
One of the comments said
You can expect this to continue happening for as long as Apple pushes Metal and refuses to support Vulkan [...] If macOS wants to get anywhere it has to be a case "why not support it" instead of "we need to make a Metal compatible version of our engine".
And I couldn't have said it better myself
Don't forget that Apple actively breaks software build processes quite frequently for their platform and doesn't allow you to fully automate a lot of them because you need accounts to download the relevant tools and can only use them on Apple hardware. That makes supporting it a pain for cross platform projects.
It sucks when you want to port an app to iOS, or an application to MacOS and find out "oh... I need to have a Mac to compile to these platforms.. and there's no way to otherwise test.."
Meanwhile, with android you can just run an emulator.
I am with Valve, who plays games on Mac anyway?
Blizzard used to support Mac very well. Diablo and WoW always supported Mac. Valve as well, most Valve first party titles released for Mac. Played lots of Portal 1/2, CS:GO. Also played Minecraft, Sims, KSP.
Ye, but why? Probably some deals between the two companies.
When Microsoft - Activision deal will finalize, you can forget about that too.
For a while it was Intel and ppc but similar graphics back end. Then it was Intel on both. But Mac had a special graphics back end. Now with Mac it's arm and proprietary graphics back end both. While they've been willing to put up with one or the other in the past. It's just not worth it to deal with both for such a small user base.
Exactly, and they can simply use Windows in a virtual machine anyway.
I've been in the games industry for 10 years, and worked for Fortune 500 companies before that. I can tell you that people assume there are a lot of "deals" between companies when realistically the companies aren't making deals with each other. Companies are still companies and attempt to make money off of the sources that they can.
I do! Lots of modded Minecraft, also Hades, Witcher 3, Tears of the Kingdom and Hollow Knight.
It often requires some tinkering and there isnβt that many games but other than that I love it. Baldurβs Gate 3 released on Mac so Iβll probably play it too eventually. Used to play CS GO, Portal 2 and the other Valve classics back in the day.
If Apple cared about Mac gaming it would actually be great since the recent Macs especially are really capable. But they donβt, so.. itβll probably stay a niche thing.
I do too! Minecraft and Factorio for sure. BG3 is underwhelming on my M1 MBA, even with the extra RAM, but I mostly use GeForce now for games. I found an adapter from Cable Matters to get that sweet 120Hz at 4k through HDMI. It looks amazing on my TV. The company provides some alternative firmware you can put on the USB-C dongle to make it work, though you need a Windows machine to upgrade the firmware.
I really have no interest in getting another laptop or building a gaming PC I will ignore. I can't justify it. This thing is light, has amazing battery life, and runs everything I need it to. I have a console for other games. If the game isn't on console, osx, or GeForce Now, I just won't play it.
I do agree with some of the others that it would be nice if they got on the Vulcan train.
Ayy, nice! I got a base 14" M1 Pro myself and it's a blast, especially thanks to that display. The refresh rate, brightness and colors are amazing. If you'd like to stay with a single computer, I'd totally recommend upgrading to it as the performance makes a lot more games playable.
Check out the Create mod in Minecraft if you like Factorio, you will love it. It's basically Factorio but in Minecraft. Oh and Hades should run well on your MBA as well, I'd recommend you try it if you haven't already!
though you need a Windows machine to upgrade the firmware.
that's a hilarious detail.
Indeed. They were upfront about it at least. You are literally using their inhouse firmware tool that isn't publicly available. After sending the request, I had the files and guide same day. I used my work laptop for it and it took 5 minutes. Easy peasy.
This is the model I got: https://www.cablematters.com/pc-1485-126-usb-c-multiport-adapter-with-8k-hdmi-2x-usb-30-gigabit-ethernet-and-power-delivery.aspx
Article/Blog Post: https://www.cablematters.com/Blog/HDMI/how-to-get-4k120hz-with-mac
But why? Why would you buy a Mac twice the price for gaming when you can buy other cheaper gaming brands?
You said it right, Apple doesn't care about gaming, and so are their customers.
Apple would not move a finger without return.
They probably use it for many things other than gaming?
That's exactly my point lol
Same amount of people who play games on Linux. They only support Linux because they have a financial incentive to do so. It's just not attached to player count but instead the success of their own operating system. Steam investing in Linux is like Google investing in Linux.
Mac users are different from others, they don't buy overpriced machines just for gaming. They buy a Mac for the workflow and ecosystem, not for gaming.
Valve saw that, and decided not to waste money on the Mac market.
Apple always makes decisions based on the revenue, Valve did the same for once.
Valve did the same for once.
You mean Valve did, as they always have.
I don't know man, Valve seems more pro users than Apple to be honest.
EDIT: I just want to add some context; Valve made Steam Deck fully reaperable, where Apple always adds restrictions on what you can repair in an iPhone or Mac. When I buy a device I always look for its reaparibility.
At the launch of Steam Deck, Valve was very responsive and they replaced many units (even if sometimes it was user's fault) for free, where Apple would find any way to charge you for the repair (and you know better than me how much expensive is to repair an iPhone or Mac).
Honestly, Steam lacks a lot of pro-user rights. Developers are restricted by a lot of things that even itch allows you to do. Like a pay-what-you-want model or mentioning another storefront in your own demo/game. Not to mention that all you are truly buying on Steam is a lease to a copy of the game rather than the actual rights of owning a product. This sidesteps a lot of consumer laws in the USA.
About the lease thing I agree, but Steam didn't really remove any games, if they did was because the original devs decided so.
I never said steam removes games but they absolutely do against the developers wishes.
Against developers wishes? Could you tell when this has happened before?
I don't think I have ever known anyone who has played a game on mac since the 1990's.
I did a ton of years ago, using wine bottles to run pirated windows games... ran like shit on my macbook
Mac locks so many people out of their ecosystem I have little to no sympathy. Apple has the money to bring this game to Mac if they really wanted.
The irony is that volunteers are going to get CS2 running on Apple Silicon before apple purely by reverse engineering their GPUs for Asahi Linux.
Apple really thought they could do what AMD and 3DFX failed to do and randomly push a competitor to Vulkan/OpenGL that only supports a handful of hardware SKUs that aren't dominant in the market anyway.
Metal is incredibly successful... Just not on Mac. It's the graphics API that drives the iPhone and iPad.
It seems like they're worrying about Macs again, but when Metal was released the focus was iOS and it did bring significant performance improvements to that platform.
We can say whatever we want about mobile games, but in numbers, they're dominant and the App Store is one of Apple's biggest revenue sources.
Every 3D game on iOS is Metal.
Sure, metal offered significant improvements over opengl when it released, but now that vulkan exists apple doesnβt have any more excuses.
I don't disagree - I don't own Apple products, and I very much would prefer if all games also dropped DirectX.
But my point is that Metal didn't fail, and it's not "used in a minority of devices" and Apple isn't "crazy for thinking they would succeed with a new graphics API for games" because by all relevant metrics, dominance over mobile gaming is much more important.
The irony is that volunteers are going to get CS2 running on Apple Silicon before apple purely by reverse engineering their GPUs for Asahi Linux
Really? x86 games emulated usably on ARM?
Source 1 engine games like half life are running atm via box_x86
Games "tend" to dominate a single, or very few cores. With modern PCs having 4 or more. You can push an isa-translator off on to a low power core. Since it won't be a constant, heavy lifting task. Then push the translated instructions through your high performance cores. Your biggest penalty on that will generally be a small bit of latency.
Your biggest hit will likely come from having to wrap graphics APIs. But again, that hit is generally what it takes to do the same under Linux with wine/proton.
But as long as your CPUs can push the instructions fast enough. Your data bus can manage the data transfers in a timely manner. And your graphics subsystem can handle the load. It's a doable task.
It's very similar to emulating retro systems in a number of ways.
And also Source 2 engine only supports Directx 11 and Vulkan
Wonder if theyβre able to tell how many people are playing it on GeForce now?
Actually runs really well on GeForce Now. Yes you need a strong internet connection but it fills the void for the rare times I want to play.