The Year of Linux Gaming continues as Apple's Game Porting Toolkit turns out to be WINE

[rcmaehl]

Summary

Apple's recently announced Game Porting Toolkit turns out to just be WINE (with a 3MB patch)

 

Quotes

Quote

At WWDC 23, the Mac gaming announcements were far from the star of the show, although Apple did announce the Game Porting Toolkit. Presented as a way for game developers to very quickly evaluate what it would take to port their PC games to MacOS. However, its DirectX12 emulation capabilities are so good that several users are already running cutting-edge PC games like Diablo IV and Cyberpunk 2077. The Game Porting Toolkit's emulation is so great because Apple picked Wine, as revealed on the CodeWeavers blog. CrossOver didn't work with Apple on the tool, but they are nonetheless elated that Apple saw the potential of Wine. Needless to say, it is a big day for Mac gaming since the list of games available to Mac users has massively increased. While this is an exciting development for Mac gaming, users should keep in mind that the game performance may be suboptimal. After all, the Game Porting Toolkit's Windows emulation was primarily meant as a first step for game developers to port their titles properly.

 

My thoughts

While this is only a 3MB patch, I'm sure this will lead to upstream improvements for WINE. Improving both Mac and Linux gaming for everyone. I didn't think I'd see the day in which big companies were actively developing WINE but here we are.

 

Sources

OS News

WCCFTech (quote source)

CodeWeavers

[Vishera]

2 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

DirectX12 emulation

Wine Is Not an Emulator

4 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

was primarily meant as a first step for game developers to port their titles properly.

To properly port a game you need the development SDK for the target operating system.

WINE is not used and is not needed to make a MacOS port for your game.

 

I just looked at the source code from the project's github page - It's just good old WINE with DXVK, VKD3D, MoltenVK for DirectX translation.

 

[LapsedMemory]

The only people Apple cares about is Apple.  As such, while they may use Wine Crossover as a basis of their toolkit, I would not hold my breath waiting for Apple to make any modifications or updates to it that benefit anyone outside of the Apple ecosystem.  It sounds like Apple is using the absolute least amount of effort just to have some marketing material.  

 

I expect they will just keep using the standard Wine Crossover libraries and just add the few changes that are required to work within OSX (hence the 3MB patch).  

[Obioban]

 

[Vishera]

26 minutes ago, LapsedMemory said:

I expect they will just keep using the standard Wine libraries and just add the few changes that are required to work within OSX (hence the 3MB patch).  

They are using the CrossOver fork of WINE.

CrossOver sells their fork of WINE on their website:

https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover

 

[ToboRobot]

2 minutes ago, Vishera said:

It's disgusting how they take an open source community project and sell it on the internet for profit.

 

No, it's great, because otherwise Open Source wouldn't get the massive amount of support from companies who use the technology to build products with.  Your attitude on Open Source is as out of date as Stallman.

[LapsedMemory]

1 minute ago, Vishera said:

They are using the CrossOver fork of WINE.

CrossOver sells their fork of WINE on their website:

https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover

It's disgusting how they take an open source community project and sell it on the internet for profit.

74€ a year subscription just for a WINE fork...

Correction noted.   

 

[rcmaehl]

1 minute ago, ToboRobot said:

No, it's great, because otherwise Open Source wouldn't get the massive amount of support from companies who use the technology to build products with.  Your attitude on Open Source is as out of date as Stallman.

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as FOSS, is in fact, FOSS/Commerical Repackaging, or as I've recently taken to calling it, FOSS plus Paid Developers.

[ToboRobot]

4 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as FOSS, is in fact, FOSS/Commerical Repackaging, or as I've recently taken to calling it, FOSS plus Paid Developers.

Meh, I don't think we need to muddy the waters with more buzzwords.  The F in OSS in my opinion is BS marketing from the ideological zealots.

Open Source allows for commercial repackaging, and there are numerous license agreements to detail the specifics.

Reality is that without big companies investing in open source software which they do for profit, is ultimately a good thing for everyone including Open Source developers and users, even they annoying ideological zealots like Stallman.

The reality is that from everything from lightbulbs to smartphones to satellites, they probably all have bits of OS code running on them, and even though some evil company made money selling products with free software, that's a good thing.

[Vishera]

14 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

No, it's great, because otherwise Open Source wouldn't get the massive amount of support from companies who use the technology to build products with. 

I just found out that The creator and principal maintainer of Wine works for Codeweavers,

He now works full-time on Wine for CodeWeavers.

Also CodeWeavers contributes code to the WINE project (Roughly 66% of patches come from CodeWeavers staff).

So by buying CrossOver you directly support the WINE project, thus my criticism of it was removed.

14 minutes ago, ToboRobot said:

Your attitude on Open Source is as out of date as Stallman.

Indeed.

[jesus123]

22 minutes ago, Vishera said:

I just found out that The creator and principal maintainer of Wine works for Codeweavers,

He now works full-time on Wine for CodeWeavers.

Also CodeWeavers contributes code to the WINE project (Roughly 66% of patches come from CodeWeavers staff).

So by buying CrossOver you directly support the WINE project.

 

Meanwhile crossover releases a blogpost stating they are thrilled about this:  https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/mjohnson/2023/6/6/wine-comes-to-macos-apple-s-game-porting-toolkit-powered-by-crossover-source-code

 

Quote

We are ecstatic that Apple chose to use CrossOver’s source code as their emulation solution for the Game Porting Toolkit.

 

i don’t think there’s bad blood here actually. If anything Apple gave crossover real big exposure and maybe crossover will actually remain the better option if they just keep on being faster on development than Apple. it is very possible that Apple doesn’t see Maintaining something like proton as their business. Their primary goal is to get game ports and become a legitimate option along Plattformen like the switch, pc… 

They might further develop this as long it benefits their porting strategy but the future commercial option for games that have no port might still remain crossover.

 

as of now as example there are quite a few game not launching on the Apple thing that do in crossover.

 

if gaming on Mac’s gets bigger chances are even though crossover might have a smaller part of the cake, they would still profit due to a bigger cake.

 

 Also in the blogpost they clearly position themselves as able to help big studios port their game which could become eventually the bigger cash cow.

 

See it like that. As of now Crossover tried achieving what proton is successfully doing on Linux. It just didn’t really work good enough so far due to them struggling with metal.

 

 Isn’t this basically Apple developing them that little missing puzzle piece?

 Sure they licensed it but now there’s incentive for directx games to look at it from a different point of view. 
 

 Crossover equally uses open source wine Ressource and makes money of them. Wouldn't it actually be kind of hypocritical if they would be upset?

 

 

[da na]

Linux mfs been like "This is my year" for the past two decades

[Paul Thexton]

It does feel like people are getting a bit carried away by the game porting toolkit to me.  Yeah it's cool to see these games running through Rosetta2 -> Wine -> MoltenVK/SomeOtherThing on Macs, but keep in mind Apple are specifically touting this as a way for developers to get an initial indication of where their baseline is should they want to port their game to Mac.

 

This isn't really Proton for Mac, even if enthusiasts are going to try and use it like it is.

[WolframaticAlpha]

2 hours ago, ToboRobot said:

No, it's great, because otherwise Open Source wouldn't get the massive amount of support from companies who use the technology to build products with.  Your attitude on Open Source is as out of date as Stallman.

2 hours ago, ToboRobot said:

Reality is that without big companies investing in open source software which they do for profit, is ultimately a good thing for everyone including Open Source developers and users

That is quite some misinfo you are spreading there. The massive amount of support takes place for already well established or large projects. Most companies rip off OSS projects and their devs. It is only the small percentage of large companies that contribute back with code. Sure you might read some blog post about hiring some guy who worked on OSS, but typically when these companies hire some of these folks in OSS positions, it is mainly the project leaders of large high profile projects. This is a big problem and why many people just get burnt out from OSS, because  realistically your project isn't going to be as big as linux. There are only few companies that are actually very pro OSS and help in the development of a thriving OSS ecosystem(ibm/redhat, google, ms, meta, intel etc)

 

And apple isn't even that well known for OSS. They sporadically contribute to BSD and other projects and their financial support is pithy when compared to their size. Heck, if you just want to have a laugh, try finding how much apple donates to the freebsd project(https://freebsdfoundation.org/our-donors/donors/?donationType=individual&donationYear=2023).

[dilpickle]

2 hours ago, da na said:

Linux mfs been like "This is my year" for the past two decades

It's literally been more than 2 decades since I've been hearing "Linux is almost ready for the desktop" 

[LapsedMemory]

5 minutes ago, dilpickle said:

It's literally been more than 2 decades since I've been hearing "Linux is almost ready for the desktop" 

Congratulations?  

 

Would.....would you like a cookie? 

[dilpickle]

13 minutes ago, LapsedMemory said:

Congratulations?  

 

Would.....would you like a cookie? 

Yes I would

[Gork]

3 hours ago, da na said:

Linux mfs been like "This is my year" for the past two decades

They can't even give away the os. it's a staggering 3% market share. Like slow down their 9999999999 fidgets because ya'all won't standardise around one. 

Clusterfuck.  Distro.They tried to get people onboard back in the 90s when their was genuine reason to raz and or dunk on MS. They couldn't get momentum 3 years ago when  everyone was at home.  I'm starting to think a rocket of elves crashlanding is morelikely than  linux becoming desktop relevant.

"congrats" a buggy codebase  that relies on specific fidgets from steam to crash, much less "work". is being eyballed by apple.

[Paul Thexton]

23 minutes ago, LapsedMemory said:

Would.....would you like a cookie?

Is it oatmeal?

[LapsedMemory]

1 minute ago, Paul Thexton said:

Is it oatmeal?

If it's got oatmeal or raisins it's not a real cookie.  It's an abomination of nature.

[Paul Thexton]

Just now, LapsedMemory said:

If it's got oatmeal or raisins it's not a real cookie.  It's an abomination of nature.

Ok, is it choc chip at least?

[Obioban]

No lie, I'm making oatmeal chocolate chip cookies tonight. Oatmeal lets you eat more without feeling nauseous.

[Paul Thexton]

Just now, Obioban said:

No lie, I'm making oatmeal chocolate chip cookies tonight.

Why has nobody ever made chocolate raisin cookies though? (Are chocolate raisins even a thing in North America?)

[LapsedMemory]

2 minutes ago, Gork said:

They can't even give away the os. it's a staggering 3% market share. Like slow down their 9999999999 fidgets because ya'all won't standardise around one. 

Clusterfuck.  Distro.They tried to get people onboard back in the 90s when their was genuine reason to raz and or dunk on MS. They couldn't get momentum 3 years ago when  everyone was at home.  I'm starting to think a rocket of elves crashlanding is morelikely than  linux becoming desktop relevant.

"congrats" a buggy codebase  that relies on specific fidgets from steam to crash, much less "work". is being eyballed by apple.

You sound triggered.

[da na]

6 minutes ago, Paul Thexton said:

Why has nobody ever made chocolate raisin cookies though? (Are chocolate raisins even a thing in North America?)

because the chocolate just melts and makes a mess, does not taste good with the raisin on a cookie