Apple’s Game Porting Toolkit – a PC Gamer’s Perspective

[maplepants]

11 hours ago, atxcyclist said:

I ended up putting Parallels and Windows 11 ARM on my MacBook, and it does OK but leaves a lot to be desired for gaming specifically, perhaps some developers in the future will make Mac-native ports for things. I am looking forward to the MacOS-native version of Stray, I'm hoping Steam lets people that have already bought it for Windows just download it.

 

Steam usually does it that way. As far as I know, the developer has to go out of their way to make that not happen.

 

When No Man's Sky launched on macOS it just showed up under the  filter in Steam on my Mac.

 

I mentioned this in the Mac Rumours thread, but it's nice to see Apple trying both to get iOS / iPadOS games ported as well as Windows. I think that's a smart move. The minimum GPU for God of War is a GTX 960, and the recommended a GTX 1060. There's no reason that game shouldn't run on M1 iPads and Macs (technically). So hopefully Apple's willing to put the developer/porting support money in that they'll need to support this.

 

I also think they'll need to make an in-house game or two in order to really show off what Metal can do. Way back when, Microsoft created Flight Simulator as much to show off the then new DirectX as they did in order to sell a game.

 

Apple should do the same thing and create a game that flexes the Metal API's muscles while looking good from an M1 Macbook Air up to an M2 Ultra Mac Pro.

[ClintBillton]

I think this push from apple isn’t really aimed at all games in general, but actually at VR games specifically.

 

They need software for the vision pro and as of right now they don’t have much.

Games are a lot higher on the list of ‘what can this device do’ for VR as opposed to a general purpose PC.

[YeshYyyK]

I would like to see a revisit to this once official ports are completed - i.e. a Death Stranding comparison or others.

 

Gaming on battery and/or max brightness outdoors (at least, on a cloudy day, since it's "only" ~500 nits, unless you use some app to force HDR brightness) would be interesting - you would still need a mouse though

 

  

7 hours ago, maplepants said:

Steam usually does it that way. As far as I know, the developer has to go out of their way to make that not happen.

 

When No Man's Sky launched on macOS it just showed up under the  filter in Steam on my Mac.

 

I mentioned this in the Mac Rumours thread, but it's nice to see Apple trying both to get iOS / iPadOS games ported as well as Windows. I think that's a smart move. The minimum GPU for God of War is a GTX 960, and the recommended a GTX 1060. There's no reason that game shouldn't run on M1 iPads and Macs (technically). So hopefully Apple's willing to put the developer/porting support money in that they'll need to support this.

 

I also think they'll need to make an in-house game or two in order to really show off what Metal can do. Way back when, Microsoft created Flight Simulator as much to show off the then new DirectX as they did in order to sell a game.

 

Apple should do the same thing and create a game that flexes the Metal API's muscles while looking good from an M1 Macbook Air up to an M2 Ultra Mac Pro.

I have zero hope for an in-house game

 

The second Metal Mac game (if not for WoW, first) was a (nearly) one-man project

 

I hope it takes off though

[maplepants]

2 hours ago, YeshYyyK said:

I have zero hope for an in-house game

I don't think it's likely either. But I think that whether it's made by in-house devs or just funded directly by Apple, they're going to need to fund some game creation if they want people to use Metal directly. That's why I think the Microsoft example is a good one (even though they already cared a lot about gaming by that point).

 

 

Of course it's not the only way to be serious, but it's *a* way and probably costs about as much as any other plan that would actually work.

 

[At-Plume]

I like that Apple is taking gaming more seriously but I can't see it happen.

 

This is a curiosity at best. It's cool and all but in the end, I just can't picture Apple putting in the work like Valve does with Proton. And Proton has proven that you can make it as easy as you can, dev time probably won't be put in it. Proton on it's own does the job, but we had way too many time where Valve had to intervene themselves to fix a broken game because the devs didn't put in the work. So picturing devs putting the work for Mac? Yeah, not gonna happen.

 

I'd like to be wrong though, but... I don't see it happen.

 

All though, this could be for VR games, as ClintBillton pointed out. It would make sense with their new headset. We'll have to see.

[r00tb33r]

13 hours ago, YeshYyyK said:

I have zero hope for an in-house game

If made-for-Apple-TV films are anything to go by, if Apple were to publish (or develop) a game, it would be overly sentimental and banal to the core.

 

In a way, Apple's hardware is pretty consistent like of a console, no huge variation like on a PC.  But their bar for entry for any sensible gaming is pretty high.  Or am I wrong?  Are the Mx Mac Minis a good gaming machine?

[CerealExperimentsLain]

4 hours ago, r00tb33r said:

If made-for-Apple-TV films are anything to go by, if Apple were to publish (or develop) a game, it would be overly sentimental but banal to the core.

FOR ALL MANKIND IS A FREAKIN' DELIGHT AND I CAN'T WAIT FOR SEASON 4.

 

[Paul Thexton]

10 hours ago, r00tb33r said:

Are the Mx Mac Minis a good gaming machine?

Entry level Apple Silicon models are significantly better for general graphics tasks than entry level Intel versions ever were, but in reality you’re not going over 1080p on them at best … That’s why Apple developed the MetalFX upscaler which Digital Foundry were very complimentary about in their review.

 

 

Basically ports to Mac that run acceptably on entry level machines are possible, so long as the developers put in the work.

 

And that’s the entire point of the Game Porting Toolkit, it’s to make that process significantly easier. The Proton-alike bit is for devs to get an initial indication where they’re starting from before they even do a native compile of their game, no more.

[Obioban]

 

[maplepants]

On 6/14/2023 at 6:03 PM, Obioban said:

 

So Linus is wrong about the perfomance numbers specifically, but that's the least important part of his argument.

 

His point was that the Game Porting Toolkit isn't "Proton for macOS", but rather that it is exactly what Apple says it is: a tool to help developers get a sense of what performance for their game might be like on a Mac. That's why the Game Porting Toolkit isn't great at running Windows' version of Steam; because the intended users aren't downloading games via steam they're compiling them themselves and then running the exe directly. 

 

I'm a Mac gamer myself (there are dozens of us) and like Andrew's stuff. But I disagree with his take here. Sure Linus and Emily were slightly wrong about what kind of performance you can expect, but the raw FPS wasn't the point of the video so it isn't really a big deal.

[Paul Thexton]

Honestly my only disappointment about the video was that they didn’t use their customised water cooled Mac Studio 

[Zodiark1593]

I always thought Apple and Nintendo would make good partners. They both use fairly similar principles and mindsets. Apple has chips that would really elevate Nintendo’s handheld systems, while Nintendo has IP that Apple could probably really make money with on their Arcade platform. 

[Kanzuke]

The recent comments are pretty ugly if any staff want to step in. Might help discourage further ugliness