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They are doing absolutely nothing to bring back gaming to Mac. Major developers (like Blizzard) who have been loyal to that user base for decades are giving up

by heyoni 8y ago

They are doing absolutely nothing to bring back gaming to Mac. Major developers (like Blizzard) who have been loyal to that user base for decades are giving up and it feels like Apple isn't even trying to figure out a solution.

ihuman 8y ago
During the keynote, they showed Fortnite and a Unity demo running on Metal 2, and showed off the power of an external GPU. The new Mac app store will also give them the ability to highlight standout games, like it does on iOS.
- heyoni 8y ago
  This is great, however there are a slew of games that should technically work on mac but won't ever be ported because of 'technical limitations' set by Apple. Those reasons could be any number of things like not having native nvidia drivers, or lack of openGL support (which is completely deprecated in Mojave), etc...I'm happy to hear about their work on fortnite because currently my mac is overpowered for that game yet it is absolutely unplayable in its current state.
grandinj 8y ago
You mean other than continually improving Metal and working with Unity to get the latest Metal stuff supported properly?
- heyoni 8y ago
  Yes, I mean other than that they are doing nothing. Vulkan and OpenGL are shunned by Apple and developers won't even port over games that should run on macos (i.e. any game using the unreal engine -- pubg for example).
  - drak0n1c 8y ago
    Unreal Engine supports Metal - they even did a demo on stage a few years back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br7qVnzxzv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br7qVnzxzv8
headcanon 8y ago
Not sure what you mean, I can download battle.net on MacOS and play every game on there, although admittedly I haven't tested them all. SC2 runs pretty flawlessly too. There are some games not available for MacOS but they seem to be less and less common. Almost everything now is cross platform, in part thanks to Unity making cross-platform games easy.
- ihuman 8y ago
  You can't play Overwatch and Destiny 2 natively on a mac
- wilsonnb 8y ago
  I don't think Overwatch runs on MacOS.
- Rebelgecko 8y ago
  The launcher can be tricked to download Overwatch but it's not playable. Due to shoddy OpenGL support the shift lately actually seems to be away from cross platform games, especially from companies that use their own engine. Most if not all of the Blizz games render using OpenGL. Heroes of the Storm used to have some experimental options to use Metal or OpenGL 4.1, however Blizzard got rid of them at some point. They seems to not be satisfied with Apple's drivers
- heyoni 8y ago
  And this is ending with new releases, starting with Overwatch. And according to Blizzard it has nothing to do with money or market share, but with Apple specific technology. They've been the biggest supporter of gaming on macos, and with them gone, the future is looking grim (for mac gamers - obviously a first world problem).

by heyoni 8y ago

ihuman 8y ago

During the keynote, they showed Fortnite and a Unity demo running on Metal 2, and showed off the power of an external GPU. The new Mac app store will also give them the ability to highlight standout games, like it does on iOS.

heyoni 8y ago
This is great, however there are a slew of games that should technically work on mac but won't ever be ported because of 'technical limitations' set by Apple. Those reasons could be any number of things like not having native nvidia drivers, or lack of openGL support (which is completely deprecated in Mojave), etc...I'm happy to hear about their work on fortnite because currently my mac is overpowered for that game yet it is absolutely unplayable in its current state.

grandinj 8y ago

You mean other than continually improving Metal and working with Unity to get the latest Metal stuff supported properly?

heyoni 8y ago
Yes, I mean other than that they are doing nothing. Vulkan and OpenGL are shunned by Apple and developers won't even port over games that should run on macos (i.e. any game using the unreal engine -- pubg for example).
- drak0n1c 8y ago
  Unreal Engine supports Metal - they even did a demo on stage a few years back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br7qVnzxzv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Br7qVnzxzv8

headcanon 8y ago

Not sure what you mean, I can download battle.net on MacOS and play every game on there, although admittedly I haven't tested them all. SC2 runs pretty flawlessly too. There are some games not available for MacOS but they seem to be less and less common. Almost everything now is cross platform, in part thanks to Unity making cross-platform games easy.

ihuman 8y ago
You can't play Overwatch and Destiny 2 natively on a mac
wilsonnb 8y ago
I don't think Overwatch runs on MacOS.
Rebelgecko 8y ago
The launcher can be tricked to download Overwatch but it's not playable. Due to shoddy OpenGL support the shift lately actually seems to be away from cross platform games, especially from companies that use their own engine. Most if not all of the Blizz games render using OpenGL. Heroes of the Storm used to have some experimental options to use Metal or OpenGL 4.1, however Blizzard got rid of them at some point. They seems to not be satisfied with Apple's drivers
heyoni 8y ago
And this is ending with new releases, starting with Overwatch. And according to Blizzard it has nothing to do with money or market share, but with Apple specific technology. They've been the biggest supporter of gaming on macos, and with them gone, the future is looking grim (for mac gamers - obviously a first world problem).