5 ms·

Beating macOS at gaming sounds like a punchline, that's just not impressive, macOS has only ever been an afterthought for gaming.

de_watcher 8y ago
Yes, you've got to try very hard to be worse than MacOS that is openly sabotaging OpenGL and Vulkan efforts.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Lack of OpenGL and Vulkan support never mattered on game consoles. Even with Switch's adoption of Vulkan, most games are actually using middleware that makes use of NVN. If a platform is relevant to professional games developers, they will target it, regardless of which APIs and OS it requires.
  - monocasa 8y ago
    Consoles give very strict contracts that you can rely on to not change for the whole lifetime of the console. In contrary macOS changes stuff every year apparently based on what a fortune teller says for Steve Job's ghost. That means that early on, yeah it's as bad as Mac, but it gets way better over the lifetime of the console.
    - pjmlp 8y ago
      All the middleware that matters for professional game studios has supported Metal since for at least one year now.
      - monocasa 8y ago
        Yeah, no. There's talks of Blizzard for instance dropping support for Mac. Dice has a blog post that's messaging concern. It looks like a bunch of engines are going to limp on MoltenVK which kind or imposes a weird impedance mismatch and gives weird perf issues soemtimes that you probs wouldn't see with a native Metal backend. And that's before getting into the release of Metal 2. There's a non zero amount of work to support it, and it's not clear how long Apple is going to support Metal 1. And all of that is before all sorts of other crazy stuff with Apple changing their app signing requirements, messaging that they're going to require all apps to be signed by Apple in some future macOS release (but won't tell you when that is).
        pjmlp 8y ago
        > All the middleware that matters.... Unreal, Unity, CryEngine, ... I wasn't talking about in-house solutions, rather engines that many AAA studios buy in order to actually focus on the game itself. As for the rest of your remark, it comes up in places like HN, but not at all when attending local game developer meetups, developer articles on Making Games, Gamasutra, Connection, IGDA, or many other professional publications.
        monocasa 8y ago
        I mean, my day job is supporting an application across Win/Mac/Linux. Even ignoring the graphics, Apple is easily the hardest to support. I don't really care if you haven't read a magazine article on it. And to pretend like FrostBite doesn't matter is ridiculous.
        pjmlp 8y ago
        It doesn't matter for developers that want to support OS X, as it is mostly focused on game consoles and Windows. Whereas the ones I listed do support those systems, Apple platforms, Android and GNU/Linux.
        monocasa 8y ago
        So wait, the AAA developers not supporting don't count against your argument? Even in the case of Blizzard who has famously been one of the biggest Mac supporters? Isn't "all AAA support Mac... except all the ones that don't support Mac" a tautology? Also, just noticed that you lumped in Unity with AAA, lolz. What's next libgdx?
        pjmlp 8y ago
        Because their focus is clearly PlayStation, Xbox and PC, not even Nintendo hardware. There are plenty of other AAA studios using Unreal, Unity, CryEngine. Maybe you should check again the names of some studios using Unity, ever heard of Nintendo and Microsoft?
ponow 8y ago
Maybe so, but in some circles Macbooks are the most prevalent computer, and these Linux advances are thus hugely relevant.

de_watcher 8y ago

Yes, you've got to try very hard to be worse than MacOS that is openly sabotaging OpenGL and Vulkan efforts.

pjmlp 8y ago
Lack of OpenGL and Vulkan support never mattered on game consoles. Even with Switch's adoption of Vulkan, most games are actually using middleware that makes use of NVN. If a platform is relevant to professional games developers, they will target it, regardless of which APIs and OS it requires.
- monocasa 8y ago
  Consoles give very strict contracts that you can rely on to not change for the whole lifetime of the console. In contrary macOS changes stuff every year apparently based on what a fortune teller says for Steve Job's ghost. That means that early on, yeah it's as bad as Mac, but it gets way better over the lifetime of the console.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    All the middleware that matters for professional game studios has supported Metal since for at least one year now.
    - monocasa 8y ago
      Yeah, no. There's talks of Blizzard for instance dropping support for Mac. Dice has a blog post that's messaging concern. It looks like a bunch of engines are going to limp on MoltenVK which kind or imposes a weird impedance mismatch and gives weird perf issues soemtimes that you probs wouldn't see with a native Metal backend. And that's before getting into the release of Metal 2. There's a non zero amount of work to support it, and it's not clear how long Apple is going to support Metal 1. And all of that is before all sorts of other crazy stuff with Apple changing their app signing requirements, messaging that they're going to require all apps to be signed by Apple in some future macOS release (but won't tell you when that is).
      - pjmlp 8y ago
        > All the middleware that matters.... Unreal, Unity, CryEngine, ... I wasn't talking about in-house solutions, rather engines that many AAA studios buy in order to actually focus on the game itself. As for the rest of your remark, it comes up in places like HN, but not at all when attending local game developer meetups, developer articles on Making Games, Gamasutra, Connection, IGDA, or many other professional publications.
        monocasa 8y ago
        I mean, my day job is supporting an application across Win/Mac/Linux. Even ignoring the graphics, Apple is easily the hardest to support. I don't really care if you haven't read a magazine article on it. And to pretend like FrostBite doesn't matter is ridiculous.
        pjmlp 8y ago
        It doesn't matter for developers that want to support OS X, as it is mostly focused on game consoles and Windows. Whereas the ones I listed do support those systems, Apple platforms, Android and GNU/Linux.
        monocasa 8y ago
        So wait, the AAA developers not supporting don't count against your argument? Even in the case of Blizzard who has famously been one of the biggest Mac supporters? Isn't "all AAA support Mac... except all the ones that don't support Mac" a tautology? Also, just noticed that you lumped in Unity with AAA, lolz. What's next libgdx?
        pjmlp 8y ago
        Because their focus is clearly PlayStation, Xbox and PC, not even Nintendo hardware. There are plenty of other AAA studios using Unreal, Unity, CryEngine. Maybe you should check again the names of some studios using Unity, ever heard of Nintendo and Microsoft?

ponow 8y ago

Maybe so, but in some circles Macbooks are the most prevalent computer, and these Linux advances are thus hugely relevant.