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Why weren’t they getting ported before Metal when OpenGL 3.1 was still at parity with the rest of the industry? The graphics API is not the significant portion

by dagmx 3y ago

Why weren’t they getting ported before Metal when OpenGL 3.1 was still at parity with the rest of the industry? The graphics API is not the significant portion of the porting issue. It’s market share and the fact that until recently, very few Macs by market share had great GPUs. The game porting toolkit works alongside wine and Rosetta to make time to first pixel easier for developers to consider the platform. Regardless of metal or not, time to first pixel and consistency of hardware has always been the biggest hurdle. Most big engines support metal just fine already, so it’s not the primary hurdle people claim otherwise we’d see more unreal and Unity games running natively on Mac’s. Now every Mac has a decent GPU (for some definition of decent) with very similar hardware.

smoldesu 3y ago
> Why weren’t they getting ported before Metal when OpenGL 3.1 was still at parity with the rest of the industry? They were. The number of OpenGL games was minuscule though, and Apple's underlying APIs have broken now, rendering most of these games unplayable. Apple doesn't really provide a stable gaming runtime, outside of the DirectX-like promise that if you use their proprietary APIs they won't depreciate them. > The game porting toolkit works alongside wine and Rosetta to make time to first pixel easier for developers to consider the platform. See, that's the thing. "time to first pixel" was an issue because of Apple's APIs. If you translate non-native program calls into native ones, then obviously you circumvent the problem. Furthermore, the reason why Game Porting Toolkit didn't exist before now was because Apple had to write a Metal translator for DirectX. The community never wrote one like they did for Vulkan, likely because nobody wants to translate DirectX to a second proprietary API. Kinda defeats the purpose, at least for non-commercial contributors. > Most big engines support metal just fine already, so it’s not the primary hurdle people claim otherwise we’d see more unreal and Unity games running natively on Mac’s. Most big engines also support PS5 and Nintendo Switch as development targets. The reason why they are relatively unpopular for porting is the exact same as Apple's - the APIs are nonstandard and closed, with limited distribution and long-term support options. Why would anyone put in the majority of their effort to support a minority of the market?
- dagmx 3y ago
  The number of Mac metal games is about the same as the number of Mac OpenGL games. Which is to say minuscule like you said, but all that shows is that it’s not about the APIs or we’d see Unity/Unreal games a plenty. It’s just down to market share. Time to first pixel still matters for off the shelf engine based games because devs need to get over the hump of building it etc let alone consider all the possible hypotheticals of how it works, even before they get to APIs. Game porting toolkit solves that. It’s not meant as a general purpose translator , just to get people over that hump And again it’s just down to market share. There are plenty of AAA games on iOS that use the same engines as PC games without having Mac versions. Take the Call of Duty games for iOS. Why wasn’t there prevalent CoD on macOS? All that proves to me is that APIs aren’t the primary reason.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  PS5 and Nintendo Switch unpopular?!? The first and second champions of game sales of this decade! What a joke, thanks for making my day. By the way, game studios don't have any issue translanting DirectX to LibGNM/X and NVN.
  - dagmx 3y ago
    Exactly. They’ll do what they need to do for any market they deem to have an adequate ROI. I always point to Linux when people mention APIs being the issue. Linux gaming was depressing before Proton, despite having both Vulkan and up to date OpenGL. Devs could have supported them but didn’t. So the API isn’t the big reason people make it out to be
    - smoldesu 3y ago
      Linux actually seems like the antithesis of your point. It has the lowest ROI of any of the platforms we've mentioned, yet the highest degree of compatibility with PC and console games outside Windows. If openness and API support isn't the issue, then why didn't DXVK get written for Apple platforms first?
      - 3y ago

by dagmx 3y ago

smoldesu 3y ago

> Why weren’t they getting ported before Metal when OpenGL 3.1 was still at parity with the rest of the industry? They were. The number of OpenGL games was minuscule though, and Apple's underlying APIs have broken now, rendering most of these games unplayable. Apple doesn't really provide a stable gaming runtime, outside of the DirectX-like promise that if you use their proprietary APIs they won't depreciate them. > The game porting toolkit works alongside wine and Rosetta to make time to first pixel easier for developers to consider the platform. See, that's the thing. "time to first pixel" was an issue because of Apple's APIs. If you translate non-native program calls into native ones, then obviously you circumvent the problem. Furthermore, the reason why Game Porting Toolkit didn't exist before now was because Apple had to write a Metal translator for DirectX. The community never wrote one like they did for Vulkan, likely because nobody wants to translate DirectX to a second proprietary API. Kinda defeats the purpose, at least for non-commercial contributors. > Most big engines support metal just fine already, so it’s not the primary hurdle people claim otherwise we’d see more unreal and Unity games running natively on Mac’s. Most big engines also support PS5 and Nintendo Switch as development targets. The reason why they are relatively unpopular for porting is the exact same as Apple's - the APIs are nonstandard and closed, with limited distribution and long-term support options. Why would anyone put in the majority of their effort to support a minority of the market?

dagmx 3y ago
The number of Mac metal games is about the same as the number of Mac OpenGL games. Which is to say minuscule like you said, but all that shows is that it’s not about the APIs or we’d see Unity/Unreal games a plenty. It’s just down to market share. Time to first pixel still matters for off the shelf engine based games because devs need to get over the hump of building it etc let alone consider all the possible hypotheticals of how it works, even before they get to APIs. Game porting toolkit solves that. It’s not meant as a general purpose translator , just to get people over that hump And again it’s just down to market share. There are plenty of AAA games on iOS that use the same engines as PC games without having Mac versions. Take the Call of Duty games for iOS. Why wasn’t there prevalent CoD on macOS? All that proves to me is that APIs aren’t the primary reason.
pjmlp 3y ago
PS5 and Nintendo Switch unpopular?!? The first and second champions of game sales of this decade! What a joke, thanks for making my day. By the way, game studios don't have any issue translanting DirectX to LibGNM/X and NVN.
- dagmx 3y ago
  Exactly. They’ll do what they need to do for any market they deem to have an adequate ROI. I always point to Linux when people mention APIs being the issue. Linux gaming was depressing before Proton, despite having both Vulkan and up to date OpenGL. Devs could have supported them but didn’t. So the API isn’t the big reason people make it out to be
  - smoldesu 3y ago
    Linux actually seems like the antithesis of your point. It has the lowest ROI of any of the platforms we've mentioned, yet the highest degree of compatibility with PC and console games outside Windows. If openness and API support isn't the issue, then why didn't DXVK get written for Apple platforms first?
    - 3y ago