4 ms·

Do you think Mac gamers would ever see similar love, like Game Porting Toolkit integrated into Steam?

coldpie 3y ago
I don't know anything about Valve's future plans, and I don't know anything at all about that toolkit (it was announced after I stopped working on Wine). My gut feeling is it's unlikely. There was a lot of incentive to target Linux with this tech, even though it's a smaller market than macOS, because you can control the whole stack and do cool stuff like SteamOS, which is what allowed the Deck to happen. On macOS, all you can do is sell stuff to end-users, where you also have to compete with the Apple store, which is owned by Apple, who also make the OS. Apple has also shown they're a bad partner for game companies (nuking 32-bit support; crummy OpenGL support; no Vulkan support; shaky record on OS updates breaking stuff). My experience is there's generally a lot of bad feelings and skepticism about Apple and macOS in the gaming industry due to that record.
- solardev 3y ago
  That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the explanation!
- rollcat 3y ago
  > Apple has also shown they're a bad partner for game companies (nuking 32-bit support; crummy OpenGL support; no Vulkan support; shaky record on OS updates breaking stuff). My experience is there's generally a lot of bad feelings and skepticism about Apple and macOS in the gaming industry due to that record. In your opinion, what steps should Apple take, and in what order, to make Mac a compelling, long-term platform for third-party game developers? They're certainly showing some interest in making games happen (GPT, raytracing), but most of the efforts so far seem to be pre-aligned in their favour (Metal, Apple Arcade).
  - coldpie 3y ago
    I don't know that I'm the best person to ask, my scope is fairly narrow and definitely more Linux-focused (I don't even own a Mac). But, I think inventing a time machine so they can avoid making their partners write articles like this[1] would be a good first step. After that, stop putting out stupid special-snowflake APIs like Metal and adopt industry standards like Vulkan and OpenGL. Then build a 20-year track record of API and OS stability so game devs & users can expect their back catalog to continue to work. I dunno, man. They've burned a lot of bridges, and they are a small piece of the pie[2]. Not a lot of incentive for people to put up with their BS. [1] https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/5E0D-522A-4E62-B6EF https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/5E0D-522A-4E62-B6... [2] macOS: 1.57%, Linux: 1.82%, Windows: 96.61% https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...
pmarreck 3y ago
I was a long-time "Mac gamer" who held out until the very end (where I personally define "very end" as Blizzard releasing their first non-simultaneous-platform-released game, Overwatch). I'm here to inform you that that ship (with some notable exceptions, such as Baldur's Gate 3 releasing on Macs today, I think, which is FANTASTIC) has more or less sailed. Tim Cook is neither a programmer, nor a gamer, nor an open-source advocate, and every move Apple makes and has made since he took the helm shows where his priorities lie, and they're not in the AAA gaming market (and additionally, they're starting to be open-source-developer-hostile, IMHO). I think macOS would have achieved a ton more success (it would have basically become a better, more user-friendly Linux) had Apple open-sourced it and simply made Mac hardware the "reference" macOS hardware (between you and me, I also think this move would have instantly garnered Gabe's support), but it's simply not going to be. Apple likes their walled garden and their 30% App Store cut and their iOS-specific lame-games and their proprietary CPU/GPU/SoC architecture that is only being pried open by extremely clever individuals like Asahi Lina https://github.com/asahilina https://github.com/asahilina and Alyssa Rosenzweig (with zero help from Apple other than "leaving the door open," essentially... Which, by the way, they can still shut at any time...) I've become more of a Linux fan over the years but only after I found NixOS- which unfortunately has kind of a steep learning curve. The reason why I couldn't use Linux as a daily driver until NixOS is that Linux's huge customizability (and my need to experiment and explore!) also lead directly to huge opportunities to brick your system or just break things in general (which happened again, and again, and again for me, across many distros such as Ubuntu, Arch, Manjaro, Pop_OS, etc.). Linux is thus like a hugely customizable sports car without brakes or safety belts. NixOS gives you both of those, so you get to fly with the sports car, enjoy all the customizability, but if anything goes wrong (which it rarely does, thanks to NixOS's architecture), you can instantly roll back to any prior version of the OS and its declaratively-installed apps and configs. It's the best of all worlds, currently, completely open-source, but the learning curve is still too steep for most. (I have hope that a NixOS-derived more-user-friendly distro like https://snowflakeos.org/ https://snowflakeos.org/ may help here, but it will take time.) In parallel with that, gaming on Linux became "viable" (modding is still tougher than on Windows, but that will eventually be easier too) thanks to Valve's Proton efforts.
- smoldesu 3y ago

I don't know anything about Valve's future plans, and I don't know anything at all about that toolkit (it was announced after I stopped working on Wine). My gut feeling is it's unlikely. There was a lot of incentive to target Linux with this tech, even though it's a smaller market than macOS, because you can control the whole stack and do cool stuff like SteamOS, which is what allowed the Deck to happen. On macOS, all you can do is sell stuff to end-users, where you also have to compete with the Apple store, which is owned by Apple, who also make the OS. Apple has also shown they're a bad partner for game companies (nuking 32-bit support; crummy OpenGL support; no Vulkan support; shaky record on OS updates breaking stuff). My experience is there's generally a lot of bad feelings and skepticism about Apple and macOS in the gaming industry due to that record.

solardev 3y ago
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the explanation!
rollcat 3y ago
> Apple has also shown they're a bad partner for game companies (nuking 32-bit support; crummy OpenGL support; no Vulkan support; shaky record on OS updates breaking stuff). My experience is there's generally a lot of bad feelings and skepticism about Apple and macOS in the gaming industry due to that record. In your opinion, what steps should Apple take, and in what order, to make Mac a compelling, long-term platform for third-party game developers? They're certainly showing some interest in making games happen (GPT, raytracing), but most of the efforts so far seem to be pre-aligned in their favour (Metal, Apple Arcade).
- coldpie 3y ago
  I don't know that I'm the best person to ask, my scope is fairly narrow and definitely more Linux-focused (I don't even own a Mac). But, I think inventing a time machine so they can avoid making their partners write articles like this[1] would be a good first step. After that, stop putting out stupid special-snowflake APIs like Metal and adopt industry standards like Vulkan and OpenGL. Then build a 20-year track record of API and OS stability so game devs & users can expect their back catalog to continue to work. I dunno, man. They've burned a lot of bridges, and they are a small piece of the pie[2]. Not a lot of incentive for people to put up with their BS. [1] https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/5E0D-522A-4E62-B6EF https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/5E0D-522A-4E62-B6... [2] macOS: 1.57%, Linux: 1.82%, Windows: 96.61% https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Software-Survey-Welcome-to-Steam https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/Steam-Hardware-Softw...

pmarreck 3y ago

I was a long-time "Mac gamer" who held out until the very end (where I personally define "very end" as Blizzard releasing their first non-simultaneous-platform-released game, Overwatch). I'm here to inform you that that ship (with some notable exceptions, such as Baldur's Gate 3 releasing on Macs today, I think, which is FANTASTIC) has more or less sailed. Tim Cook is neither a programmer, nor a gamer, nor an open-source advocate, and every move Apple makes and has made since he took the helm shows where his priorities lie, and they're not in the AAA gaming market (and additionally, they're starting to be open-source-developer-hostile, IMHO). I think macOS would have achieved a ton more success (it would have basically become a better, more user-friendly Linux) had Apple open-sourced it and simply made Mac hardware the "reference" macOS hardware (between you and me, I also think this move would have instantly garnered Gabe's support), but it's simply not going to be. Apple likes their walled garden and their 30% App Store cut and their iOS-specific lame-games and their proprietary CPU/GPU/SoC architecture that is only being pried open by extremely clever individuals like Asahi Lina https://github.com/asahilina https://github.com/asahilina and Alyssa Rosenzweig (with zero help from Apple other than "leaving the door open," essentially... Which, by the way, they can still shut at any time...) I've become more of a Linux fan over the years but only after I found NixOS- which unfortunately has kind of a steep learning curve. The reason why I couldn't use Linux as a daily driver until NixOS is that Linux's huge customizability (and my need to experiment and explore!) also lead directly to huge opportunities to brick your system or just break things in general (which happened again, and again, and again for me, across many distros such as Ubuntu, Arch, Manjaro, Pop_OS, etc.). Linux is thus like a hugely customizable sports car without brakes or safety belts. NixOS gives you both of those, so you get to fly with the sports car, enjoy all the customizability, but if anything goes wrong (which it rarely does, thanks to NixOS's architecture), you can instantly roll back to any prior version of the OS and its declaratively-installed apps and configs. It's the best of all worlds, currently, completely open-source, but the learning curve is still too steep for most. (I have hope that a NixOS-derived more-user-friendly distro like https://snowflakeos.org/ https://snowflakeos.org/ may help here, but it will take time.) In parallel with that, gaming on Linux became "viable" (modding is still tougher than on Windows, but that will eventually be easier too) thanks to Valve's Proton efforts.

smoldesu 3y ago