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Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

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Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#12

Keep in mind, it's getting 15fps at 1440x900. It's not saying that Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 is a great experience. It's merely pointing out that it's technically possible (which is a massive achievement).

Not as massive an achievement as Proton getting nearly every Windows game in existence running well from unmodified binaries on Linux.

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently it’s a emulator like Proton as used by Steam to run Windows games on Linux. It even uses Rosetta to run x86_64 core on ARM. But it’s not intended for end users. Instead it’s intended for developers to evaluate how their game would run on macOS so they can decide wether or not to port it.

According to CodeWeavers, it is based on their CrossOver code (GPL 2.1) and can be committed back into Wine: https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/mjohnson/2023/6/6/wine-come...

It uses a proprietary framework that implements Direct3D on top of Metal:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36224057

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#14

This actually makes me wonder if I should sell my Apple stocks, that they even put out something like this (even if only as an "evaluation tool" and based on CrossOvers GPL code) screams as an validation that there is enough developers ignoring Apple/Metal that they're actually starting to hurt from a lack of titles. Sure, everyone doing Unity or Unreal will probably have the middleware take care of the biggest diffe…

I think this response lacks the context of the current state of the video game industry. In my mind this is no different than nVidia providing white glove engineering support and optimizations for titles to run on their GPUS.

There is a reason nVidia has generally won the consumer GPU arms race over the years over AMD. They go out of their way to support studios and titles, compared to what AMD does imho.

It shows that Apple recognizes it needs to lower the barrier of entry for studios to considering targeting Macs. Because compared to the larger gaming market most studios have very little incentive to build and maintain this because Mac’s could account for 1-3% of your player base. Is that worth 1-5 ICs worth of time if you are a small studio. Probably not.

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#15

Fantastic would be 25fps, this isn't there yet.

The tool is not meant to be used for that. It is fantastic in the sense that it was achieved with no changes to the game whatsoever. I'm wondering if this is also translating the binary with Rosetta.

Well if there are no changes made to the game whatsoever, then it has to be using Rosetta. Fantastic would be DXVK approximate levels of performance hit. This is far short of that.

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#16
post #12

Keep in mind, it's getting 15fps at 1440x900. It's not saying that Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 is a great experience. It's merely pointing out that it's technically possible (which is a massive achievement).

Not as massive an achievement as Proton getting nearly every Windows game in existence running well from unmodified binaries on Linux.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. Think about how many Steam Decks have been sold. Game devs are already actively targeting the Deck. If porting games to Mac can be made easier, we all need to actively encourage it. Unfortunately, the only way we get Apple to give us more game dev tools is by porting the games.

I have a Steam Deck and a Mac. I would love to play half the games from my Deck on my laptop.

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#18

This actually makes me wonder if I should sell my Apple stocks, that they even put out something like this (even if only as an "evaluation tool" and based on CrossOvers GPL code) screams as an validation that there is enough developers ignoring Apple/Metal that they're actually starting to hurt from a lack of titles. Sure, everyone doing Unity or Unreal will probably have the middleware take care of the biggest diffe…

You're gonna sell your stocks in the most successful tech company of all time because they don't have enough video games? I think Apple has proven they can grow a company's value without games. But what we all want is a larger investment in games so the Mac becomes a competitive platform again.

Not to mention the headset... we'll see, but there is no reason to expect it won't be an insane commercial success by gen 3.

Re: Apple's game porting toolkit is fantastic. Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 MBP

#19
post #12

Keep in mind, it's getting 15fps at 1440x900. It's not saying that Cyberpunk 2077 at Ultra on an M1 is a great experience. It's merely pointing out that it's technically possible (which is a massive achievement).

Not as massive an achievement as Proton getting nearly every Windows game in existence running well from unmodified binaries on Linux.

Proton isn’t as massive an achievement as the sun! That thing pumps out around 2.3012⋅10^27 joules a second!
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