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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

#171

Post by heyoni »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #124
chrisco255 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I appreciate this effort, not for AAA games, because I never bought a MacBook expecting it to be able to...but for much more casual or lower poly games that are available on Steam for Windows users only, because it's too hard to port. There's tons of sub-AAA games that could easily be ported and enjoyed on a modern M1/M2 Mac.

Speaking only for myself, I use Macs to get work done. The lack of games is actually a plus, as I can get compulsive with games. It's funny, when people denigrate the worst gaming platform in the world as a "toy computer." People get Macs, that want to get work done. As noted previously, there's really nothing that can beat a well-built PC gaming rig. I don't really think Apple has ever cared about the Mac as a gamin…

I don’t know, you say that but there are plenty of triple A games in the App Store and Apple did put in the effort into getting their game subscription to work on their desktops.

Let’s be real, we might all be getting more work done as a result but that’s because Apple dropped the ball, hard. They came out with the metal api but refused to support any others, even letting open GL fester. The fact that they couldn’t keep Blizzard of all companies developing games for the mac is all you need to know.

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

#172

Post by bombcar »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #124
chrisco255 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I appreciate this effort, not for AAA games, because I never bought a MacBook expecting it to be able to...but for much more casual or lower poly games that are available on Steam for Windows users only, because it's too hard to port. There's tons of sub-AAA games that could easily be ported and enjoyed on a modern M1/M2 Mac.

Speaking only for myself, I use Macs to get work done. The lack of games is actually a plus, as I can get compulsive with games. It's funny, when people denigrate the worst gaming platform in the world as a "toy computer." People get Macs, that want to get work done. As noted previously, there's really nothing that can beat a well-built PC gaming rig. I don't really think Apple has ever cared about the Mac as a gamin…

For a large number of customers, Macs play games just fine (you can get SimCity 4 for Silicon, heh).

It's not the top of the line, but it covers a decent swath, even without doing emulation or translation.

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

#173

Post by madeofpalk »

paulmd wrote: post #167
madeofpalk wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple's best GPU is close to a mid-range previous gen nvidia GPU? I'm sure it'll run a 4 year old game on medium settings great! But that's kind of the point, that it doesn't stand a chance against the rest of the industry. Who's supposed to be impressed by getting middling performance on Death Stranding 4 years after it came out? Literal definition of "also ran".

> Who's supposed to be impressed by getting middling performance on Death Stranding 4 years after it came out? Literal definition of "also ran". Plenty of people are impressed at 3060/3070 performance in a 25W system-power envelope . You literally can't even run the memory chips for a 3070 in that power budget let alone the whole APU. Like I'd love to see the AMD equivalent APU to that "also-ran 3070 performance" mac…

That's neat and impressive, but that's all they have. They don't have a high end. For $3000 you can get a top end gaming PC. There's no amount of money you can spend on a Mac to equal that.

I think you're missing the point that parent (and Siracusa) made - Apple invests a signficant into the software and graphics stack, only to fumble it at the last minute by not having high-end graphics hardware, and caring enough to court "triple A" game developers to their platforms, despite them creating and maintaining Metal and this 20k-line WINE patch.

There's this weird mismatch of Apple dedicating a non-trival amount of time in their keynote to "Mac Gaming" as if it's supposed to be impressive to finally play a 4 year old game on a Mac because they don't ship high-end graphics devices.

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

#174

Post by icapybara »

yurishimo wrote: post #16
trevyn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you find this is a good solution for playing Steam games?

I have an older PC, and I'm thinking about replacing it with a macbook air and a steam deck. Does the steam deck feel more limiting than just having a windows PC with steam?

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

#175

Post by sylens »

goosedragons wrote: post #31
metmac wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

They also need to focus more on backwards compatibility. If Apple continually makes most of my library unplayable as they have done repeatedly (Classic, Rosetta 1, 32bit) then I wouldn't trust them with gaming. It seems moving forward PlayStation and Xbox are making it a priority, it already was on PC and I don't think Apple will ever have anything with the draw of Nintendo that could surmount that.

This is a huge draw in PC gaming. People love going back to old games and modding them or updating them to run better. Heck, didn't Portal (a 2007 game) just get an RTX update?

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

#176

Post by whywhywhywhy »

radicalbyte wrote: post #36
gilgoomesh wrote: post #6

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).

I'm not sure - Apple's marketing claimed that the M1 was beating top end PC parts. This isn't even close.

They did, although the graph cuts off just before the 3090 takes the lead and goes beyond.

https://cdn.videocardz.com/1/2022/03/M1-vs-3090.jpg

Frustrating they're being this misleading when M1 is outstanding for it's own reasons, but 3090 eats it alive in the workflows it excels in too.

Perfect machine would be both those chips in the same box tbh.

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

#177

Post by hedora »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #124
chrisco255 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I appreciate this effort, not for AAA games, because I never bought a MacBook expecting it to be able to...but for much more casual or lower poly games that are available on Steam for Windows users only, because it's too hard to port. There's tons of sub-AAA games that could easily be ported and enjoyed on a modern M1/M2 Mac.

Speaking only for myself, I use Macs to get work done. The lack of games is actually a plus, as I can get compulsive with games. It's funny, when people denigrate the worst gaming platform in the world as a "toy computer." People get Macs, that want to get work done. As noted previously, there's really nothing that can beat a well-built PC gaming rig. I don't really think Apple has ever cared about the Mac as a gamin…

> It's funny, when people denigrate the worst gaming platform in the world as a "toy computer."

Unless you're developing iOS apps or MacOS apps, it's pretty terrible as a work platform too. I guess iWork is OK, but no one uses it, so it's not helpful for collaboration. Maybe people use it for media production? Doesn't the big rendering still happen on Linux though, and hasn't windows caught up?

Having said that, Mac laptops made passable web browser + video phone + dumb terminal in the intel days, and now they're excellent at those things and added "virtualization host" to that list.

I guess I've always thought of them more like glorified vt100s than like computers. They're certainly market leaders for that use case, though WSL is helping windows catch up.

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

#178

Post by pram »

sudosysgen wrote: post #156
throwaway290 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> M1 Ultra Do they put M1 Ultra in laptops tho?

Yes. The MBP with an M1 Max will, at max performance, use enough power that it would discharge it's battery in less than an hour. I think Apple throttles it on battery, though.

The MBP with an M1 Ultra isn't a thing that exists.

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

#179

Post by clint »

yreg wrote: post #34

As John Siracusa discussed on this week's ATP[0], it's incredible how much effort Apple puts into this considering the result. Apple built it's own little parallel gaming stack world that works really well on their hardware and the hardware is also amazing for the power envelopes it is wrapped in. But then Apple doesn't ship devices with actually powerful GPUs, so it can never compete with the gaming PCs which are fa…

The high-end gaming market is infintessimal when compared to the casual gaming market. Apple knows this and they are perfectly positioned for high-quality casual games.

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

#180

Post by wlesieutre »

madeofpalk wrote: post #173
paulmd wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Who's supposed to be impressed by getting middling performance on Death Stranding 4 years after it came out? Literal definition of "also ran". Plenty of people are impressed at 3060/3070 performance in a 25W system-power envelope . You literally can't even run the memory chips for a 3070 in that power budget let alone the whole APU. Like I'd love to see the AMD equivalent APU to that "also-ran 3070 performance" mac…

That's neat and impressive, but that's all they have. They don't have a high end. For $3000 you can get a top end gaming PC. There's no amount of money you can spend on a Mac to equal that. I think you're missing the point that parent (and Siracusa) made - Apple invests a signficant into the software and graphics stack, only to fumble it at the last minute by not having high-end graphics hardware, and caring enough t…

Two days ago we could speculate that maybe the $6000+ Mac Pro would bring better graphics performance, but now we know it's a $7000 Mac Studio with PCIe slots. And as far as we know you can't put a GPU in those slots.

Not that it would've been in my price range anyway, but it could've indicated that thunderbolt eGPU support would make a return.

Lack of that is a weird omission if Apple is trying to act like they have a gaming platform.

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