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Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs

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Re: Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs

#31

Post by nottorp »

GeekyBear wrote: post #21
benoau wrote: post #9

This is why Rosetta 2's looming retirement sucks.

x86 gaming and running x86 Linux software are the exceptions. > Starting with macOS 28, Rosetta 2 will be largely discontinued. Apple says that after that point, it “will keep a subset of Rosetta functionality aimed at supporting older unmaintained gaming titles, that rely on Intel-based frameworks.” https://9to5mac.com/2026/02/16/macos-26-4-will-notify-users-... It's the Mac native x86 software that hasn't been upda…

That's an "I'll believe it when I see it working on my machine" matter.

As my sibling post says, it's more likely to work only for some older mac os native games.

Re: Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs

#32

Post by ryandrake »

chii wrote: post #23
smith7018 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get why Apple wants to remove it but it genuinely sucks. I can't imagine it costs them a lot to put it into maintenance mode and just support 20 years of macOS games and apps going forward. They want developers to fully move to ARM but older titles or software whose developers have moved on/passed will be lost to the sands of time.

If they choose to discontinue it, it would be nice to have them opensource it so that the community could have a go at maintaining it tbh. Surely that's better than letting it rot (both rosetta and the old software that it runs).

That would be ideal, but given Apple's general hostility towards Open Source, it sounds extremely unlikely. I wonder what it would take to re-implement it. If it's "just software," I suppose there is a chance, not that I'm volunteering :)

Re: Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs

#33

Post by nottorp »

McGuffin wrote: post #26
f055 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm i guess this would require figuring out how to extract game data from an .exe installer GOG distributes. I guess AI would figure it out in like 3 minutes ;) I’ll check later.

You could try https://github.com/dscharrer/innoextract (installable via homebrew).

That, or just run it with wine.

Re: Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs

#34

Post by mrpippy »

fwip wrote: post #24
rimunroe wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought Rosetta 2 was a purely software layer

Rosetta 2 is software, but there are design decisions made for the M-series chips that are specifically made to improve the ability of Rosetta to work in a performant way. The main one I'm aware of is the x86-TSO memory-ordering mode - most ARM chips don't support this, but the M-series have it so that Rosetta can toggle it on for x86 emulation. I'm not sure what the total cost of these are, but it's not zero.

Those are still needed for the Rosetta use-cases that are sticking around (old games, Linux binaries)

Re: Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs

#35

Post by a1o »

benoau wrote: post #9

This is why Rosetta 2's looming retirement sucks.

This would be very bad for Wine too. I think Wine has some answer to this, since Wine does run on Android, but I think it won’t make the current easy path that is just brew install wine and be done.

Re: Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs

#36

Post by parl_match »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #4
haunter wrote: post #2

>install DOSBox for Mac Mind you there are countless DOSBox forks out there and the vanilla original one is probably the least interesting one. Nowadays the three most popular one would be DOSBox-X, DOSBox Pure, and DOSBox Staging https://dosbox-x.com/ https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x https://schelling.itch.io/dosbox-pure https://github.com/schellingb/dosbox-pure-unleashed/ https://www.dosbox-staging.org/ h…

> Mind you there are countless DOSBox forks out there and the vanilla original one is probably the least interesting one. What do you want to be "interesting" about dosbox?

> What do you want to be "interesting" about dosbox?

Quality of life improvements? Expanded (experimental) hardware support?

Re: Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs

#37

Post by Caracas288 »

benoau wrote: post #9

This is why Rosetta 2's looming retirement sucks.

Is there an actual reason for it, apart from Apple hurrying devs along?

For the consumer, the benefits of backwards compatibility are obvious, but it’s sad that companies don’t see it as a selling point.

Well, we wouldn’t want anyone using their perfectly functional copy of Photoshop CS6 would we…

Re: Windows GOG DOS Games on M-Series Macs

#40

Post by badsectoracula »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #4
haunter wrote: post #2

>install DOSBox for Mac Mind you there are countless DOSBox forks out there and the vanilla original one is probably the least interesting one. Nowadays the three most popular one would be DOSBox-X, DOSBox Pure, and DOSBox Staging https://dosbox-x.com/ https://github.com/joncampbell123/dosbox-x https://schelling.itch.io/dosbox-pure https://github.com/schellingb/dosbox-pure-unleashed/ https://www.dosbox-staging.org/ h…

> Mind you there are countless DOSBox forks out there and the vanilla original one is probably the least interesting one. What do you want to be "interesting" about dosbox?

Last time i checked (and DOSBox hasn't made an official release since then) the vanilla DOSBox isn't able to run the game i made for an MS-DOS game jam a few years ago[0] because it doesn't implement RDTSC properly (that the game uses for timing). All currently developed DOSBox forks work properly.

Also the forks add some additional niceties, e.g. DOSBox Staging has some very nice CRT filters that basically make games look almost like the real thing (i have some actual CRTs to compare). DOSBox-X has a GUI to setup options while the emulator is running which is very convenient.

[0] https://bad-sector.itch.io/post-apocalyptic-petra

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