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Apple OS X El Capitan

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Re: Apple OS X El Capitan

#61

Post by pjmlp »

phn wrote: post #42
pjmlp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As anyone in the industry knows, either you make a game engine or a game.

There are plenty of successful studios that have their own in-house engines. Naughty Dog, From Software, ex Kojima Productions... Besides, for simple games, using those engines are a huge overhead and an unnecessary cost. I understand what you're saying, but I don't like how you make it sound a simple, already-made-for-you decision, when reality is much more nuanced. Each case is a case, and no one should turn down t…

Having gotten lots of Gamasutra postmortens and GDC presentations, is why I just oversimplified the statement.

Re: Apple OS X El Capitan

#62

Post by bashinator »

happyscrappy wrote: post #39
rimantas wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This kind of behaviour makes me really really sorry to be > an Apple customer :/ Well, don't be then. I don't get this cry about walled gardens. Feel free to roam in the jungle if you don't like them.

Yeah, feel free to sideload sketchy apps to your Android if you have no qualms being pwned. There is a reason Google recommends only Play Store downloads and it is not just because they want to lock you in their garden.

I wonder if you're getting downvoted because there's been plenty of malware in the Google Play Store?

Re: Apple OS X El Capitan

#63

Post by emsy »

phn wrote: post #42
pjmlp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As anyone in the industry knows, either you make a game engine or a game.

There are plenty of successful studios that have their own in-house engines. Naughty Dog, From Software, ex Kojima Productions... Besides, for simple games, using those engines are a huge overhead and an unnecessary cost. I understand what you're saying, but I don't like how you make it sound a simple, already-made-for-you decision, when reality is much more nuanced. Each case is a case, and no one should turn down t…

Engines bring their overhead, but they also bring expertise small studios most likely lack. It's easy to cripple your performance with a single error. This can also happen to you while using an engine but even more so when writing your own engine.

Or put differently: Simple games probably have so sleek game logic code that the engine overhead can safely be ignored.

I don't say custom engines are pointless, but for the hundreds of games that are released on the App Store daily, a ready to use engine is "enough".

Re: Apple OS X El Capitan

#64

Post by chrisBob »

phn wrote: post #42
pjmlp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As anyone in the industry knows, either you make a game engine or a game.

There are plenty of successful studios that have their own in-house engines. Naughty Dog, From Software, ex Kojima Productions... Besides, for simple games, using those engines are a huge overhead and an unnecessary cost. I understand what you're saying, but I don't like how you make it sound a simple, already-made-for-you decision, when reality is much more nuanced. Each case is a case, and no one should turn down t…

> Besides, for simple games, using those engines are a huge overhead and an unnecessary cost.

I don't think the pricing of $0-$75/month is a huge cost. They made some big changes to their fee structure this year.

Re: Apple OS X El Capitan

#65

Post by threeseed »

izacus wrote: post #24
zamalek wrote: post #5

> Metal is coming to Mac, paving the way for new levels of realism and detail in games and other apps. I'm guessing this is yet another API like Mantle/Vulkan that is also seated comfortably in the Apple walled garden and increases the development costs: awesome!

And it's 40% faster! .... Of course they forgot to mention that OGL drivers on OS X were about 30% slower than OGL/DX drivers on Windows on the same hardware running same scene. So instead of updating their OpenGL 3D performance they just kept it back and now you're forced to use a proprietary walled garden API for full performance. This kind of behaviour makes me really really sorry to be an Apple customer :/

We don't know if they have increased OpenGL 3D performance. You are just speculating.

Re: Apple OS X El Capitan

#66

Post by Dain42 »

zamalek wrote: post #41
gtf21 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, don't be then. I don't get this cry about walled gardens. Feel free to roam in the jungle if you don't like them. I really don't get why people pull this "if you don't like it, leave" argument (in everything from politics to tech). There are lots of reasons someone might want to use a mac (I do), one is perfectly entitled to complain about aspects of Apple's approach to try to make the argument for change.

I think it originates from misunderstanding what a walled garden is and why they are great for customer retention. The whole point of walled garden is locking people in. Avoiding a walled garden can only happen before you invest in the garden. Once you have spent money in iTunes or the store (or e.g. even have a long list of contacts in some IM client) you are stuck unless you are happy to lose those purchases/data.

I had this experience leaving the Apple walled garden about six years ago and moving on to Ubuntu (with Windows for gaming purposes in free time). I just kind of ate the costs. I suppose technically I still have access to my video content purchased on iTunes, but I'd have to boot to Windows or use a VM to get to it.

My rationale was kind of along the lines of avoiding the sunk cost fallacy: just because I'd been invested in the Apple ecosystem for 20-some years and buying iTunes stuff for more than half a decade didn't mean that I should just keep doing that when I was unhappy with other things. But that cost-benefit calculus might work out differently for other people. The lock-in is very real if you don't want to lose your stuff. It's a reason that I still refuse to buy movies from any online service. Only discs that I can rip or DRM free downloads for me from now on, so I don't end up walled-in again.

Eventually I was able to rescue all my protected music at least by paying what ammounted to a $25 ransom for a year of iTunes Match (or whatever they call it now) so I could download DRM free versions of the music I'd already paid for.

Re: Apple OS X El Capitan

#67

Post by threeseed »

cwyers wrote: post #43
zamalek wrote: post #5

> Metal is coming to Mac, paving the way for new levels of realism and detail in games and other apps. I'm guessing this is yet another API like Mantle/Vulkan that is also seated comfortably in the Apple walled garden and increases the development costs: awesome!

I'm sure Valve is thrilled to see the largest OpenGL desktop OS abandoning OpenGL for their own API right now. Just thrilled to pieces.

I don't see where Apple said they were abandoning OpenGL.

They just moved over to Metal for AppKit operations which naturally would always be faster than a common abstraction layer.

Re: Apple OS X El Capitan

#68

Post by cwyers »

threeseed wrote: post #67
cwyers wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure Valve is thrilled to see the largest OpenGL desktop OS abandoning OpenGL for their own API right now. Just thrilled to pieces.

I don't see where Apple said they were abandoning OpenGL. They just moved over to Metal for AppKit operations which naturally would always be faster than a common abstraction layer.

I'm sure OS X will retain its current support for OpenGL. But I think this means that Metal, not Vulkan, is going to be the equivalent to DX12 for OS X development.

Re: Apple OS X El Capitan

#69

Post by leoc »

cwyers wrote: post #58
leoc wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OS X has a lot going for it, but when it comes to the desktop gaming market it's just not the top dog in revenue generation that iOS is for mobile apps. I'd assume (not an expert) that Vulkan's support from Intel, nVidia and AMD on PC could mean more to professional game developers and publishers than Metal's OS X support.

I don't think there's going to be a major game developer that supports OpenGL/Vulkan on Windows over DirectX, outside of perhaps Bethesda/iD. If Vulkan isn't present on the second-most used desktop OS, and it's not best-of-breed on the operating system used on over 90% of desktops, I don't see where it makes major inroads on the desktop.

Valve is certainly interested in Vulkan, partly as a means to target Chinese Dota players running Windows XP. Even a second-place position on PC may amount to more than star status on OS X. (Though OTOH the relatively easy port could draw people looking for some extra income for their iOS game.)

(In any case, is it yet certain that Apple won't support Vulkan on OS X? It wouldn't have been ready for El Capitan's launch this Autumn regardless. Maybe Apple will try to deprecate it (in the non-technical sense) as a compatibility option but support it anyway?)

Re: Apple OS X El Capitan

#70

Post by corysama »

acdha wrote: post #8
zamalek wrote: post #5

> Metal is coming to Mac, paving the way for new levels of realism and detail in games and other apps. I'm guessing this is yet another API like Mantle/Vulkan that is also seated comfortably in the Apple walled garden and increases the development costs: awesome!

Yes, but unlike either of those it's in widespread production use (Mantle is still beta, Vulkan was just announced). It shipped last year on iOS 8 – this is just the expected next step of offering it on OS X as well: https://developer.apple.com/metal/

FYI: Mantle is probably never going to go widespread public in any meaningful way. AMD is going to focus on DX12 and Vulkan instead.

https://community.amd.com/community/gaming/blog/2015/05/12/o...

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