Apple CAN’T do AAA gaming [Merged Megathread]

[Nugat Trailers]

Valve has remained hilariously silent about the Mac, to the point where it is likely detrimental to them.

Apart from having said nothing about the M1 Mac, although they did add native support for Mac games in September last year, hidden in Steamworks patch notes, any dev releasing a Mac game has to flag that it is a 64 bit game, otherwise we get the lovely 'This game is incompatible with Catalina or above' message.

Steam itself had a bug where the 64 bit Steam client would automatically update to the 32 bit version on a new update. That took until April 2020 to fix.

nVidia's talked more about Mac gaming than Valve has. And that's crazy.

 

[Irishman]

Yes. So, no surprise for me.

So, why so mad then?

I mean, if you knew what you were buying beforehand?

It would be like buying a truck and giving it a one star review because it’s not a car.

I’ll take it off your hand if it’s not for you?

DM me and I’ll give you my shipping address.

 

[millerj123]

So, why so mad then?

I mean, if you knew what you were buying beforehand?

It would be like buying a truck and giving it a one star review because it’s not a car.

I’ll take it off your hand if it’s not for you?

DM me and I’ll give you my shipping address.

Ah, you misunderstand. I bought a Mac because it suits my needs. This thread is fun because why spend extra for a Mac if you want a gaming machine?

 

[Irishman]

Ah, you misunderstand. I bought a Mac because it suits my needs. This thread is fun because why spend extra for a Mac if you want a gaming machine?

So, how much extra am I allowed to spend on a Mac if I want to have only one computer and I want to also game on it?

 

[Mikael H]

Which games do you want to play but can’t on your Mac? Let’s get as specific as possible.

Let's run down the list, shall we? This is just a list of the specific titles in my Steam library that I sometimes play or, as it may be, re-play for sentimental value, and which do not work on my Mac but work just fine on my Linux gaming PC.

Carmageddon 2
Counter-Strike
Counter-Strike:Source
Day of Defeat
Day of Defeat: Source
Dirt Rally 2.0
DuckTales Remastered
GTA: Vice City
GTA: San Andreas
GTA V
GRID
Half-Life
Half-Life 2
Half-Life: Blue Shift
Half-Life: Opposing Force
IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946
Left 4 Dead 2
Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2
Monkey Island 2: Special Edition
Portal
Portal 2
Prince of Persia
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
Sid Meier's Ace Patrol
Sid Meier's Civilization IV
Team Fortress Classic
Tomb Raider I
Tomb Raider II
Trials 2

The emulation world seems to have caught on pretty well, though, and several of the emulators I run seem to work, at the very least via Rosetta. That of course also goes for third-party efforts like ScummVM and the various Doom and Quake sourceports.

 

[Irishman]

Let's run down the list, shall we? This is just a list of the specific titles in my Steam library that I sometimes play or, as it may be, re-play for sentimental value, and which do not work on my Mac but work just fine on my Linux gaming PC.

Carmageddon 2
Counter-Strike
Counter-Strike:Source
Day of Defeat
Day of Defeat: Source
Dirt Rally 2.0
DuckTales Remastered
GTA: Vice City
GTA: San Andreas
GTA V
GRID
Half-Life
Half-Life 2
Half-Life: Blue Shift
Half-Life: Opposing Force
IL-2 Sturmovik: 1946
Left 4 Dead 2
Mass Effect
Mass Effect 2
Monkey Island 2: Special Edition
Portal
Portal 2
Prince of Persia
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Prince of Persia: Warrior Within
Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones
Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands
The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition
Sid Meier's Ace Patrol
Sid Meier's Civilization IV
Team Fortress Classic
Tomb Raider I
Tomb Raider II
Trials 2

The emulation world seems to have caught on pretty well, though, and several of the emulators I run seem to work, at the very least via Rosetta. That of course also goes for third-party efforts like ScummVM and the various Doom and Quake sourceports.

And what are the specs of your Mac? Because a good number of the games on your Steam list work on my iMac!

I know there are petitions online to accomplish just that end (providing open source ports of id tech engines up to and including id tech 5).

 

[Mikael H]

And what are the specs of your Mac? Because a good number of the games on your Steam list work on my iMac!

I have an M1 Max MacBook Pro. I was, of course aware of this going in, and I’ve been running a Linux machine in addition to my various Macs for years, for gaming purposes.
As others have said, though, it would be nice to be able to have a single computer for all my needs.

 

[millerj123]

So, how much extra am I allowed to spend on a Mac if I want to have only one computer and I want to also game on it?

Moneys. All the moneys.

Michael H just posted a list, you could try those, although I have no idea how they'd do on the Mac you have.

 

[Homy]

Valve has remained hilariously silent about the Mac, to the point where it is likely detrimental to them.

Apart from having said nothing about the M1 Mac, although they did add native support for Mac games in September last year, hidden in Steamworks patch notes, any dev releasing a Mac game has to flag that it is a 64 bit game, otherwise we get the lovely 'This game is incompatible with Catalina or above' message.

Steam itself had a bug where the 64 bit Steam client would automatically update to the 32 bit version on a new update. That took until April 2020 to fix.

nVidia's talked more about Mac gaming than Valve has. And that's crazy.

Maybe they're waiting for Apple Silicon to pass the 50% mark.

 

[Odessa]

What makes you believe that? Do new games use Vulkan instead of DirectX 12? Do Steam stats show this trend?

Do you think Steam Deck will make a difference and game developers will start releasing games for Linux instead of relying on Proton?


The latest Asahi Linux blog post (July) explains:

M2 is here! July 2022 Release & Progress Report - Asahi Linux

asahilinux.org

Does anyone have more info about this demo?

Nvidia doing a demo of their gpu on arch linux. on arm no less, we're living wild times

Well according to Hector, m1 macbook cannot support eGpu, or if it does, it is not in a standard way and it remains to be found. That's a shame cos you could had an m1 pro machine with an eventual upgrade of the gpu to m1 max level and beyond if that was the case..

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1538426240922963968

Maybe they'll make their own eGPUs with their own standard?

Steam Deck is already making a difference, like Elden Ring devs tried hard to make the game 'deck verified' which made it run as good, if not somewhat better on linux machine with radeon gpus. I think this is the way: making windows games that are wine/proton optimized.
I found some GOG games actually works better with wine than with the natives builds. Making native linux games is hard because there isn't really a standardized way of distributing proprietary paid binaries yet.
But meanwhile if we have windows games that are optimised for proton, i really don't mind.

But then, for proton to really works on apple silicon, if I understood it right, we need vulkan support.

 

[Colstan]

Maybe they're waiting for Apple Silicon to pass the 50% mark.

View attachment 2038372

I was going to point this out, but you beat me to it. In June, Apple Silicon only gained 0.7% on Steam, and it had been dropping for a couple of months, then it bounced back up again in July. That suggests that the 10% drop in Mac sales from last quarter are abating. It's a single data point from the Steam survey, but it gives us an indication that Apple has resolved many of its supply constraints and that this quarter should be much better. Given that it is much easier to purchase most Macs and the Studio Display, things should be looking up, assuming recession and inflation don't impact sales. Apple's appeal to quality over quantity may help them, in that regard.

Also, assuming this pace continues, simple math tells us that Apple Silicon will be over 50% on Steam by the middle of November, in about three and a half months. This is happening quicker than I anticipated, because most games are still Intel native. It goes to show just how capable Apple Silicon Macs are and how well Rosetta 2 was implemented.

For me personally, I'm glad I invested in a 2018 Mac mini, and didn't wait longer. By the time I do replace it with an Apple Silicon Mac, most software will have worked out the teething issues. I knew games would be the slowest, but even they are making progress.

 

[MisterSavage]

Steam Deck is already making a difference, like Elden Ring devs tried hard to make the game 'deck verified' which made it run as good, if not somewhat better on linux machine with radeon gpus. I think this is the way: making windows games that are wine/proton optimized.

That's a game I tried during my demo and I was very impressed (as someone who has logged a LOT of hours in ER).

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Well according to Hector, m1 macbook cannot support eGpu, or if it does, it is not in a standard way and it remains to be found. That's a shame cos you could had an m1 pro machine with an eventual upgrade of the gpu to m1 max level and beyond if that was the case..

This is expected. Current eGPU breakout boxes work in the model where the data to be rendered is being composed on one side of a bus, then pushed over the bus to the other side to be rendered, with separate pools of memory, etc. The Apple Silicon model (TBDR) is that the CPU and GPU have access to the same pool of memory, which means the GPU has to be on the SoC. As a result, there’s no option for the GPU to be external to the SoC, much less external to the system via a significantly slower bus.

All of Apple’s documentation regarding their graphics system reinforces this view with every WWDC. Anything is possible, but I think Apple’s really focused on making sure developers learn how to best take advantage of TBDR rather than re-introduce a non-TBDR external solution in the future.

 

[Nugat Trailers]

I was going to point this out, but you beat me to it. In June, Apple Silicon only gained 0.7% on Steam, and it had been dropping for a couple of months, then it bounced back up again in July. That suggests that the 10% drop in Mac sales from last quarter are abating. It's a single data point from the Steam survey, but it gives us an indication that Apple has resolved many of its supply constraints and that this quarter should be much better. Given that it is much easier to purchase most Macs and the Studio Display, things should be looking up, assuming recession and inflation don't impact sales. Apple's appeal to quality over quantity may help them, in that regard.

Also, assuming this pace continues, simple math tells us that Apple Silicon will be over 50% on Steam by the middle of November, in about three and a half months. This is happening quicker than I anticipated, because most games are still Intel native. It goes to show just how capable Apple Silicon Macs are and how well Rosetta 2 was implemented.

For me personally, I'm glad I invested in a 2018 Mac mini, and didn't wait longer. By the time I do replace it with an Apple Silicon Mac, most software will have worked out the teething issues. I knew games would be the slowest, but even they are making progress.

The surveys have been quite interesting to see. Not so much the marketshare, which is still not fantastic, but that average RAM is increasing (8.90% 4 GB, 55.56% 8 GB, 27.22 16 GB, 7.06% Over 16 GB in Nov 2020 to 3.84% 4 GB, 52.59% 8 GB, 32.26 16 GB, 6.71% 32 GB, 2.65% 64 GB).

Going by VRAM's a tad harder, since there was an issue with reporting that was only fixed in November 2021, but even so, during that time it's changed (47.82% 2 GB, 25.82% 8 GB, 11.49% 16 GB, 1.79% 32 GB, 0.80% 64 GB to 39.08% 2 GB, 27.20% 8 GB, 15.93% 16 GB, 3.22% 32 GB, 1.68% 64 GB).

Steam sees VRAM as the same as RAM with ASi machines. But at the least, it hints at quite a few people actually going for more RAM.

 

[Odessa]

For those who missed it: last year, Dolphin emulator devs did a nice article about how the m1 air perform at GameCube emulation and the difference between rosetta2 and native. I believe they were the first, and most enthusiast, to make a native build of their emulator.

Temptation of the Apple: Dolphin on macOS M1

From the announcement made on November 10th, 2020, users have had high hopes for the new Apple M1 devices. With its powerful Apple Silicon processor smashing benchmarks all over the place, users and developers were both asking if a native Dolphin build would be possible. Now we have the answer...

dolphin-emu.org

 

[Colstan]

MrMacRight has a new video featuring five upcoming Apple Silicon games, perhaps a bonus sixth.

 

[quarkysg]

Apple: Future is 6502. DEAD
Apple: Future is 68K. DEAD
Apple: Future is PowerPC. DEAD
Apple: Future is AS. See a pattern?

Think you forgot to insert Intel x86/64 in between PowerPC and AS?

You're right, it is indeed a pattern there.

 

[diamond.g]

MrMacRight has a new video featuring five upcoming Apple Silicon games, perhaps a bonus sixth.

I really hope these games are bought in droves so that publishers actually believe there is a market and continues to bring stuff to the platform.

 

[Mikael H]

Apple: Future is 6502. DEAD
Apple: Future is 68K. DEAD
Apple: Future is PowerPC. DEAD
Apple: Future is AS. See a pattern?

To be honest that's more of a sign of the company's agility and guts to lose backwards compatibility over time. At the time of each of those choices they were arguably the correct choice for a new generation of computers if you wanted to start relatively fresh.
I say this as a person who professionally tries to drag legacy x86 software kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat. I don't spend a single week at work where I don't curse design decisions made in the nineties.

 

[Boil]

What if the headline read "Apple secures release exclusive for GTA: Sandy Shores"...? ;^p

 

[diamond.g]

What if the headline read "Apple secures release exclusive for GTA: Sandy Shores"...? ;^p

That would be cool, especially if they could make it at least a timed platform exclusive.

 

[Blue Quark]

FWIW, when I first bought my M1 MacBook Pro, I D/L'd and installed Diablo III on it, and performance-wise, it ran as smooth as glass.

As Blizzard's current vision for DIII and games like it is not one I care for, I uninstalled it after about 30 minutes of playing around with it. But, nevertheless, it does work just fine.

 

[Blue Quark]

What's truly sad is my desktop computer (HP Envy TE01-0014) isn't up to the challenge of running a lawn mowing simulator game. I had to shrink that sucker waaaaaaaaay down just to get it be playable.

 

[diamond.g]

What's truly sad is my desktop computer (HP Envy TE01-0014) isn't up to the challenge of running a lawn mowing simulator game. I had to shrink that sucker waaaaaaaaay down just to get it be playable.

What GPU?

 

[Homy]

What GPU?

Intel® UHD Graphics 630?