Apple Silicon Optimized Games - what's in the pipeline?

[Unregistered 4U]

I’m honestly not sure.

I’ve tracked Mihoyo’s tweaks between 2.0 - 2.5 from an end-user perspective, and they obviously tried at least somewhat but I’m not sure if they actually took a look at specifically M1 devices.

Because whichever way you look at it, the game runs badly in extended gaming sessions.

I’m not sure if it’s the heat factor of the M1 being shoved into a thin metal slate (from what I’ve seen, M1 Airs suffer from similar problems too so that may be an unsolvable issue) or if it’s Unity’s propensity to overheat devices, or if Mihoyo just can’t be bothered to optimize it further… difficult to say.

But I’m pretty sure that there will be a limit to what can reasonably be done with that chip due to how much it heats up, and it probably won’t be anywhere close to the highest settings they offer in the game. I hope that I’m proved wrong though.

I actually used to run some of the highest settings at 120 FPS on my M1 iPad Pro. One of the recent patches has severely affected my performance such that I can’t turn on much and still have 60 FPS now.

 

[FrostLK8]

I actually used to run some of the highest settings at 120 FPS on my M1 iPad Pro. One of the recent patches has severely affected my performance such that I can’t turn on much and still have 60 FPS now.

That… is pretty much impossible. Genshin Impact never even came close to running actually smooth 120 FPS on M1 iPads - or to be more accurate, not for any appreciable length of time.

For that matter, even a smooth 60 FPS is 100% impossible under sustained load on any setting other than Low resolution (with all else High). There have been many complaints about it for months now on social media and nothing has changed.

It has horrible sustained performance - it’s possible to “showcase” the game running on High 60 for 15-20 minutes in slow overworld fights, but as soon as the temperature goes up sufficiently it absolutely kills performance and only provides smooth 60 on Low (which looks blurry and pretty bad).

It’s even very easy to purposely throttle it, all you have to do is go repeatedly fighting ruin machines by following Mihoyo’s interactive map for spawn points, or fighting Lawachurls one after another the same way. Or 10-15 dungeon runs, demanding areas like Serai and Dragonspine blizzard etc. You can even get it to lag by using particular characters and effects - Kazuha’s burst, Ganyu’s charge shots repeatedly, pyronado, combined bursts, pretty much anything particle heavy and demanding bricks the iPad.

And once it starts lagging, it doesn’t stop, as you can read in countless posts both here and on Reddit etc.

I mean, it’s playable at persistent 60 on Low. But it looks blurry and pixelated.

 

[anshuvorty]

Nothing. If you really want to play games, get a console or Gaming PC....gaming on Mac is dead...

 

[diamond.g]

That… is pretty much impossible. Genshin Impact never even came close to running actually smooth 120 FPS on M1 iPads - or to be more accurate, not for any appreciable length of time.

For that matter, even a smooth 60 FPS is 100% impossible under sustained load on any setting other than Low resolution (with all else High). There have been many complaints about it for months now on social media and nothing has changed.

It has horrible sustained performance - it’s possible to “showcase” the game running on High 60 for 15-20 minutes in slow overworld fights, but as soon as the temperature goes up sufficiently it absolutely kills performance and only provides smooth 60 on Low (which looks blurry and pretty bad).

It’s even very easy to purposely throttle it, all you have to do is go repeatedly fighting ruin machines by following Mihoyo’s interactive map for spawn points, or fighting Lawachurls one after another the same way. Or 10-15 dungeon runs, demanding areas like Serai and Dragonspine blizzard etc. You can even get it to lag by using particular characters and effects - Kazuha’s burst, Ganyu’s charge shots repeatedly, pyronado, combined bursts, pretty much anything particle heavy and demanding bricks the iPad.

And once it starts lagging, it doesn’t stop, as you can read in countless posts both here and on Reddit etc.

I mean, it’s playable at persistent 60 on Low. But it looks blurry and pixelated.

I wonder how different the mobile builds of GI are from the PC build (I know they use the same engine).

 

[Unregistered 4U]

That… is pretty much impossible. Genshin Impact never even came close to running actually smooth 120 FPS on M1 iPads - or to be more accurate, not for any appreciable length of time.

For that matter, even a smooth 60 FPS is 100% impossible under sustained load on any setting other than Low resolution (with all else High). There have been many complaints about it for months now on social media and nothing has changed.

It has horrible sustained performance - it’s possible to “showcase” the game running on High 60 for 15-20 minutes in slow overworld fights, but as soon as the temperature goes up sufficiently it absolutely kills performance and only provides smooth 60 on Low (which looks blurry and pretty bad).

It’s even very easy to purposely throttle it, all you have to do is go repeatedly fighting ruin machines by following Mihoyo’s interactive map for spawn points, or fighting Lawachurls one after another the same way. Or 10-15 dungeon runs, demanding areas like Serai and Dragonspine blizzard etc. You can even get it to lag by using particular characters and effects - Kazuha’s burst, Ganyu’s charge shots repeatedly, pyronado, combined bursts, pretty much anything particle heavy and demanding bricks the iPad.

And once it starts lagging, it doesn’t stop, as you can read in countless posts both here and on Reddit etc.

I mean, it’s playable at persistent 60 on Low. But it looks blurry and pixelated.

Ah, yeah, I never played more than a couple hours a day at most, so 10-15 dungeon runs was never a thing for me. But, in the upper right hand corner, it always said “overclocked” but the performance was fine... again, JUST for me. With the recent releases, I noticed I had to decrease the SFX Quality and Environment to get back to where I was.

So JUST for me, performance has just recently gotten worse though I can understand how those that play constantly would have bad performance for that entire time.

 

[FrostLK8]

I wonder how different the mobile builds of GI are from the PC build (I know they use the same engine).

Dunno, but the PC version understandably does have much better graphics with a ton more detail and much better draw distance, etc. It isn’t too demanding from what I hear, very much the opposite of what can be said for mobile (which, case in point, doesn’t run well even on high end devices like 2021 Pros).

Ah, yeah, I never played more than a couple hours a day at most, so 10-15 dungeon runs was never a thing for me. But, in the upper right hand corner, it always said “overclocked” but the performance was fine... again, JUST for me. With the recent releases, I noticed I had to decrease the SFX Quality and Environment to get back to where I was.

So JUST for me, performance has just recently gotten worse though I can understand how those that play constantly would have bad performance for that entire time.

But 10-15 dungeon runs aren’t actually a lot, that‘s like 15 minutes of gameplay. And tbf, you can run some higher settings if you log in, condense resin/spend resin, do dailies and log out (so short burst of 10-20 mins at a time).

But they’ve recently gone into overdrive with new regions, new areas to explore, quests that take hours etc: even the current temporary event is 5-6 hours of continuous gameplay to finish fully, and new areas come with demanding graphical effects and take many hours to finalize. Chasm and Sumeru are coming up and they’re probably going to be a processor nightmare for mobile. So if you for example go and try to play something like that for an hour or two in one sitting, the game becomes unplayable except at Low resolution. Which is a huge shame, because the overworld is gorgeous, full of detail and obviously took a ton of work only to end up either 1) lagging to unplayability (Med res) or 2) not lagging but looking blurry (Low res).

Idk anymore whether this is a problem with this iPad/its hot chip, GI's optimization, or both… but sustained performance sucks big time.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Idk anymore whether this is a problem with this iPad/its hot chip, GI's optimization, or both… but sustained performance sucks big time.

I’m guessing GI, mainly because performance used to be better and has gotten worse, even with my light use case.

 

[scottrichardson]

Might want to sit tight and wait for WWDC.

Something tells me that we may see the announcement of some actual proper, highly optimised native AAA games by big name developers for Mac.

Now they have a full suite of Macs running up to 64 core GPU M1 Ultras, it’s time Apple started to sway both developers AND a huge potential untapped market!

Synthetic benchmarks show that when fully properly written for native Apple silicon AND full utilisation of Metal’s low level API’s, the M1 is king of the hill.

 

[acorntoy]

A lot of free-to-play games with IAP are in your future

 

[diamond.g]

Might want to sit tight and wait for WWDC.

Something tells me that we may see the announcement of some actual proper, highly optimised native AAA games by big name developers for Mac.

Now they have a full suite of Macs running up to 64 core GPU M1 Ultras, it’s time Apple started to sway both developers AND a huge potential untapped market!

Synthetic benchmarks show that when fully properly written for native Apple silicon AND full utilisation of Metal’s low level API’s, the M1 is king of the hill.

Yeah maybe Firaxis will surprise us and release a native version of Marvels Midnight Suns on macOS. Or maybe Rockstar will show off GTA 5 remaster on macOS with all the bells and whistles.

 

[Unregistered 4U]

Yeah maybe Firaxis will surprise us and release a native version of Marvels Midnight Suns on macOS. Or maybe Rockstar will show off GTA 5 remaster on macOS with all the bells and whistles.

Doubtful. The number of NON M1 Macs out there still dwarf the number of M1 Macs and that’ll be true for awhile yet. What’s the critical mass for developers to think it’s worth their time? Well, as the iPad has a version of the best selling game ever and the M1 Mac doesn’t (even though it should be fairly straightforward to release) it may be a LOOONG time before the Mac reaches that level.

 

[Shivetya]

Yeah maybe Firaxis will surprise us and release a native version of Marvels Midnight Suns on macOS. Or maybe Rockstar will show off GTA 5 remaster on macOS with all the bells and whistles.

I would pay all over again to get native versions of both XCOM games

 

[Irishman]

I would pay all over again to get native versions of both XCOM games

I have no experience with either of the XCOM games (other than that they’re turned based shooter games), so were they titles lost during the 32-bit apocalypse ?

 

[Shivetya]

I have no experience with either of the XCOM games (other than that they’re turned based shooter games), so were they titles lost during the 32-bit apocalypse ?

The first was lost but second survived. that 32 bit apocalypse will be eclipsed by the M* apocalypse

 

[diamond.g]

TUNIC on Steam

Explore a land filled with lost legends, ancient powers, and ferocious monsters in TUNIC, an isometric action game about a small fox on a big adventure.

store.steampowered.com

Tunic is out, recommened specs is a M1 based Mac so yay?

I think this is the first game I have seen to say M1 recommended, on Steam at least.

 

[dr.zeissler]

If apple does not pay for porting to ARM64/metal native AAA-macgaming will stay dead since M1 release