Developer post highlighting real-world difficulties porting games to M1 architecture

[Joe Dohn]

I've stumbled on a Mac forum elsewhere about a game called "Humankind": https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1124300/view/3037107931329009034

I thought it would be interesting to post it here because the developer stated that porting their game to the M1 is a very complex task. They stated to have stumbled upon lack of documentation, stability and performance issues – definitely not the "push of a button" Apple marketed would be required to port software from x86 to M1.

Now, I like Apple, but we can't just agree to everything they do. It's not healthy for the users, and it's not healthy for Apple. They need to see real life issues developers stumble on so they can make software porting easier, as they insist on a new architecture. Don't get me wrong, I do like the Apple Silicon architecture, but porting software doesn't seem to be so easy as Apple stated, and they need to hear to stories like these to make life easier for developers. The users will win, developers will win, and Apple will win extra revenue. We all win.

 

[Strider64]

It's easier to develop from a clean slate than to try to convert an application (or game in this case) over from another platform. It was Apple's marketing not the Apple developers saying that as I'm sure the developers deep down were rolling their eyes when this was said. They probably were biting their tongues in order for them to keep their jobs. ? (joking) There isn't much of a market for gaming on an Apple computer and there are tons of other gaming options on the market already.

 

[edfoo]

Tim Cook wants you to use your Mac for productive work, not gaming

 

[mcnallym]

What I would say is that from what I read then the button change was if using the Apple API and Xcode. Ie already using current Apple API and frameworks then should be good.
Was the Mac version a port or was it written clean using the Mac API and xcode.

Ie if using modern Apple framework and have an app already then can click to generate for Apple Silicon or Intel binaries.

Handbrake didn’t get quicksync or AMD GPU acceleration till videotoolbox brought the support and then used that so handbrake uses the GPU, quicksync or T2 chip if there, now the media engine.

You aren’t going to get a windows app, button click for Mac even if Intel only binary.

 

[leman]

I was just talking to Amplitude devs earlier this week about this. I still have difficulty understanding what the problem is, since they are being very vague. They say that they didn't have "access to sufficient information and hardware before release" which I cannot understand since the hardware was available in retail almost a year before the game was released, and the documentation was available for much longer. Even weirder though is that they told me that they don't even plan to make a native ARM version, so they must be talking about running Humankind under Rosetta 2. I really can't imagine what are these problems they are dealing with because they are not saying anything concrete. Especially since other — more graphically complex games, seem to run under Rosetta2 and even natively without any issues. And even more weird is the fact that Humankind already runs under Rosetta2, and frankly, it ran for me with fewer crashes than the same game on Windows (it's quite buggy atm).

At any rate, I have submitted a refund request. I was following Humankind very closely from the start and I have submitted a lot of feedback during the betas, but I can't say that I agree with the overall direction the studio has taken the game. Because of all this, I have submitted a refund request. I will revisit Humankind in mid 2022, hopefully by then they will have a working Mac version and will have sufficiently fixed their broken gameplay mechanics and bugs.

Still, I must say that I am thankful to Amplitude for treating this matter in a mature way. They have always been open and transparent.

 

[Gnattu]

I was just talking to Amplitude devs earlier this week about this. I still have difficulty understanding what the problem is, since they are being very vague. They say that they didn't have "access to sufficient information and hardware before release" which I cannot understand since the hardware was available in retail almost a year before the game was released, and the documentation was available for much longer.

I suspect they are using some libraries that is only distributed in binary form and have no arm64 binaries available, or they do have a lot of hand-crafted SSE assemblies for performance.

 

[leman]

I suspect they are using some libraries that is only distributed in binary form and have no arm64 binaries available, or they do have a lot of hand-crafted SSE assemblies for performance.

Maybe, but it already works under Rosetta... so something must have gone really weird during their planning phase...

 

[JMacHack]

I think the “push of a button” statement was for XCode projects made entirely using Apple’s own libraries. Typical marketing spin.

My shot in the dark is that Humankind uses some libraries not ported to MacOS or incompatible with ARM64. So the devs said “we’ll try and port the libraries ourselves” but ran into some issue with hardware documentation. Anyone knowledgeable feel free to correct me

 

[leman]

I think the “push of a button” statement was for XCode projects made entirely using Apple’s own libraries. Typical marketing spin.

Most of the (UI) apps done in Xcode are likely to just cross-compile, yes. In fact, all of the low-level scientific software I have written in the last ten years compiled (and run correctly) on ARM without any modifications — probably because I always took care to use architecture-neutral code in parts where it mattered.

My shot in the dark is that Humankind uses some libraries not ported to MacOS or incompatible with ARM64. So the devs said “we’ll try and port the libraries ourselves” but ran into some issue with hardware documentation. Anyone knowledgeable feel free to correct me

They have a working Mac port (they call it beta, but it ran better for me under macOS than the official version run under Bootcamp with the same software), so the libraries do work on macOS. The odd thing here is that the devs claim that the app does not work properly under Rosetta 2. At the same time people actually have it running under Rosetta 2 and saying that everything seems to work fine. Obviously, Amplitude will have access to more data. But all of this is quite puzzling.

 

[UBS28]

Tim Cook wants you to use your Mac for productive work, not gaming

Who says that only games have this problem?

 

[vir]

Just keep waiting.

 

[Joe Dohn]

There isn't much of a market for gaming on an Apple computer and there are tons of other gaming options on the market already.

I don't buy that Apple Silicon devices are not good for gaming.

Computers are getting so powerful that we can simply virtualize other architectures. And the M1 has proved that, with the help of Microsoft translation layers, it can run Windows games through brute force. It's not perfect, but many games will run decently. And with the exponential speed boost Apple Silicon is getting, it will only get better.

Of course, Apple has to collaborate too, especially considering they phased out eGPUs and are deprecating OpenGL. Even if Apple Silicon becomes more viable to run games natively, there's a huge library of x86 games and software that is not getting ported, so making virtualization easier only helps benefitting them and us, users. if Apple isolate themselves to such a point that x86 apps won't run easily and I'm forced to choose a Windows or an Apple ecosystem, I'll begrudingly choose Windows due to the sheer number of applications available – and I bet many users will feel the same. But again, this is not the 1990s anymore, and computers are powerful enough so we don't have to choose.

 

[edfoo]

I don't buy that Apple Silicon devices are not good for gaming.

The hardware may be more than capable, but if Apple is not interested (don't see them showcasing gaming in their announcement at all), and not many game developers are supporting MacOS, then gaming will still be pretty dead in the water for Apple silicon devices.

 

[crazy dave]

The hardware may be more than capable, but if Apple is not interested (don't see them showcasing gaming in their announcement at all), and not many game developers are supporting MacOS, then gaming will still be pretty dead in the water for Apple silicon devices.

While I agree more will need to be done (and it sounds like they’re starting further projects aimed at helping developers like having issues like the ones in the OP), they highlighted gaming in their developers section of the announcement. You know the part where the developers waxed lyrically about the M1 Max? They did the same for the M1 too.

 

[Joe Dohn]

The hardware may be more than capable, but if Apple is not interested (don't see them showcasing gaming in their announcement at all), and not many game developers are supporting MacOS, then gaming will still be pretty dead in the water for Apple silicon devices.

If Apple doesn't get in the way, gaming can be kindled / revived with VMWare / Parallels + virtualization. Like I said before, The original M1 proved to have more than decent performance, similar to an Nvidia Geforce 1060. I don't see why the M1 Pro Max wouldn't be able to give a virtualized gaming performance similar to an Nvidia Geforce 3060. Just activate seamless mode and voilá, you don't even have to switch between MacOs / Windows.

 

[Lihp8270]

In

If Apple doesn't get in the way, gaming can be kindled / revived with VMWare / Parallels + virtualization. Like I said before, The original M1 proved to have more than decent performance, similar to an Nvidia Geforce 1060. I don't see why the M1 Pro Max wouldn't be able to give a virtualized gaming performance similar to an Nvidia Geforce 3060. Just activate seamless mode and voilá, you don't even have to switch between MacOs / Windows.

The issue with virtualising is that if you’re trying to game on the M1 with 8gb of ram. You’re gonna lose a lot of ram with textures etc before you even consider what is needed for virtualisation.

Cards like the 1060 have 4gb of VRAM and even that is considered bare bones for 1080 gaming these days with most entry level cards coming with 8gb of VRAM, which is pretty much the minimum for modern AAA 1080p gaming.

 

[senttoschool]

I was just talking to Amplitude devs earlier this week about this. I still have difficulty understanding what the problem is, since they are being very vague. They say that they didn't have "access to sufficient information and hardware before release" which I cannot understand since the hardware was available in retail almost a year before the game was released, and the documentation was available for much longer. Even weirder though is that they told me that they don't even plan to make a native ARM version, so they must be talking about running Humankind under Rosetta 2. I really can't imagine what are these problems they are dealing with because they are not saying anything concrete. Especially since other — more graphically complex games, seem to run under Rosetta2 and even natively without any issues. And even more weird is the fact that Humankind already runs under Rosetta2, and frankly, it ran for me with fewer crashes than the same game on Windows (it's quite buggy atm).

At any rate, I have submitted a refund request. I was following Humankind very closely from the start and I have submitted a lot of feedback during the betas, but I can't say that I agree with the overall direction the studio has taken the game. Because of all this, I have submitted a refund request. I will revisit Humankind in mid 2022, hopefully by then they will have a working Mac version and will have sufficiently fixed their broken gameplay mechanics and bugs.

Still, I must say that I am thankful to Amplitude for treating this matter in a mature way. They have always been open and transparent.

They use Unity and it doesn't seem like Unity had native M1 support until recently and it's still in beta. So maybe the devs had to hack it themselves?

Also, this game isn't going out on mobile. If they were making an iOS version, they would have had much more experience working with Metal & ARM? But since this is just a Windows/Mac game, they likely lack the necessary experience to smoothly port the game.

 

[senttoschool]

Tim Cook wants you to use your Mac for productive work, not gaming

 

[vir]

Parallels gaming is miserable.

 

[Gnattu]

So maybe the devs had to hack it themselves

This will never end good, I don't even think it is an option. If this is the case I think they can just speak loud that the engine they are using does not have native Apple Silicon support yet, and everybody will understand.

 

[leman]

They use Unity and it doesn't seem like Unity had native M1 support until recently and it's still in beta. So maybe the devs had to hack it themselves?

Unity had native support for Apple Silicon since version 2020.2 which was released in December last year.

Also, this game isn't going out on mobile. If they were making an iOS version, they would have had much more experience working with Metal & ARM? But since this is just a Windows/Mac game, they likely lack the necessary experience to smoothly port the game.

Amplitude has developed five games prior to Humankind (+countless expansions for them), al of which run on macOS (and on Rosetta 2). They have more than enough experience. To me it really sounds like bad choices early in the development process that botched their platform compatibility. It is also possible that their acquisition by SEGA has changed their priorities.

 

[Mcdevidr]

If Apple doesn't get in the way, gaming can be kindled / revived with VMWare / Parallels + virtualization. Like I said before, The original M1 proved to have more than decent performance, similar to an Nvidia Geforce 1060. I don't see why the M1 Pro Max wouldn't be able to give a virtualized gaming performance similar to an Nvidia Geforce 3060. Just activate seamless mode and voilá, you don't even have to switch between MacOs / Windows.

I’ve had and used several M1s and games on them. They do not get anywhere close to a 1060 performance especially not in parallels. Even using Rosetta they are not even close to being on par with a 1050 in my experience much less a 1060.

 

[CarbonCycles]

When Sony first released the PlayStation with gpus, the developers were beside themselves on how to leverage the new architecture...they stumbled at first. Fast forward several years and generations, and it would be unthinkable to go back to the older architecture without the gpus.

 

[Lihp8270]

When Sony first released the PlayStation with gpus, the developers were beside themselves on how to leverage the new architecture...they stumbled at first. Fast forward several years and generations, and it would be unthinkable to go back to the older architecture without the gpus.

I think you’re mistaken. A big draw for developers was how easy it was to develop for. It used C, the dev kit connected to a regular PC as a development platform, it used a popular free open source compiler. Developers loved how easy it was to work with. There were comments that pc games took mere weeks to port over to PlayStation and that was before release.

In addition Sony purchased a studio to ensure there was good launch games for customers.

The console was the best selling console ever when it was released. It was a huge market % compared to apples single digit. Comparing the M1 to the PlayStation isn’t reasonable.

 

[Adarna]

Check again by year 2023-2025 if AAA games are announced/out for the Mac. By then 2nm iPhones/iPads/Macs will be out.

Game devs will only commit to capex if they see a market.