Any recommendations for some AS native games that aren't too large file size and are friendly for playing sans mouse (directly on laptop)? I recently upgraded to the Apple One family thing so have the Apple Games available. Looking for a ~time waster that I can fire up on an M1 MBA.
Apple and Gaming
- Thread starter jeanlain
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Not Apple Arcade, but my favorite time waster is The Long Dark. If you’re playing with wildlife set to peaceful, it’s perfect for a trackpad, runs great on an M1, and is surprisingly light on battery use.
I was going to make a post about it anyway, since it just had what’s probably its last big update, after 10(?) years. Supposedly, the developer is moving on to their next game, but I’m not going to hold my breath for future Mac support. It seems like a lot of developers who released things on Mac around the early 2010s gave up on Mac ports once it came time to roll out a new game.
Well, if you've got Apple Arcade, you have access to probably the greatest slowcore, low stress, time wasting game of the last decade if not longer—Stardew Valley. But playing that inevitably becomes more like getting a second job or joining a cult, really.
I can feel my wife's glare burning a hole in the back of my head.
EDIT: My bad, the AA version ("Stardew Valley+") is iPhone/iPadOS only, and the MacOS version requires Rosetta. So I pretty much failed the brief in every respect.
I can feel my wife's glare burning a hole in the back of my head.
EDIT: My bad, the AA version ("Stardew Valley+") is iPhone/iPadOS only, and the MacOS version requires Rosetta. So I pretty much failed the brief in every respect.
Setting up my new machine and transferring files over, decided to look for an old meme I thought was lost to time (not sure "meme" was much of a term back then!). But found it surprisingly quickly.
Whatever the state of Mac gaming these days, it's better than the days that led to this:
Whatever the state of Mac gaming these days, it's better than the days that led to this:
Slay the Spire (installed via Steam) is under 500MB for the game itself, runs great on M1 MBA, and is also available on iOS with Apple Arcade. It's better on computer because of the hotkeys if you like that, but even on my phone it's a game I always turn back to. Best deck builder / rogue like in the business!
If you enjoy JROGs Fantasian is a good from the creator of Final Fantasy. It’s very JRPG (spiky haired amnesiac protagonist, long-lost family members that coincidentally meet each other, etc.), and the back half of the game gets ridiculously hard, but there’s a lot good. It puts a new and welcome spin on random battles, has the last complete soundtrack by Nobuo Uematsu, and the environments are all actual physical dioramas they build and scanned into the game. There are some parts that are clearly designed for touch screens, especially with aiming attacks at enemies, but it still works just fine with a keyboard and mouse.
I’ve been working through my Steam backlog of Mac games recently. I also picked up Crossover for the Windows exclusives in my library after being a console user for a decade. Prior to that I mostly played on Mac or using BootCamp.
Anyway, after six months or so of “it just (doesn’t) work,” I’m throwing in the towel. Bad ports, poor performance, spotty controller support. Lots and lots of tweaking, far beyond what I used to do on a PC. And more support tickets than I have opened in years, mostly without resolution.
Emulation remains the bright shining spot, but for modern gaming I’m going back to consoles. Sorry Tim Apple but it ain’t working out.
I know, not an airport, don't have to announce my departure.
Anyway, after six months or so of “it just (doesn’t) work,” I’m throwing in the towel. Bad ports, poor performance, spotty controller support. Lots and lots of tweaking, far beyond what I used to do on a PC. And more support tickets than I have opened in years, mostly without resolution.
Emulation remains the bright shining spot, but for modern gaming I’m going back to consoles. Sorry Tim Apple but it ain’t working out.
I know, not an airport, don't have to announce my departure.
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Picked up a M3 a year ago with the the expectation to tinker with GPT and crossover.
Turns out I‘m not the nerd I used to be and that 5-6 native titles are more than enough to fullfill my late gamers light needs. Looking forward to add AC and Cyberpunk to that library though.
Turns out I‘m not the nerd I used to be and that 5-6 native titles are more than enough to fullfill my late gamers light needs. Looking forward to add AC and Cyberpunk to that library though.
Asphalt 9 is a surprising amount of fun, can be played with the keyboard alone, and is free in the Store.
If you haven't already, you might want to give Nvidia Geforce Now a try. The catalog is limited, and you need a very good connection, but it works surprisingly well.
Not available in my area without a specific network provider that I don’t use. I’ve tried other similar services and the latency is always noticeable.
I had a PS5 but sold it. I’m going to wait to see what happens with the Switch successor before I make a decision. I tried streaming from the (hardwired) PS5 before and it didn’t cut it either. And I have a rock solid local network.
Not really in any rush. Appreciate the suggestion though. Something about portable gaming clicks in a way it didn’t a few years ago and it seems like the Switch 2 will scratch that itch nicely based on the rumors.
I had a PS5 but sold it. I’m going to wait to see what happens with the Switch successor before I make a decision. I tried streaming from the (hardwired) PS5 before and it didn’t cut it either. And I have a rock solid local network.
Not really in any rush. Appreciate the suggestion though. Something about portable gaming clicks in a way it didn’t a few years ago and it seems like the Switch 2 will scratch that itch nicely based on the rumors.
Hoping the Switch 2 really ups the ante. I think I am going to bow out of the console race this generation unless it's portable so looking at the Switch 2 and Steam Deck successor. Having to sit down at a predetermined location to do console gaming is so inconvenient nowadays.
Will Apple and Epic ever settle their beef? This is ridiculous.
I don't know but seeing this thread bumped reminded me of seeing this the other day:
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/...to-feature-parity-with-windowsprogress-report
Having tried various mobile consoles over the years and ending with a brief flirtation with the Deck, I'm the complete opposite.
I feel like everything that's played well on the move, a phone is a better solution for so many reasons.
And for everything I actually consider "serious" gaming, you want to be rooted to the spot.
For me, Cyberpunk is going to be the definitive benchmark of Mac gaming so I'm actually stoked about it, especially as by the time it will be playable (because I'm expecting #justcdprthings) I will very likely have the full spread of M4 hardware to try it on, and I've spent literally weeks tweaking it on Windows ranging from i7-4070 to X3D/TRP-4090 to compare it to.
^ Agree, this will be fascinating. While unlikely that Apple’s GPU will reach the Nvidia flagship levels of performance, CP77 is, still, a game very demanding on the CPU. Comparisons with PCs running at relatively low resolutions, with RT off, will be illuminating.
I messed around with it a bit last night. The beeping noise every time WASD was pressed was irritating. Also, the "Exit" button on the main menu doesn't work. A sneaky way to get "one more turn".... Force-quit from the OS works though.
Digital Foundry just released another relevant video
View: https://youtu.be/V7-FAoFhyLw
I will say I think it spent too long discussing the failure of AAA iPhone gaming. To me that was a given, for a large number of reasons. Controls, battery life, performance, and screen size are just the top of the list of why these are subpar experiences. Yes a Switch or Steam Deck have some of the same issues, but not all, and with ways to work around others. Plus if your dedicated game device dies that’s not nearly as big a deal as killing your phone.
What I find more interesting is the Mac, and I’m admittedly disappointed in their discussion of that. It was a lot of the same hand waves we’ve seen in the past. Macs aren’t game machines, Mac users aren’t gamers, etc. And I’ve never found that compelling. Even the base M1 MacBook Air (7 core GPU, 8 GB RAM) is plenty powerful relative to the competition, and it only goes up from there. College students buy MacBooks of various forms by the millions, and they like their games. Some will have consoles sure, but that doesn’t stop students with Windows laptops from gaming on those.
The best I can come up with it’s something that’s been accepted narrative for so long it’s become self-fulfilling, but as Apple’s market share keeps climbing their struggles to make meaningful inroads here only gets more perplexing.
View: https://youtu.be/V7-FAoFhyLw
I will say I think it spent too long discussing the failure of AAA iPhone gaming. To me that was a given, for a large number of reasons. Controls, battery life, performance, and screen size are just the top of the list of why these are subpar experiences. Yes a Switch or Steam Deck have some of the same issues, but not all, and with ways to work around others. Plus if your dedicated game device dies that’s not nearly as big a deal as killing your phone.
What I find more interesting is the Mac, and I’m admittedly disappointed in their discussion of that. It was a lot of the same hand waves we’ve seen in the past. Macs aren’t game machines, Mac users aren’t gamers, etc. And I’ve never found that compelling. Even the base M1 MacBook Air (7 core GPU, 8 GB RAM) is plenty powerful relative to the competition, and it only goes up from there. College students buy MacBooks of various forms by the millions, and they like their games. Some will have consoles sure, but that doesn’t stop students with Windows laptops from gaming on those.
The best I can come up with it’s something that’s been accepted narrative for so long it’s become self-fulfilling, but as Apple’s market share keeps climbing their struggles to make meaningful inroads here only gets more perplexing.
I wonder if things would have been different if Apple hadn't 86'd OpenGL and instead embraced it. I know it's got issues, but that's what a lot of the game engines are on. I read the thing on Unreal, and from what I gather just generally reading about, Metal, while it has its strong suits, just doesn't have the same level of support from any gaming engines. Even in that piece Epic said it's making macOS up to feature parity with windows by creating an OpenGL translation layer.
Maaaaybe Apple is playing the (really) long game like with Arm, and in 5-10 (more) years Metal and its libraries will be more modern and still relatively cruft-free compared OpenGL and DirectX, and maybe companies will come to embrace it. Maybe.
Maaaaybe Apple is playing the (really) long game like with Arm, and in 5-10 (more) years Metal and its libraries will be more modern and still relatively cruft-free compared OpenGL and DirectX, and maybe companies will come to embrace it. Maybe.
OpenGL is a dead end. It stopped updating at 4.6, which was released in 2017. It’s more of a problem that there’s no decent Vulkan support. There’s MoltenVK, but it has limitations due to architectural decisions that were made. It’s bad enough that someone from LunarG was gauging interest in doing a Mesa driver with a Metal backend. Given that the hardware is capable (i.e., Asahi ships a Vulkan 1.4 conformant implementation for M1 and M2 hardware), it should be possible, but someone would have to step forward to do the work.
Where does it say that?
My bad. It's DX, not OGL.
Either way, they're not calling Metal. They're using something else to call Metal.
And I should have said "Vulcan" in my post, since I know that's where things are now but just didn't think about it.
It already seems to do alright...while emulating/translating x86. I'll just link Andrew Tsai's videos for example, seems like he's become known for this kinda thing: M4, Pro, Max.
Killing off 32 bit and whatever other compatibility breaks into the ARM transition was a rough period that didn't help. Giving up on OpenGL may have been early but as mentioned things were headed that way anyway, not supporting Vulkan in lieu of that felt like the bigger issue, and seems to still be a problem to an extent.
The next few years could be interesting if the console space keeps going how it's going. Xbox is faltering and MS seems to be going all in on being a multiplatform publisher, Sony is branching out to PC (and maybe Switch 2 who knows), and Nintendo, well they're still Nintendo...except third parties seem like they'll be more receptive to them with decent enough hardware to try to eek out more sales anywhere they can get. Maybe Apple platforms can benefit too
OpenGL and Vulkan barely make a difference. There are plenty of Unity and UE games that don't have Mac ports even though the IDEs support macOS.
It's again mostly a question of user base.
It's again mostly a question of user base.
Recent Steam database numbers show Linux at less than 2% of install base so the Steam Deck is still very niche. And yet Valve has bent over backwards with Proton to make it work.
It’s on the platform holder, not the developers, to bridge the gap. Apple is throwing out a bone with the GPTK but they still insist on developers putting in the work to actually port.
Unfortunately, Valve’s implementation will continue to improve while Apple’s is unlikely to gain the same level of traction. Their business model is at cross purposes here - they want App Store native ports.
It’s simply a case of incentive misalignment. And it won’t (can’t) change because of the amount of money involved.
The Switch has been a boon for CPU cross compatibility but they also run NVIDIA for the GPU so that complicates matters especially with DLSS and CUDA that Apple doesn’t offer. Windows on ARM is also taking off which helps as well.
It’s on the platform holder, not the developers, to bridge the gap. Apple is throwing out a bone with the GPTK but they still insist on developers putting in the work to actually port.
Unfortunately, Valve’s implementation will continue to improve while Apple’s is unlikely to gain the same level of traction. Their business model is at cross purposes here - they want App Store native ports.
It’s simply a case of incentive misalignment. And it won’t (can’t) change because of the amount of money involved.
The Switch has been a boon for CPU cross compatibility but they also run NVIDIA for the GPU so that complicates matters especially with DLSS and CUDA that Apple doesn’t offer. Windows on ARM is also taking off which helps as well.
As Microsoft and Sony will tell you, you solve this problem by spending an eye-wateringly huge amount of money, for literally decades.
Metal Shader Converter is an Apple-developed library for translating from HLSL to Metal IR. Unreal is still using Metal (via their platform abstraction AFAIK), though they’re using Apple’s metal-cpp interface instead of the Objective-C one to call it. I don’t know what their implementation is like currently (are they writing MSL shaders or translating their shaders with something like SPIRV-Cross?), but presumably this move simplifies their pipeline and allows customers to use HLSL shaders when targeting Apple platforms.
Vulkan support would open up Proton for macOS. As it is today, using DXVK with Wine requires using an older version of DXVK and a modified MoltenVK that lies about extension support (which notably does not work with Unreal Engine games).
Speaking of… now that I've got a modern Mac, what's the best way to play non-Mac-native games? I installed Whiskey, but that uses an older version of wine. I've installed wine in the past and could do it again, but it's a huge PITA. Or should I just get Mac native stuff?
Honestly, if more than the most casual gaming matters, and you’ve got the space: get a system with some games. A console, or a PC, or a Switch, or a Steam Deck.
Native gaming is plagued by the fact you’ve got tiny choice, and the games aren’t any smaller than their PC equivalent; unless you’ve really paid Tim’s Storage Tax, you’ve got limited SSD space.
Couldn’t comment on the emulation/translation approach. Never tried it, never will; it looks like work, and I’ve got a gaming PC right here, with a 4070 in it, and 4TB of space for games.
Native gaming is plagued by the fact you’ve got tiny choice, and the games aren’t any smaller than their PC equivalent; unless you’ve really paid Tim’s Storage Tax, you’ve got limited SSD space.
Couldn’t comment on the emulation/translation approach. Never tried it, never will; it looks like work, and I’ve got a gaming PC right here, with a 4070 in it, and 4TB of space for games.
Metal debuted in 2014. Vulkan debuted in 2016. Pretty similar issue to Lightning vs USB-C; the "new" standard thing wasn't ready / around when Apple needed to move off the old thing, and doing a change and then another change (to a consortium managed option, at that) just kinda isn't Apple's style.
Crossover. But be prepared for some tweaking.
DXMT ( https://github.com/3Shain/dxmt ) is getting better fast. Direct translation of DirectX 11 to Metal and DirectX DXBC into Metal LLVM IR. No need for an intermediate step like MoltenVK and textual shaders conversion.
It will be in Crossover 25 too.
It will be in Crossover 25 too.
It may not be compelling, but what if it's reality?
I'm going to argue that "game machine" means something beyond "...it can play games too." It's about audience.
Consoles, obviously, are game machines because that's all they do, play games. No one is buying a console for anything else. There is no need to convince a console buyer of the value of paying for or playing games.
Most PCs aren't good at playing games and aren't designed to play games. That's why there are gaming PCs and laptops that are purposefully designed and built to support the technologies important to gaming. They are game machines. No one buying a gaming PC needs to be convinced of the value of paying for or playing games.
These "game machines" exist because there is a culture of gaming that makes them economically viable. Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft have created generations of consoles and poured untold billions into supporting deep catalogs of titles and the ecosystems to make them destination devices for gaming. Build it and they will come, yes, but also, constantly give them reasons to come back.
Gaming PCs and laptops allow buyers to customize and tweak their capabilities to support specific games, game types, or performance targets within the boundaries of almost any budget. Add a diverse range of equally-supported storefronts to buy games (most importantly, Steam) and you have console-like purpose and ease of use.
Macs are good at games as a side effect, not as a goal. There is no audience of gamers paying top dollar for a purpose-built "gaming Mac" and there is no passionate culture of people willing to pay day-one money for the games to run on them. There is no investment by Apple to seed a deep catalog of native games to make the Mac a destination for gaming and specific games.
Ultimately, as the last few messages in this thread attest, technologies designed to harness the power of modern Apple hardware and act as a shim, translation layer, or emulator for software designed for other systems, may end up being the best way to pursuing gaming on the Mac. Because by their very nature and complexity, setups like this are going to appeal to people with the skill and passion to make them work with the reward of gaining access to a depth of titles that will never be duplicated natively. What gaming culture exists on the Mac will recognize this opportunity and take it. Because there is no other viable option.
There was a tagged release recently. I really need to get back to packaging DXMT for nixpkgs, but I have no time.
(There’s some build system issues I need to sort out, and nixpkg’s cross-compiling libc++ for Windows was broken the last time I tried it.)
Whichever way that works. I only have a few games, but some play fine in Whisky, some I need to play in a Windows VM to work (using VMware in my case). Better performance in Whisky, but can be good enough in virtualization.
There's Heroic Games Launcher but haven't used it myself yet. Another Wine frontend but appears to have some specific accommodations for stuff like anti cheat...which could be useful, cause one of the games I've wanted to play won't launch in Windows ARM because of it.