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Early Access and options for M1 Mac owners


Shmauck

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8 hours ago, Pthigrivi said:

The thing that was so innovative about Marathon and maybe more so Durandal and Infinity was they had really complex scifi stories and world building.

System Shock would like a word with you...

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43 minutes ago, Pthigrivi said:

I still think that guy took way too much credit for Jonathan Ive's genius. I mean I've owned Macs for most of my life and I've always found a way to play great games, but they sure don't make it easy.

Maybe he does, I really don't know or care. Without getting into the bad and good of Apple and derailing the thread. All I'm saying is Apple didn't do the desktop gaming industry any favors over the years. Apple made it difficult to near impossible for game developers to work within their OS. (Not because Apple are jerks when it comes to their OS's, (they are,) it's because their OS's is a derivative of Unix not Linux. They are similar enough to code for, but the optimizations required are different. And Apple doesn't tell you what you should be looking for.)

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50 minutes ago, shdwlrd said:

OS's is a derivative of Unix not Linux. They are similar enough to code for, but the optimizations required are different. And Apple doesn't tell you what you should be looking for.

Not only that, but often enough the documentation just assumes that you'll be using *nix documentation, despite the fact that there can be substantial differences in implementation. OSX POSIX is particularly bad for this. I've had a misfortune of having to implement memory sharing between processes on an OSX machine, and absolutely nothing tells you that the file mapping path rules are different for OSX, greatly restricting maximum file name length, and the error you get is a generic "access violation," with absolutely no clarification of what went wrong. Identical code ran flawlessly on several flavors of *nix, and all of the documentation said that OSX implementation is supposed to be identical. Not to mention the simple test cases passed because, of course, they had shorter file names.

And this is kind of a theme throughout. I live in the Valley, so I know a lot of current and former Apple engineers and in some of the worst cases I was able to just reach out and ask, "what is that supposed to be?" and they'd be able to get me something from internal docs that really should have been public docs. But if you're working for a game studio out in Bellevue or Austin, and you don't just happen to know someone from Apple, you're SoL, and you got to hope that somebody on Stack Overflow managed to track this particular problem down at some point. Or dig through Darwin sources and hope you can figure it out.

Writing code for Apple devices, beyond the absolute basics, is all kinds of not a fun experience. And yes, Apple could absolutely have made this better for everyone by staying in more committees and sharing more documentation. Look at CLang. It's wonderful, and everyone loves it, and that what happens when Apple takes a more open approach to a project. Had they stayed in Vulkan and worked with the community to create native Vulkan-to-Metal bridge, I guarantee there would be a lot more games running native on OSX. But as things stand, if I was chained to a computer and told to port a game engine to run on Metal, I'd probably gnaw off whatever limb was attached to the chain. That's not how you want the engineers to react to your platform if you want people to make games for it.

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On 1/5/2023 at 1:15 PM, Shmauck said:

Another option could be cloud gaming. I have tried KSP1 on a Shadow cloud PC and that actually worked quite well. I may be looking into GeForce Now or Google Stadia until end of February.

Either way, I really like the Elgato solution as I am using OBS for capturing anyway which is now available in an Apple Silicon version. 

I would go with Shadow because GeForce Now and Stadia are gonna take a while to add support for KSP 2, and Shadows pcs are great. You can run most games on ultra graphics no problem.

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Very interesting insights into the whole Apple and Gaming subject. I was probably mislead by the fact that the M1 Max comes with quite powerful GPU specs. This made me assume they have decided to be more committed to Gaming in the future. 

Update on my case: 

25 minutes ago, oguser said:

I would go with Shadow because GeForce Now and Stadia are gonna take a while to add support for KSP 2, and Shadows pcs are great. You can run most games on ultra graphics no problem.

I confirm, not even KSP 1 is available on my GeForce Now instance as it seems. I connected GeForce Now to my Steam account and KSP would not appear. I opened a ticket. 

Am fiddling with a new Shadow PC now. Playing KSP will work for sure as the cloud machine grants full control over Windows. Have installed KSP 1 and have it running with my Steam Cloud save games without a problem.

In regard of my recording/streaming plans, I will install OBS on the Shadow PC next. 

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13 minutes ago, Shmauck said:

I was probably mislead by the fact that the M1 Max comes with quite powerful GPU specs.

Apple has an amazing in-house graphics team, both for hardware and software, but it sounds like their main target is productivity. Things like rendering CGI, video FX, and a whole lineup of machine learning applications. Which is, honestly, wild, because Apple also has a games division, but they seem to focus on mobile, I think, and the two branches of the company just don't appear to work together at all. Going by hardware capabilities alone, M1 and M2 macbooks can be among the better gaming machines, at least in the laptop space. Yet that entire avenue is neglected by the company. I'm sure that there is something that at least sounds like a good explanation for that to the top bras of the company, but from outside it makes no sense at all, and even mid-level management at Apple seems to be baffled. There are definitely influential people in that company who want to make gaming on macbooks happen, but it's a huge corporation with a lot of depth to its management hierarchy, so none of it appears to materialize into an actual commercial push across the company.

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2 hours ago, K^2 said:

Apple has an amazing in-house graphics team, both for hardware and software, but it sounds like their main target is productivity. Things like rendering CGI, video FX, and a whole lineup of machine learning applications. Which is, honestly, wild, because Apple also has a games division, but they seem to focus on mobile, I think, and the two branches of the company just don't appear to work together at all. Going by hardware capabilities alone, M1 and M2 macbooks can be among the better gaming machines, at least in the laptop space. Yet that entire avenue is neglected by the company. I'm sure that there is something that at least sounds like a good explanation for that to the top bras of the company, but from outside it makes no sense at all, and even mid-level management at Apple seems to be baffled. There are definitely influential people in that company who want to make gaming on macbooks happen, but it's a huge corporation with a lot of depth to its management hierarchy, so none of it appears to materialize into an actual commercial push across the company.

Yes for the game companies You have x86 for pc and consoles outside Nintendo and mobile. Elder scroll online an MMO I tend to play daily is not supporting M1 even if supporting mac since launch, yes you can run M1 but you will struggle in raids or large scale pvp. 
 WOW does but its a much more lightweight client. 

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On 1/8/2023 at 7:39 AM, Shmauck said:

Very interesting insights into the whole Apple and Gaming subject. I was probably mislead by the fact that the M1 Max comes with quite powerful GPU specs. This made me assume they have decided to be more committed to Gaming in the future. 

Update on my case: 

I confirm, not even KSP 1 is available on my GeForce Now instance as it seems. I connected GeForce Now to my Steam account and KSP would not appear. I opened a ticket. 

Am fiddling with a new Shadow PC now. Playing KSP will work for sure as the cloud machine grants full control over Windows. Have installed KSP 1 and have it running with my Steam Cloud save games without a problem.

In regard of my recording/streaming plans, I will install OBS on the Shadow PC next. 

Another great reason to use Shadow is that you can install mods or other software on it, something that you can't do on GeForce NOW. Streaming on Shadow will probably be great with their internet speeds and location.

Shadow also allows you to use your microphone and USB devices connected to the computer. I am not sure if this feature works with cameras, though.

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On 1/7/2023 at 8:31 AM, Pthigrivi said:

The thing that was so innovative about Marathon and maybe more so Durandal and Infinity was they had really complex scifi stories and world building. This is obviously and commonplace now but at the time it was a big change over “just run around and shoot stuff”. Halo of course continued this, but Id say Halflife did a better job carrying through some of the subtler themes. Myst and Riven also had very weird and interesting stories. Its just a real headscratcher that Mac abandoned sincere support for this aspect of computing. 

Most of those games around the time had some level or story. Duke Nukem was about the shallowest but it still had a storyline. Wolfenstein, Quake, and Doom all had a bit more depth to their world building and depth and I'd argue that both Marathon and Durandal continued this but they were still largely "levels" spit up by some narrative. It wasn't until Half-life where Valve showed off the relatively seamless level transitions and demonstrated that you can make the narrative the pinnacle driving force in the gameplay. The story dictated the level design more than in any other game before Half-Life. Bungie obviously took note and re-thought how they were approaching Halo. The /noclip documentary UnForeseen Consequences: A Hlaf-Life Documentary covers it really well and the best quote from it is "the entire industry fundamentally shifted with the release of [the Half-Life] demo".

On 1/7/2023 at 4:07 PM, shdwlrd said:

Steve Jobs and his bizarre thoughts how his products should be used. 

Steve Jobs wasn't even at Apple during that time. Apple acquired Next and he came back to Apple in '97, not to say they have ever taken gaming seriously on macOS before, during, or after Steve Jobs. When Valve was working on brining Steam to macOS in the current era, Gabe Newell noted that Apple continues to every once in a while will reach out to "improve gaming on macOS" and then would go silent and squirrel! :D

On 1/7/2023 at 4:16 PM, Pthigrivi said:

I still think that guy took way too much credit for Jonathan Ive's genius. I mean I've owned Macs for most of my life and I've always found a way to play great games, but they sure don't make it easy.

I don't think this is how I'd characterize things. He, unlike most CEO/keynote speakers at the time, pushed forward engineers to show & tell the tech & design they were leading; including Jonny Ive's industrial design and Scott Forstall's software design.

Edited by PopinFRESH
removed errant line return
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11 hours ago, oguser said:

Another great reason to use Shadow is that you can install mods or other software on it, something that you can't do on GeForce NOW. Streaming on Shadow will probably be great with their internet speeds and location.

Shadow also allows you to use your microphone and USB devices connected to the computer. I am not sure if this feature works with cameras, though.

Currently, cameras are not an issue. I'm not showing my face on YT. :cool:

Streaming from the Shadow would require an audio stream going through my upload so that is the next thing I am going to test.

For recording, that's not an issue, because I am capturing video within Shadow via a local OBS. Then I download the files to my Mac and add voiceovers in postproduction. 

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11 minutes ago, shelshok said:

Seeing this thread is quite a bummer, but I haven't seen it mentioned otherwise. Has there been an announcement about Mac Compatibility?

There won't be Mac compatibility at launch of Early Access, but it may come later after the launch of 1.0.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 1/6/2023 at 8:26 AM, magnemoe said:

Now I blame Apple here, they have an tradition of changing CPU architecture. 
Starting with the Motorola 38k cpu who Amiga used, they then switched to IBM PowerPC, yes the 38k line was ending so they had to do something. 
But then jumping to x86 in 2006 and to their own M1 cpu in 2020 makes less sense, Yes jumping to x86 down the line makes sense as most did. Also has an feeling Apple see phones and mobile devices as their main focus.
But with pc, Xbox and PlayStation using an common cpu architecture for an decade now going away from it leaves gamers out dry. 

There are  downsides to every CPU arch. In the case of x86, "high power consumption" and "a lot of hardware baggage so that email software from the 1980s can still run" come to mind. To keep making improvements, at some point you have to drop hardware backwards compatibility and do it in software (or not at all, if there isn't enough demand for it or you're making a new platform or whatever). Did Apple make the right decision both in switching to their custom ARM implementation and in doing it when they did? Dunno, IMHO it's still too early to tell. These things can take a long time to play out, and Apple's barely into their 3rd year. I think between ARM and RISC-V, though, we're at least entering an era where x86 doesn't have complete dominance and won't necessarily be the default choice. Everyone's rushing to find out what they can make hardware do if it doesn't work the x86 way, and the results are interesting. It certainly hasn't been the ARM/RISC-V/POWER blow-out that everyone who isn't Intel was hoping for, but there are definitely some wins to be had (especially for a company like Apple who's now in a position to customize their CPU for how their software works). Does switching arches leave some old software behind? Probably. Really fast emulators such as Apple's Rosetta 2 can do amazing things (and I hear MS's emulator for Windows on ARM has gotten a lot faster, too), but there'll likely always be some piece of software that doesn't quite work right. However, if you've come to the conclusion that x86 isn't the best arch for you anymore, there's not really a way to avoid the situation. Well, I suppose except maybe only using open-source software, but there's several asterisks and a few whole other conversations involved in that "solution".

 

As far as games being compatible with the ARM CPUs Apple's using is concerned, if the developers write their software against Apple's current APIs and are using Apple's current tooling (and they didn't use any assembly code or anything), adding ARM support is mostly just clicking a checkbox in the Xcode project settings and making sure everything still works right. Now, optimizations made to the data structures and algorithms and such that were made for x86 might not work as well (or at all) on ARM systems, but that checkbox will likely be enough to get it running. If the game is written against some other API like Unity or Unreal Engine or something , the developers will have to wait for that vendor to add support and that can take a while or already be done. AFAIK, not only does Unity run fine in Apple's x86 emulator, but they've offered native ARM support for I think about a year. Whether either version of KSP has been updated to use one of those newer versions of Unity to get native ARM support is another matter.

Edited by TheOtherDave
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Love the architecture discussion going on, but a lack of Mac support is likely to continue late into Early Access - Dealing with OS bugs while also trying to work out new EA features is only going to muddy the waters and make things more difficult for the devs. We're all but certain to see Mac support arrive (Assuming a mac release is coming at all) once the core is all in and they're doing wider bug fixing instead of feature implementation. Sucks for some people, but the more variables you can remove from the mix, the better.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I use an M2 Mac mini or my ksp1 gaming and it work SO WELL, better than my pc which is like 5 years old at this point, I am considering Parrellels, I have 337 subscribers on YT to answer to if I don't release a video 'bout it on the 24th. Tho I am worried about that $99 price tag. Plus the 50 buck for KSP2 I need $150 which I'm not sure in investing yet. :/ For Geforce Now, I use that to play Planet Coaster and Zoo but i haven't seen KSP1 or 2 on it so it'll be intersting to see if they can do it. If so, I would be SUCH a life-saver.

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14 minutes ago, Andrew the Astronaut said:

I use an M2 Mac mini or my ksp1 gaming and it work SO WELL, better than my pc which is like 5 years old at this point, I am considering Parrellels, I have 337 subscribers on YT to answer to if I don't release a video 'bout it on the 24th. Tho I am worried about that $99 price tag. Plus the 50 buck for KSP2 I need $150 which I'm not sure in investing yet. :/ For Geforce Now, I use that to play Planet Coaster and Zoo but i haven't seen KSP1 or 2 on it so it'll be intersting to see if they can do it. If so, I would be SUCH a life-saver.

So I already have Parallels and will be testing on my macbook. It is however a 2021 machine with an i7 rather than an apple chip. For certain friday night I'll be seeing if it works and I'll post my experience here.

Edited by Pthigrivi
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5 hours ago, mattinoz said:

Steve Jobs showed the the first Halo demo seen in public at Macworld New York last century. 

 

And I’m still slightly annoyed with MS for delaying the Mac version for a couple years after they bought Bungie.

(Yes, I know they bought Bungie so they could have an Xbox exclusive… exclusives annoy me, too.)

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