Awesome Game - Develop For Mac

[thehosk1963]

I find it difficult to comprehend why game developers are not creating a Mac version of their product. Planet Crafter would work extremely well on an M1 etc... What About Developing For It!
I play Metro Exodus on a Mac M1 with the highest settings and is absolutely fantastic.
Had to play Planet Crafter on a PC initially and I am really hoping Planet Crafter is presented on a Mac OS platform, here's wishin.

[jankaskinen]

is there not a converter on mac that alows you play dpc games ?i guess the mac world is not big enough or to hard to program games for i dont know as i do not use mac in any way shape or form. Have a great new year:-)

[thehosk1963]

Interesting though Metro Exodus is fantastic and developed and runs perfectly on a Mac M1.
Also something like Unreal Engine has a game converter available, so not hard to create something. I would love to create Planet Crafter in UE5.

[The Hosk]

With the release of the M1 chip range, there is the ability to work and play on a Mac. With UE5 development for games it looks more realistic and runs at your >60FPS+ with a game converter to Apple products built in. I think Unity need to diversify a little quicker and develop for the 21st Century. Have a look at Metro Exodus on an M1, I think you will change your view on what can be done on a Mac. Reason for the push, I use UE5 in the film industry and use Apple products to film and edit with and UE5 has provided the tools to carry it out with ease. Look at the Mandalorian. Quixel provide great 3D real environment textured assets even for game development and they look great. Planet Crafter could have been more, and was looking forward to a Mac version, alas not. You don't need a RTX3090 anymore.

[Jimmy]

How do you people think, that there's supposed to be a "release on M1 Mac"-Button in the programming environment, that magically makes a Mac release? Have you tried this yourself before? Multi-Platform releasing is certainly possible - but there have several additions and changes to be made to the code for each platform. This isn't as simple as your day at the mall java game, where a virtual machine handles all the HAL overhead. Only because Metro Exodus was ported properly (by a team of 80+ people) doesn't mean it's simple. I can tell you dozens over dozens of project which failed to be properly ported.

[CrazedBumblebee]

Anyone claim that they have or do use the Mac for their graphic work doesn't prove anything. Back in the 90s when using a Mac for graphic artist work was all the rage, it literally sucked compared to the PC - but most graphic artists found Mac easy to use and never actually tried doing the same job on a PC, so it became popular. Nothing much has changed over the years.

The things that you can do on a PC, although potentially possible on a Mac, usually require a lot of time and effort to develop by companies that get little back from it, because the business and consumer market invariably chooses Windows over MacOS, and those that do use MacOS tend not to want to do super important tough graphical work, further reducing the likelihood that their effort will be of any benefit to them financially.

Also, good luck getting a GPU for a Mac that's powerful enough to do what an RTX card can do in a PC. I know Apple put a lot of other companies tech in their machines and make it impossible to upgrade individual components, but i'm pretty sure they're not using any high-end nVidia or AMD cards in their setup, and even if they were have you ever tried doing that stuff on a PC in a *nix OS?

Graphics drivers for nix are terrible, most don't work, and the ones that do are much MUCH slower compared to in Windows. They also generally won't support DX either, so you have to hope that the games you want to play support OpenGL, which as someone else above posted MacOS does not support. So you're kind of SOL.

Get a PC if you want to play games.

[Fish <><]

At the end of the day, not supporting Mac is a business decision by the developers. It could be it's too hard. It could also be that the devs have only ever learned Windows programming (ie, they have zero experience developing for Mac or Linux anyway). We'd really have to ask them what the problem is, but the fundamental fact remains: it was their decision pure and simple. I'm just glad that 7 Days to Die chose to support it and I can attest that the M1Max doesn't break a sweat on high graphics settings.

Pre M1, I would agree that Macs were neither built for nor marketed for gaming.

Post M1, I would only agree that Macs are not marketed for gaming, and I would agree that if you wanted a dedicated maxed-out gaming machine, Mac is not the way to go. But let's be realistic. A lot of people I know can't afford the gaming machine they want anyway. Yes, Macs are expensive, but so it the high-end gaming machine. And not being able to support powerful RTX cards is kinda moot if you can't buy the things in the first place.

And I would agree that Apple does need to put some effort into showing developers how easier "it will be" (we are not there yet) to be able to support both (or more) Operating Systems.

But let's be honest here - wouldn't it be great if we weren't locked into a platform (be it personal computer, console, tablet, et al) to play any game we want? Isn't it better for everyone to encourage cross-platform compatibility?

[Armitage Shanks]

LOL@all these "experts". There's 1 simple reason developers like this don't release mac versions of games, and that's market share. Why should a small developer invest so much time into catering to less than 5% of the gaming community?

[navad108]

90% of Indie games in my library have a Mac release. I have a steam deck but I don't like the handheld controls. I have a high end external GPU on my Intel Mac so it would nice to get the convenience of a localized release. I know it's extra work for the devs so I'm not demanding but I wanna finish the game myself rather than watch RCE do it with all his eggplants.

[ElDudorino]

Get a real computer instead of complaining that a game wasn't released on your silly niche machine. It can be a lot of work to port a game to another platform, and there's barely any point in doing it for a platform with a small market share that's generally accepted not to be a gaming machine. The Planet Crafter is made by a team of like two people and most of us would prefer that the devs focus on bugs and new features instead of devoting a bunch of time to a niche audience.

And it's not like porting an EA game would be 'one and done.' The devs are constantly working on new content and would have to maintain builds for multiple platforms. It would be ridiculous to expect that at this point in the process. If they're going to make a Mac version they should wait until after they leave EA.

[trygve]

Macs ARE real computers.
I used to play World of Tanks on an early Mac Mini that I souped up by replacing the limp Intel CoreDuo(1.6GHz or whatever) with a 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo. Of course, with 64MB RAM dedicated to the graphics card, graphics kind of sucked... royally!
Did score 9 kills in one game with my NC31, though, and several Kamikaze with my StürmPanzer II...
MYST was first written for a Mac.
The HALO game series that every Xboxer is nuts about
started out on Mac...

[ElDudorino]

Yes we can all name 5 or 6 Mac games but as a whole the compatibility is a mere fraction of what you get from a real computer. I'm not actually sure what the point of Macs is but it's not gaming.

Regardless, anybody blaming an Early Access dev team of 2 people for not maintaining multiple builds for multiple operating systems when the game isn't anywhere near finished is completely out of touch with reality. Wait for the game to actually be released before you start port begging for your niche machine.

[trygve]

My current Mac doesn't do much. It sits below the TV, hooked up to a stack of external DVD and BLue-Ray drives and is mostly used to rip movies and TV series over to my network storage.(Don't ask how many Dr Who or Ususei Yatsura episodes I have... )
It's nice, though, to know that I have a computer that will never suddenly restart to install a hotfix to a SW package I don't even use...
I remember my first Mac; the iBook G4 12" laptop. I had never used one before, but after my Packard Bell laptop died because the manufacturer wouldn't even spend $0.1 on a diode for Reverse polarity protection, I wanted to see what the competition could do. From I started opening the box, it took me less than 5 minutes until I was surfing the net. That was in 2005, I think?
It stayed my main computer, for surfing, reading, writing, bookkeeping, and even some gaming for years. Don't think I bought a new computer until 2012?
Which year was it again that SONY finally admitted that they screwed up the batteries of these and everyone could get a new and improved one? I parked the iBook the next year.
I sometimes take it out to play with still. And it still works.
And... I never experienced 'Driver Hell' or DLL-purgatory.
(I work as IT support at a large government organisation. I'm intimately familiar with the foibles of Winblows. )

But yeah, the Gaming scene on Macs isn't much, really. The OS that has it worse is probably OS/2... (Yes, I run that on a PC, too. )

[SteinDrSolido]

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[Thorbalt]

Originally posted by trygve:

Macs ARE real computers.
I used to play World of Tanks on an early Mac Mini that I souped up by replacing the limp Intel CoreDuo(1.6GHz or whatever) with a 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo. Of course, with 64MB RAM dedicated to the graphics card, graphics kind of sucked... royally!
Did score 9 kills in one game with my NC31, though, and several Kamikaze with my StürmPanzer II...
MYST was first written for a Mac.
The HALO game series that every Xboxer is nuts about
started out on Mac...

You should go see a shrink about your delusions

[RAMChYLD]

Originally posted by Fish <><:

At the end of the day, not supporting Mac is a business decision by the developers. It could be it's too hard.

This. Especially with Apple’s insistence that devs use their proprietary technologies like Metal and Core Audio that make porting to a Mac painful instead of supporting universal cross-platform tech like OpenGL and Vulkan.