Plans to Support Metal or DX12?

[Nintonito]

I understand that vulkan is infinitely more useful to support since it benefits windows and linux, and potentially even OSX in the long run, but how about the offerings from Windows and OSX themselves? Especially in the case of OSX i would expect a metal backend to run significantly better than the glacial OpenGL speeds on OSX due to slow as hell drivers. Windows not so much, but DX has traditionally held a performance lead on windows over OpenGL, and DX12 would further this. What are the developers thought? Is the effort even worth the return, or is investing fully into Vulkan more effective? Considering it is rumored Apple may actually avoid Vulkan support, would you be interested in supporting at least a basic metal backend to keep the Mac version reasonably performant (not that it runs terribly, but compared to talos on OpenGL on my windows machine with similiar specs the performance is noticably worse.

[Alyssa Princess]

As long as Vulkan performs similarly to DX 12 and metal, I hope developers only support it and nothing else. Apple and others need to be pressured to allow open standards.

[daniel.mantione]

Croteam have spoken out against Metal. I have seen no comments about DX12, but considering that DX12 offers no advantages over Vulkan, at least I don't see the point.

[Niiru > /dev/null]

The two first posters are exactly on spot.

There is no reason at all to implement DX12 in any game.
Metal.. Just a little but it would be bad in the long run.

[kwahoo]

There is https://moltengl.com/metalvk/ - an Vulkan implementation on top of Metal.

[blackout24]

Originally posted by Alyssa Princess:

As long as Vulkan performs similarly to DX 12 and metal, I hope developers only support it and nothing else. Apple and others need to be pressured to allow open standards.

Quoted for truth.

[FuzzyPuffin]

Might be in my head, but the new 64-bit version on the Mac seems much faster for me.

But yes, really hope Apple adds Vulcan support in 10.12 (as well as improve Metal).

[Arno]

Originally posted by Alyssa Princess:

As long as Vulkan performs similarly to DX 12 and metal, I hope developers only support it and nothing else. Apple and others need to be pressured to allow open standards.

s/be pressured to allow/feel the pain in their bank accounts when they don't use/ <-- FTFY

Like a lot of us here, I don't use Microsoft's operating systems unless coerced. I don't think they're particularly bad, they're just not as good as the alternatives. As such, I'm pretty much tired of paying $100-$250 every few years for what (to me) is essentially 20GB of game launching middleware.

[Arno]

Originally posted by Nintonito:

...but DX has traditionally held a performance lead on windows over OpenGL, and DX12 would further this.

http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/133824-valve-opengl-is-faster-than-directx-even-on-windows

Now, obviously we've all seen the real-world benchmarks for games, and seen the differences with our own eyes, so I'm not trying to argue with reality here when it comes to practical application. My point here is that the perceived issues with OpenGL when compared to DirectX are a result of (lack of) developer attention, not an inherent flaw in the toolkit itself.

[daniel.mantione]

Well, let's say it is 80% lack of developer attention, 20% OpenGL itself, because it is widely said that OpenGL lacks with multi-threaded rendering. It is certainly possible to beat DirectX with OpenGL though, DirectX doesn't make a game magically faster.

[blackout24]

Originally posted by FuzzyPuffin:

Might be in my head, but the new 64-bit version on the Mac seems much faster for me.

But yes, really hope Apple adds Vulcan support in 10.12 (as well as improve Metal).

No the 64 Bit Version definitely is a lot faster:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=More-64-bit-Linux-Games

I remember back in 2013, when Steam for Linux launched as a closed beta and Croteam handed out Serious Sam 3 we Tux lovers constantly pestered the developers that everything needs to 64 Bit even text editors. :D Finally it's here. 32 Bit only applications are a Windows artifact.

[edo]

Even if they dont want to support a Metal renderer, they could use MoltenVK so mac users can get the FPS boost (and more people using Vulkan, thats always a good thing). It could even be used for an iOS port.

I know than the downside of this tool is than is propietary and it require a license to be used, but other than that I have read than its easy to implement. If a game like this supports Vulkan on macOS, that would show to other developers than Vulkan can also be used to support macOS on serious games like this one. So, I think than it makes sense. It would be interesting to know their position related to this.

[AlenL]

The biggest downside of MoltenVK is that, for now, it seems it doesn't work. :(

[edo]

Fair enough, its good to see your position. But since Apple is still on the process of improving and adding features to Metal, there is the possibility in the future that this tool can make a better vulkan->metal translation. Only time will tell.

[AlenL]

We tried the library , but it plain didn't work, and it didn't seem like it was being actively maintained.
The decision is to implement Metal directly into the engine.

[Nintonito]

Originally posted by AlenL:

We tried the library , but it plain didn't work, and it didn't seem like it was being actively maintained.
The decision is to implement Metal directly into the engine.

holy crap you guys are on fire with this. Will this be Talos exclusive or added to the other OSX games when the vulkan support update happens?