Or (Nathan) Israeli
Christina WarrenApple added #DX12 support to macOS and Apple Silicon via its Game Porting Toolkit. It’s basically a 20k patch to Wine that will make it easy to play AAA Windows games on macOS without using a VM. https://github.com/apple/homebrew-apple
This video goes into more details if you don’t want to read the insane patch file augmented on top of the homebrew formula. https://youtu.be/g3n62FOX1Go
Apple hid something AMAZING for Mac gaming at WWDC
Also, plz appreciate the lengths Apple will go through to avoid sending stuff to upstream. This has to be GPL v2 b/c Wine/Codeweavers, but rather than patch upstream, this is patched inside a homebrew formula. It’s amazing.
There are 3 videos at #WWDC23 for porting your game for Mac. First video discusses this toolkit a bit but burries the lead for real. https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10123/
Jon Fisher@film_girl Diablo IV for Mac please.
Jose Munoz@jonfisher @film_girl Blizzard used to be the place you could always count on for a solid Mac version.
@film_girl Someone already got Diablo IV running on an Apple Silicon Mac with the macOS beta. https://www.reddit.com/r/macgaming/comments/14307be/diablo_iv_on_m2_max_using_macos_sonoma_and_game/
@jonfisher yup! Clearly, this was tested internally before this was released.
@film_girl You love to see it.
Rafa Campoamor 🇪🇺🌹@film_girl So… Cyberpunk 2077 for Mac? 🤔🥺🙏🏻
nomilkinmytea@film_girl BREAKING NEWS: Fire hot, snow cold, Apple being dicks.
Ade Thompson@film_girl If the aim of the toolkit is to bring more native games to Mac then it won’t see the light of day to the general public as a way to run Windows games as is which is a shame.
@apt they have to. It’s based on GPL code, they can’t hide the code. They have to make it public. I bet you could run this now against a bunch of AAA games on Steam and get them running on Apple Silicon with no problem.
@film_girl Doesn’t feel very ‘Apple’ but good news, cue a third party dev to make something of this in the coming weeks. *cough* @stroughtonsmith *cough*
@apt @stroughtonsmith oh, launchers will exist very soon for sure. Probably some that even feel very Apple. This is essentially Proton for Mac. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proton_(software) and I expect to see similar frontends the same way Steam Deck has multiple frontends beyond just the Steam interface.
benwu@film_girl this is exactly what I've been hoping for since I learned how the steam deck worked.
Antwan van Houdt@benwu @film_girl used to run Half Life 2 like this back when I was little with only an iMac family computer. Wineskin was also great!
@film_girl @apt Feels like to make it actually usable there will have to be some optimization or conversion to Metal.
The vid has Medium on an M2 Max running at 1080 with 28 fps. That's not quite good enough to just wrap up and ship, I would think?
@ringslinger @apt I think it depends on the game. Some tweaks might be needed but I think it’ll depend on the game.
Colin Cornaby@film_girl @ringslinger @apt In the sessions they talk about this a bit more. Key point is these games still aren't native. Windows means x86 which means Rosetta. This translation is basically not meant to be performant - and they show examples of games having performance issues which need to be corrected in a native port.
@film_girl @ringslinger @apt I’d wager for many games (especially a few years old) it’ll be pretty good.
@ringslinger @film_girl I think that’s the point of the video, run your current windows game without optimisation and tweak accordingly so that’s maybe a worse case scenario demo 🤷♂️
@apt @film_girl That's certainly what they are promoting.
@apt @film_girl Wine is not GPL, it's LGPL. They don't have to publish all the code, and indeed they don't for the D3DMetal component.
@apt @film_girl The aim of the toolkit is to let developers test their games on Mac before incrementally doing a proper native port. The license terms of the porting toolkit forbid using it in production (eg. shipping games to the public using it).
Peter Cohen@film_girl CodeWeavers gets Sherlocked...
@flargh @film_girl Just as they got DX12 working as well.
@film_girl @apt Just watched the video you pointed to, thanks for the link. Great stuff, glad to see Apple embrace and extend the tech. This doesn't solve the business case problem for Mac games, but anything to reduce friction for devs is aces.
The Mac gaming DirectX 12 Revolution is NOW!
@film_girl @flargh And here we go, a GUI wrapper for the toolkit https://github.com/IsaacMarovitz/Whisky as discussed here https://youtu.be/Cg1g27MUd_0
@flargh not at all. This is a patch to their code. They can take this patch themselves too. This is essentially Apple’s version at Proton, which Valve created to get game compatibility for Steam Deck. The bulk of the code IS CodeWeavers. This is just a patch.
Eric A. Meyer@film_girl If this means I can run Dyson Sphere Program on my M2 Max MacBook Pro, PUT IT IN MY VEINS
David Friedman@film_girl I liked this line from that video: "The fact that this is open source is literally a game changer."
@ironicsans yup. And literally something Apple couldn’t avoid. Hurray for OSS and in this case, copyleft licenses.
Paul Chernoff@film_girl Thanks for posting. I am usually dubious whenever I hear about porting tools, this makes me hopeful.
(((Jann Gobble)))🏳️🌈@film_girl This #HUD shows amazing performance for an #emulated game. I know 28fps is is not fantastic, but 28fps for emulated #D3D12 (#DirectX) is absolutely phenomenal - even at only 1080p 60hz!
tbodt@film_girl the video is wrong, the directx-on-metal code is closed source, you download it separately and install on top of wine
(boost pls)
BrianAllenATL@film_girl is this the opening for Apple to challenge Sony and MS in the gaming console business?
@brianallen yes and no. Yes, insofar as it makes it way easier for devs to bring their existing stuff to Apple Vision Pro (and by extension macOS), the same way devs Windows apps now run on Steam Deck via Proton. No, because the development is still being done on a PC for a PC. That it works on Linux or macOS is incidental. You’re still probably buying these games from Steam, for example, and you’re buying the Windows version.
Scott Bronson@AppApe here's a sign that maybe Apple is interested in improving Macs for gaming. At this point anything would help.
AppApe@sb time will tell. For what macs cost you’d need junk they would allow people to do their favorite activities
Steve Lhomme@film_girl :shocked:
Jan Lehnardt 
@film_girl what now?! 😍
Katie FennHoly.
Shit.
elle mundy@film_girl oh holy shit
sebsauvage@film_girl
Oh nice... Apple benefits from Free Software while locking out Free Software OSes from its hardware.
Oh nice... Apple benefits from Free Software while locking out Free Software OSes from its hardware.
@sebsauvage I mean, Asahi is doing pretty well and has said Apple has made changes that seem to be just for them. They’ve made the code available per the license terms so I don’t know what there is to complain about here. We should be happy they opted to patch at all and not try to invent their own solution that wasn’t open by virtue of its inherited codebase.
Ian Fogg@film_girl With Valve having enormous success with Proton (ie Crossover) on Linux/Steamdeck, I’ve been wondering if Apple could also make Windows gaming easier on Macs. DX12 support is a very interesting move
Ehler@film_girl @stroughtonsmith Wasn't CrossOver just talking about doing this game-by-game? What does that change?
@ehler @stroughtonsmith from what I understand, this has essentially been tested on a ton of games already. Those games could be played via Steam or just submitted to the MAS packaged as .app files that are really just shims with .exe’s inside.
Aaron M@film_girl That's awesome. I was curious about what it would be when they mentioned it. I know games are more than just the graphics layer, but maybe can play some modern games on Mac this year? :D
@agmcleod That’s exaxtly what this does. The first step will be to get publishers to upload their existing windows files to the MAS with very little changes (package as a .app) but the secondary thing that apple won’t like as much is you could play Steam or even downloaded .exe’s without a VM.
Drew PickardThat’s an actual “Finally”
Alticus@film_girl This doesn’t mean games will play right out the gate - they still have to be ported but using this patch it will be much easier at the API level right?
@Alticus I’ve been hearing from people that would know that a lot of games have already been tested to work out of the box fwiw.
@film_girl Oh wow, like tested since yesterday or maybe even tested with this even before WWDC?