So Apple made a game porting toolkit for macOS, based on Wine like Proton is for Linux/Steam Deck and then part of the code has a license that forbids developers to ship with it - evaluation only.
What. So confused on why.
https://twitter.com/never_released/status/1666191614253907968
Apple: we're gonna make it easier to port but actually we're not.
So it's basically very much like a developer-only Proton to evaluate ports, without Apple wanting to maintain a full translation layer like Valve do with Proton - they still want developers to port.
(but we've already seen users download it, and then use this porting toolkit to run games on macOS so people will do it anyway lol)
@gamingonlinux "because we can't be fucked"
@gamingonlinux Isn't that basically what happened with OS X? They said, "we're using BSD!" and then, "but nothing will seemlessly interoperate!"
@gamingonlinux@mastodon.social is it because they distribute it through the mac app store and want you to distribute your games through there? weird
@gamingonlinux@mastodon.social would it be possible to make a lutris-like launcher for macos games then?
@j0 @gamingonlinux Apparently, only for testing purposes
@gamingonlinux What? Users going around absurd ToS stipulations? That can never happen! /s
@gamingonlinux It's not gonna be able to run on Apple Silicon, right? At least not anything written for x86. Seems kinda pointless if you're transitioning to an entirely different architecture.
@StarkRG It works on Apple Silicon, it's part of the point.
@gamingonlinux If it's based on Wine, how the heck does that work? Wine just provides libraries, not architecture emulation...
@StarkRG @gamingonlinux apple already has a (very impressive) x86->m1 emulator, this provides the missing bits: os calls and shader language translation
@StarkRG @gamingonlinux Wine works on ARM64 for ARM64 Windows binaries, if I am not mistaken, and the developers would undoubtably be able to build their own game for ARM.
If there are binaries which cannot be ported my guess is that it would work well under Rosetta, as a lot of applications are already using it.
@StarkRG The got Rosetta.
@gamingonlinux It’s meant to allow you to very quickly test your game (with little to no changes) on a Mac to see where the gaps are. You then use other new tools to convert your shaders to Metal and start to port your game. Definitely not full on Proton where there’s not a ton you need to do to get it to work, but should make the process much simpler for devs.
@gamingonlinux For a company so focused Apple is always so confused about gaming. It’s so strange.
They spent their very valuable keynote time on Kojima’s 3 years old game. What’s the point if you’re never going to go all in. Gamers don’t buy devices just to play one game a year.
@gamingonlinux This is going to roll out in their annual release this year, the license would probably change at that time.
@stevestreza @gamingonlinux the video on developer.apple.com only talks about using the game porting toolkit to evaluate game performance before attempting a native port, than porting to native apple APIs. Sooo... there is a chance this part of the licence wont change... https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2023/10123/
@gamingonlinux
I've been using #CrossOver for #Mac for years. It basically killed native #macOS #games market when it became good enough.
@gamingonlinux they want devs to use it and port their games to macOS, not ship their windows game along with the porting toolkit lol
@gamingonlinux isn't this against wine licence, I thought wine was a copy left
) @skymtf@tech.lgbt @gamingonlinux@mastodon.social they made the source available, so they're not in violation ig
@julia @gamingonlinux so is it just appstore guidelines preventing devs from shipping with it, or is that it has other propriety stuff that you can't ship with. Cause if its just appstore someone just gonna bundle it in a steam game
@gamingonlinux @julia yeah they added more propriety stuff into it oooof! This won't stop people from building launchers built around this though
@skymtf@tech.lgbt @gamingonlinux@mastodon.social not sure on this, I'd have to look into it further
I believe it has code from crossover - a commercial product - that they've licensed to be used as part of this porting effort, not for general use. I also suspect Apple's quality requirements are a driver - a ported game is likely to be of superior quality to one that's just passed unoptimized to an emulator, because the game's developers have skin in the game.
@gamingonlinux
I wish Linux had a way to force people to do native ports :-p
(then again, I'm totally fine with Linuxports that use dxvk-native under the hood, as long as it's properly tested and works well)
@gamingonlinux well that's quite sad.
@gamingonlinux well, since avahi already runs faster on mac hardware than macOS why would anyone use macOS for gaming anyway...
@gamingonlinux knowing them, they did this to prohibit third party storefronts to integrate this solution into their software.
@gamingonlinux this is just my theory, but I feel that it wouldn't be weird of them to prohibit/restrict apps with third party marketplaces on their desktop ecosystem in the long run considering they already prohibited them on the iphone