So in the end... the easiest way to develop cross-platform PC games is just target Windows and Direct3D 12, and let Wine/other D3D12 emulators handle the heavy lifting.
As a user... Tell me why I shouldn't just run games directly on Windows, the native platform?
As a user... Tell me why I shouldn't just run games directly on Windows, the native platform?
If you’re fine with using Windows then knock yourself out! I just came from another thread where people were complaining bitterly about the nonsense and dark patterns Microsoft is pumping into Windows to monetize users to the hilt. Frankly, I’d rather just avoid all of that!
If you're ok with everything else that comes with windows, that's fine. I'd rather not. I don't want to deal with its shell, update schedule, ad pushing, etc. for example so the emulator is a better approach for me.
And +10 years ago nobody thought to play on Mac. But now with the market share they have… Hard to ignore as a business and if Apple do all the heavy lifting for us games are going to come on Mac.
> . But now with the market share they have… Hard to ignore as a busines
That is not true at all. Ignoring Mac as a gamedev is one of the easiest decisions we've ever made at every studio I worked at. Even the studio where the boss used a Mac! The market share is minuscule and lacks even the Steamdeck and proton pushing linux support into Steam games.
That Apple saw fit to half-effort this tooling then lock it behind a license which prevents gamedevs shipping with it, and steam from packaging it, means Apple has yet again demonstrated their time tested poor support for games.
Statcounter is websites, games are not websites and you need to use an appropriate data source. Steam reports 1-2% for Mac users. My own game's wishlist stats are showing Mac is less popular than linux!
> My own game's wishlist stats are showing Mac is less popular than linux!
If you're talking about Railgrade (from your bio), couldn't that simply be because your game only shows as supporting Windows? Why would a Mac user wishlist a game they can't play? Linux users have had Proton for a few years now and the discussed Mac toolkit was only announced a couple days ago.
The platform wishlist breakdown occurs when players make a specific choice. Players use it as a "vote" for their platform. Thus Linux users are voting for Linux trying to convince us as devs to support them, Mac users are doing likewise.
If the Linux users were vastly out of line, I'd question them. Instead they are inline with the Steam survey. Anyway, the idea that Mac users are not big games is about as controversial as the color of the sky.
That makes sense. I was just a bit confused. I wasn't aware that's how the wishlist was used by some. With that said, I imagine Linux users are probably more familiar with that use than Mac users (i.e., power user vs. casual user). But, if it's representative of the Steam survey, then I suppose it's as good a metric as any.
Regardless, I definitely didn't mean to imply that Mac users are big gamers. Most Macs are MacBooks and most people don't buy a laptop primarily for gaming. It'd be a secondary concern. There's also a chicken and egg situation in which Mac users may not be big gamers because there's not many games for Macs (not to mention that Steam runs terribly and is buggy on M-series Macs). Any Mac users that are big gamers probably have a console and/or PC (like myself) due to this situation, so any wishlisting is done on the device I play games on, despite the desire to be able to play on the go on my MacBook. Any Mac users that aren't big gamers may be due to having limited games. My wife who isn't a big gamer, but does like to play games occasionally, is relegated to using Bootcamp on her iMac.
Of course, that’s assuming that Steam is where all Mac users go to get games. Some of the bigger Mac titles like World of Warcraft aren’t on Steam, so it’s not hard to imagine a Mac user who more casually games not bothering to download Steam because their needs are met elsewhere.
Lag time in port availability also probably factors in too. If you open Steam on a Mac you’re shown a bunch of brand new games without Mac ports… if you don’t dig a little deeper it gives one the impression that they don’t have many Mac games and isn’t worth bothering with.
It does not sound like you have a better data source and are working backwards to explain the discrepancy.
Instead it sounds like you are reaching for excuses to ignore what you wish to be not-true. You clearly care a lot about gaming on Mac. Sadly Apple does not care. Hence how a rather decent US PC market share translates to trivial games market share.
When Apple starts caring they have the money to buy ports. There is no need for excuses.
I would say I care more about games being multiplatform by default (as most other software is now) than I do specifically Mac gaming. For playing games I have a custom built Windows tower, but would rather that not be necessary. While the situation has improved dramatically on Linux in the past few years it still has notable gaps (practically all of VR for example), and so the Windows partition persists.
Windows isn't my primary operating system because gaming isn't the primary thing I use my computer for.
I code, and in a similar way doing software development on Mac and Windows appears to be "just run Linux in a VM and pretend to use the primary operating system".
Because the experience of gaming on Steam Deck's SteamOS is better. Because I already have a MacBook and occassionally want to play a round of Civilization or Victoria 3 on it.
Removing OS silos for gaming is amazing, Valve really opened the floodgates with Proton. Windows, Linux and now macOS all being able to run same games is just great.
What's the point of censoring only one character from the word "fucking"? Both you and everyone that reads your comment know exactly what you are saying, so it's not like you are shielding anyone from anything. And neither is there anyone who is going to punish you for saying a naughty word on the internet. What are you afraid is going to happen if you write "fucking"?
I genuinely want to know the real answer, because this kind of behaviour confuses me. And every time I ask someone about it they don't answer, or give a non-answer.
If HN blocked comments with certain words, I'd understand.
If you genuinely find fuck an offensive word, and instead chose to use some other word instead, I would understand.
But this makes no sense. Please be so kind as to explain.
It is a stylistic device that serves as a sort of emphasis. Rhetorically censoring all or part calls attention to it as profanity.
You hear an analogous effect used a lot in spoken speech (definitely in the UK, not sure about USA), for example, "ff-<beat>-in' thing". This stresses it in a way, similar to varying tone or volume, that would be missed in a flat reading.
That's an interesting theory, but I don't believe any of it.
There are many better ways of calling attention, or adding emphasis to profanity without having to resort to making it look less profane.
And in the specific case of the comment I replied to it does not look like they were particularly angry or frustrated enough to apply this technique of yours to just one word, while the rest of the sentence is fairly innocuous. And I further doubt that if any (neutral) literary analysis were to be applied to that comment, that people would think that stormking was so angry that they were actually trying to apply any kind of emphasis the profanity.
Emphasis not just in the narrow sense of showing intense emotion, but rather the general concept of giving a sentence rhythm and prosody, often to highlight a wry or ironic situation. Your analysis is correct that GP likely did not do it entirely to invite readers to get annoyed on their behalf, but rather to humourously focus on the contrast between the arduity of setting up and waiting for a dual-boot on one hand, and playing a "f*cking game" on the other.
> There are many better ways of calling attention
Written expression is a form of art, not a formula with a correct answer.
I think you’re looking at it the wrong way. If you’re happy using Windows there’s no reason to stop using it. But a computer is capable of many more things than playing games and many of us prefer doing those things on macOS. This allows us to have the best of both worlds. If you don’t want it you’re under no obligation to take it.
Because you don't want to use Windows? I use Linux for gaming becasue I use Linux in general. Wine / dxvk / vkd3d-proton do a great job of helping to run games, but native games on Linux would be still better.
Some developers noticed this when Valve released the Steam Deck and Proton. Some had Linux ports but they were slow and didn't work perfectly. They just removed those and let the SD run the windows version through Proton. Boom, Linux version :D
The GPU in the M series chips is pretty good and if your software is optimized, it can run great. They also have great battery life even when playing games. Unfortunately, Apple has ignored game developers for a long time and even now they don't permit redistribution of the game porting toolkit
As a user... Tell me why I shouldn't just run games directly on Windows, the native platform?