Oxygen Not included alpha on MAC's

[Jimothan]

I am a fellow Mac user (please don't make fun of me I know I should get a PC).  and I'm wondering will the alpha ever be released on Mac or will I have to wait for the beta to play this AMAZING game.

[Octyabr]

I'm gonna be the bad guy (because you are a Mac user, muhahaha!) by telling you that you must wait after the beta to play it.

Now in all seriousness, maybe after the alpha, for what I've read, Unity engine seems to be quite portable. So, once all major bugs get squashed, and major content get released, the game could be ported.

[AlexRou]

Unity by itself may be portable BUT any plugins or custom shaders will be windows specific unless they created those with mac/linux in mind. So depending on how they did things it won't be as simple as fix all the bugs and click build for mac. Even then performance would be very different so another round of optimizations and that usually causes bugs and it becomes a feedback loop until its good enough.

[Feanaaro]

I'm also on a Mac, but I really would like to try this game. Has anyone had any luck in running it through Crossover (or Wine, I guess)?

[AlexRou]

1 hour ago, Feanaaro said:

I'm also on a Mac, but I really would like to try this game. Has anyone had any luck in running it through Crossover (or Wine, I guess)?

The only way is bootcamp and actually install windows.

[PickPay]

I'd very much want to have it for Mac OS asap and not have to run Windows just for this game.

[Thisiscotty]

maybe use wine or bootcamp for now?

[AlexRou]

39 minutes ago, PickPay said:

I'd very much want to have it for Mac OS asap and not have to run Windows just for this game.

If you want to play games this will happen a lot. 90% of all games are for windows first. And very little is going to change unless macs start having powerful CPUs and GPUs and not something just as good as 3~ years ago. Also developing for mac is a huge pain because macs want everything to be done their way on their terms with their tools.

[PickPay]

2 hours ago, AlexRou said:

If you want to play games this will happen a lot. 90% of all games are for windows first. And very little is going to change unless macs start having powerful CPUs and GPUs and not something just as good as 3~ years ago. Also developing for mac is a huge pain because macs want everything to be done their way on their terms with their tools.

I've been playing on Mac for 20 years so I know what the situation is.

CPUs are powerful and GPUs as well but the iMac has laptop class cards so you cant compare to a full size one as for the Mac Pro well they have pro cards not made for gaming.

Developing on and for Mac is actually easier but if you start on another platform then porting can be complicated.

There are many reasons why some systems and standards are adopted over others and not necessarily because they are superior.

[AlexRou]

Just now, PickPay said:

I've been playing on Mac for 20 years so I know what the situation is.

CPUs are powerful and GPUs as well but the iMac has laptop class cards so you cant compare to a full size one as for the Mac Pro well they have pro cards not made for gaming.

Developing on and for Mac is actually easier but if you start on another platform then porting can be complicated.

There are many reasons why some systems and standards are adopted over others and not necessarily because they are superior.

" CPUs are powerful and GPUs as well" not exactly ... most macs don't even have a dedicated graphics card and those that do aren't exactly very strong either. And CPU performance have been the same for the past few years.

Also developing on a mac means using mac's programming language, using mac's tools and using mac's graphics system. That is if you want to get the most performance out of a mac. Porting from windows is essentially redoing the a large portion of the game if they want to push for the best performance rather than something that just runs. Developing on a mac robs you of any choice you had for everything. Its either do it the mac way or be slow or not work at all.

[Risu]

2 hours ago, AlexRou said:

" CPUs are powerful and GPUs as well" not exactly ... most macs don't even have a dedicated graphics card and those that do aren't exactly very strong either. And CPU performance have been the same for the past few years.

Also developing on a mac means using mac's programming language, using mac's tools and using mac's graphics system. That is if you want to get the most performance out of a mac. Porting from windows is essentially redoing the a large portion of the game if they want to push for the best performance rather than something that just runs. Developing on a mac robs you of any choice you had for everything. Its either do it the mac way or be slow or not work at all.

Thankfully Unity takes the brunt of the force and Klei only need to worry about porting a complicated native library.
 

[AlexRou]

3 minutes ago, Risu said:

Thankfully Unity takes the brunt of the force and Klei only need to worry about porting a complicated native library.
 

Nope, they have to also port all custom shaders since they would be in dx 11.

[Risu]

1 minute ago, AlexRou said:

Nope, they have to also port all shaders since they would be in dx 11.

Ahh that's true. Their rendering engine is just one big shader.
 

[xepherys]

On 3/19/2017 at 6:14 PM, AlexRou said:

" CPUs are powerful and GPUs as well" not exactly ... most macs don't even have a dedicated graphics card and those that do aren't exactly very strong either. And CPU performance have been the same for the past few years.

Also developing on a mac means using mac's programming language, using mac's tools and using mac's graphics system. That is if you want to get the most performance out of a mac. Porting from windows is essentially redoing the a large portion of the game if they want to push for the best performance rather than something that just runs. Developing on a mac robs you of any choice you had for everything. Its either do it the mac way or be slow or not work at all.

You don't do a lot of development, do you?  Developing on a Mac means using any programming language (like C#, C++, Java, et cetera), or using Unity and not having to worry about that at all.  It means using Mac tools, like Unity, or Unreal, or Visual Studio (exactly the same tools that many people use on PC).  It means using a Mac graphics system, like OpenGL, on Mac hardware, like an nVidia or Radeon card.

In fact, my development in Unity kicks out debug builds for Mac and Windows easily, and the other guy on my dev team develops on a Windows system exactly in line with my development on a Mac.  It literally makes zero difference.  Most MacBooks (laptops) don't have a dedicated graphics card, but all iMacs and Mac Pros do, at least in the last decade.

Why bother speaking on matters of which you have little or no knowledge?

[xepherys]

On 3/19/2017 at 8:53 PM, Risu said:

Ahh that's true. Their rendering engine is just one big shader.
 

 

On 3/19/2017 at 8:51 PM, AlexRou said:

Nope, they have to also port all custom shaders since they would be in dx 11.

 

Actually, in Unity shaders are written in HLSL and Unity compiles them to the platform at build time.

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-ShadingLanguage.html

So the shader is written once for Unity, and Unity compiles it to d3d/HLSL for Windows and OpenGL for Mac and PSSL for PS4, et cetera.  In modern versions of Unity (really anything Unity 4 and later, and definitely in Unity 5 versions) there's VERY little reason to write your shader code specifically for a target platform.  I would be utterly shocked if Klei is doing so.  In fact, I would be shocked if any good developer did, unless they couldn't port some existing shader that they desperately wanted to use - but that seems fairly unlikely as well.

[absimiliard]

I haven't heard of anyone using WINE to run ONI yet.  But I can attest that you don't need to bootcamp it.  Installing Parallels and running it in a VM works just fine -- and allows me to put it in it's own space and simply swipe back and forth between the game and my macbook.

 

I do use the Pro version, but I doubt that for this usage you need that -- I suspect either the Home of Business editions would work just fine as well.  (most users won't need the extras in Pro)

[PickPay]

15 hours ago, xepherys said:

You don't do a lot of development, do you?  Developing on a Mac means using any programming language (like C#, C++, Java, et cetera), or using Unity and not having to worry about that at all.  It means using Mac tools, like Unity, or Unreal, or Visual Studio (exactly the same tools that many people use on PC).  It means using a Mac graphics system, like OpenGL, on Mac hardware, like an nVidia or Radeon card.

In fact, my development in Unity kicks out debug builds for Mac and Windows easily, and the other guy on my dev team develops on a Windows system exactly in line with my development on a Mac.  It literally makes zero difference.  Most MacBooks (laptops) don't have a dedicated graphics card, but all iMacs and Mac Pros do, at least in the last decade.

Why bother speaking on matters of which you have little or no knowledge?

Maybe because they want to convince everyone that Windows is the ultimate platform for gaming and that Mac isn't viable ?

[absimiliard]

16 minutes ago, PickPay said:

Maybe because they want to convince everyone that Windows is the ultimate platform for gaming and that Mac isn't viable ?

 

Oh no, definitely NOT that.  During the development of Don't Starve Together they pushed hard to get the mac version out.  Klei is definitely not a partisan as far as platform goes.  Honestly, they are the best development house I know of -- that doesn't sound like them at all to me.

[xepherys]

5 hours ago, PickPay said:

Maybe because they want to convince everyone that Windows is the ultimate platform for gaming and that Mac isn't viable ?

Hah!  Probably the case.  I don't really get why it matters so much to people.  I game on whatever I have... Mac, PC, phone, Playstation  /shrug

But yeah, some people just want to be right, I guess.

[PickPay]

8 hours ago, absimiliard said:

 

Oh no, definitely NOT that.  During the development of Don't Starve Together they pushed hard to get the mac version out.  Klei is definitely not a partisan as far as platform goes.  Honestly, they are the best development house I know of -- that doesn't sound like them at all to me.

I didn't mean Klei but other players

[absimiliard]

Doh!  Sorry, bad mis-read on my part.

[AlexRou]

Just want to clear things up a little. Was ranting without thinking software devs would read the rant so I apologize for it not being accurate. I'll admit I avoid touching OSX so feel free to correct everything.

On 6/7/2017 at 5:40 AM, xepherys said:

You don't do a lot of development, do you?  Developing on a Mac means using any programming language (like C#, C++, Java, et cetera), or using Unity and not having to worry about that at all.  It means using Mac tools, like Unity, or Unreal, or Visual Studio (exactly the same tools that many people use on PC).  It means using a Mac graphics system, like OpenGL, on Mac hardware, like an nVidia or Radeon card.

In fact, my development in Unity kicks out debug builds for Mac and Windows easily, and the other guy on my dev team develops on a Windows system exactly in line with my development on a Mac.  It literally makes zero difference.  Most MacBooks (laptops) don't have a dedicated graphics card, but all iMacs and Mac Pros do, at least in the last decade.

Why bother speaking on matters of which you have little or no knowledge?

Was thinking of engine dev when I wrote that post.

To interact with the display manager you're going to have to use obj C or swift (mac specific) somewhere. I know they can call C/C++ but anything interacting with the window and input events are going to be in obj C or swift and that means using xcode (mac specific).

OpenGL on mac isn't the same as OpenGL on windows or linux, each of them followed the spec differently in certain areas. And if you'd want anything faster you're going to use Metal (mac specific). There's Vulkan on mac but even that is just a wrapper over Metal and prob will cause a ton of problems.

And most mac gamers are not going to have "high end" macs, they are going to have the ones with only integrated gpus (which is why I was thinking of Metal). Even the gpus in new iMacs/MBPs are pretty midrange compared to a PC.

 

For those that can't use Unity or Unreal for various reasons that is how alien macs are.

 

On 6/7/2017 at 11:17 AM, xepherys said:

Actually, in Unity shaders are written in HLSL and Unity compiles them to the platform at build time.

https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SL-ShadingLanguage.html

Did not know that, my bad. btw it's CG not HLSL

 

[xepherys]

@AlexRou - this is much closer to accurate, but still not 100%.  You don't have to code in Obj-C or Swift (Swift is pretty much dead anyway) unless you are programming in XCode, but XCode is not a requirement.  You can use Xamarian (Mono) or Visual Studio for Mac to write Mac-native applications in C# using the .NET framework.  Remember, in the end it's all about the compiler.  With the correct compiler, you can use any language to target any platform.  I could, in theory, write a game for PS4 or XB1 in Atari Basic if I had the right compiler for it.  Obj-C in XCode is just Apple's first-party platform option.  I'm sure a lot of Mac devs use it.  I work software QA and tools dev for a software company.  Of course we use PCs, and everything is in C#/.NET.  I'm comfortable with it... so that's also what I use at home on my Mac.

You're correct about the GL implementation, but there isn't a ton of deviation.  The difference between OpenGL on Mac and OpenGL on Windows is far, far smaller than the difference between OpenGL and DX.  And yes, most people don't have high-end Macs, but also most games don't require high-end video cards.  I used to be a PC gamer and spent tons of money on the latest hardware and OC'ing all my components and setting up water cooling.  But then I realized that personally, I didn't really care if I got 130fps or 60fps    And most games don't require high-end hardware anyway.  Steam lists ONI's minimum graphics card as an Intel HD 4600.  My late-2011 MacBook Pro (which is not an uncommon Apple laptop) only has an HD 3000 for it's built-in, but also has a discrete Radeon 6750M.  All iMacs since the unibody design (and possibly before then) have discrete cards that can easily run ONI or Don't Starve.  I own a few hundred Steam games, of which about 90% work on my iMac (every one with SteamPlay).  Of the ones that don't, it's simply because they weren't developed for SteamPlay, not because the hardware can't handle it.  I can play them easily in Bootcamp under Windows on my Mac.

A big thing that PC gamers don't realize about Mac performance, including with regards to games, and especially since the switch to Intel from PowerPC, is that performance on an identically equipped Mac is higher than the same hardware on a PC-based system.  Back when I purchased my first "new" Mac (I used Macs as a kid, then switched to PC for gaming), I got a MBP in 2008.  It was a pretty decent system, and was specced identically to the HP laptop I was getting rid of (an early gaming-focused HP laptop).  Same CPU, same memory, same GPU, etc.  I could run Bootcamp with Windows Vista (the HP had Vista) and all benchmarks and in-game play worked far better on the MBP than the HP.  This is, in large part, because drivers and hardware run in much better harmony because there's no discrepancy with what hardware the drivers need to support.

Of course, I prefer to game on a console, so my expectations are probably lower than most PC gamers with regards to how things should look.  But then, with the very high number of mobile games that do very well, especially low-poly games, that attitude is shifting anyhow.

[AlexRou]

31 minutes ago, xepherys said:

this is much closer to accurate, but still not 100%.  You don't have to code in Obj-C or Swift (Swift is pretty much dead anyway) unless you are programming in XCode, but XCode is not a requirement.  You can use Xamarian (Mono) or Visual Studio for Mac to write Mac-native applications in C# using the .NET framework.

C# is no where near good enough for game engine dev sadly, so that point still stands kinda.

As for the rest .... was just trying to point out the amount of work involved to make something that runs on macs only to end up with most of the players having integrated gpus. For ONI sure that works out, but for larger more graphically demanding games not really. 

If there were more powerful macs at the same price point of comparable PCs which would in turn mean more gamers on such hardware, then maybe macs would be a better market. But sadly the reality is that until that day, gaming on macs will be limited to what runs on intel gpus. Sure you can say there will be a ton of casual games. But for any serious gamer windows is the only way.

The only possible alternative to windows I see is Linux, since it is not limited to hardware like OSX and the only problem it has are drivers and lack of games. Both problems which are much more solveable than getting Apple to put GTX 1080s into macs without charging people $30K.

[xepherys]

@AlexRou - I don't disagree that the Apple hardware platform could be better for gamers, and no C# isn't ideal for making engines, but really it just comes down to adoption rate.  You can build a game engine in C/C++ on a Mac (ask Bungie, they did it for years, even in the 68000 days before PowerPC came along).  Then, most of the games I play don't require high-end graphics cards anymore.  I'd rather play ONI or Don't Starve (or Terraria or similar games) than CoD, and even when I play FPS games, I don't care about running it at 100fps with UHD resolutions and 4x AA.  I'm more interested in the game being fun.  I know that's not a common standpoint these days lol.

But yes, more readily available high-end Apple hardware would make a difference.  And more and more people are building Hackintoshes with higher end hardware all the time, so that's nice to see as well.