Oh you know what I mean. I call any game that freshly leaves Early Access a 1.0 release. Been calling it that since Minecraft when that game officially left it's "Early Access" in late 2011
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Well, I did it....gaming PC
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Oh you know what I mean. I call any game that freshly leaves Early Access a 1.0 release. Been calling it that since Minecraft when that game officially left it's "Early Access" in late 2011
Not really. The Switch gets more games than Macs have in 10 years combined probably. Switch had even outdated hardware when it launched.
As a game developer, it’s about marketshare, and the pool of potential buyers. This is why I’m developing my game for Windows. Even though it can run on an integrated Intel GPU from 2013 and a laptop at that. Any Mac can handle my game with ease.
I’ll do nearly everything I can to use Mac only. I’m not a fan of Windows anymore. I miss Windows 7. 10 and 11 are far too frustrating and my setup is too power hungry and hot. But I will not sacrifice the large pool of potential buyers and tank my company due to it.
Also, as someone that is quite frustrated with Apple not having a good desktop presence, I do think some of these statements are a bit hyperbolic. I was able to achieve 4K 60 FPS with Final Fantasy 7 Remake via Game Porting Toolkit with my M2 Ultra. So that is clearly newer than your statements about only being able to run 1990s or stuff not even in this decade.
Try getting a 4090. Oh and paying early adopter fee for DDR 5. Those two hurt!I was so tempted to go all the way to the 4080 but I do have a wife who would have gone ballistic if I spend *that* much
Fair point, and I think there must be a lot of throttling going on with the MBP vs the studio's, and a big chunk of the advantage of the dedicated tower is simply thermal - it pulls 450-500 watts, and that'd just melt any laptop on the planet.
Unfortunately, the games that I like to play aren't necessarily on the 'must port' list, and there aren't all that many of them being made these days in the first place. BG3 is about the only one in the past few years, so I'm now going back and picking up all the ones I missed along the way.
To your FF7 experience, maybe if the developers actually port the game it'll be better than trying to run directly under crossover, but again, these are older titles so I don't have much hope they'll invest the $. I completely understand the marketshare argument, which is why I surrendered to reality. I wouldn't build a game for Mac either (and I'm surprised that Larion did).
To your second post...4090 is a sweet card, but I still have a car and mortgage payment I have to make!
I’m referring to the FF7 Remake that came out in 2020. And on PC mid December 2021. So it’s a recent enough game.
interesting. I wonder if i'm actually trying to play things that are too old for crossover to work right.
Could be. With how much we enjoy how backwards compatible Windows is, there are still some old games that require me to boot up an old Windows 98 system to play as it just won't play nice on 10 or 11.
I understand your situation and everyone does what’s best for them. Using Crossover or similar translators/emulators is not painless but so is with all software. Updates to macOS, Crossover, games or launchers like Steam, EA, GOG, Epic and Heroic can break compatibility and it takes time to fix them. I guess you were running Crossover 22. I’m a Bettertester and been running Crossover 23 betas and release candidate and many things that didn’t work now work.
Origin got replaced by EA app and I lost hope too of being able to play Mass Effect. EA app didn’t work in Crossover 22 but now it works well. I can now run both Mass Effect LE and Dragon Age, but it wasn’t painless from the start. Mass Effect needed an update in the EA app but the update didn’t work so I couldn’t launch the game but suddenly one day it didn’t needed the update and been working since. Mass Effect worked in Crossover 22 before but the last update to 22.1.1 broke the game.
Similar thing with Dragon Age: Origins. Being old it didn’t run first due to Error: 0x7E ”Missing NxCharacter.dll but after some research it turned up that even PC gamers could get the same error. The game needed Nvidia PhysX and after installation it runs fine with highest settings at 1440p. No fps counter but runs smoothly with some freezes during video playback. Dragon Age II runs well too with some freezes between scenes and in action depending on how high your settings are. Couldn't get the in-game overlay to work with Shift+F1 in EA App to see fps but it runs fine at 1440p and very high settings. Had to lower the settings though to high to avoid too much freezing frames. I don’t have Inquisition though and according to tests by other people it still doesn’t run.
The latest Steam update broke the Steam app for people like me using Monterey. It worked before the update and people using Ventura/Sonoma don’t seem to have problems. Since 23 release candidate it works again but you have to restart steamwebhelper.exe. Apparently steamwebhelper causes bad performance on PC too since the latest update so I read people disable it. Codeweavers say though they don’t experience any problem with Steam on Monterey. So it’s always like that. Some have problems and others don’t.
Some games also work better with Metal 3, games made in Unreal engine requiring geometry shader support causing black screen. Codeweavers say ”We have some geometry shader support with CrossOver 23, but it depends on Metal features that are only available on Ventura and newer macOS versions”.
If you decide to use Crossover again my tip is to become a Bettertester and eventually get a free license. I became one in April and in just two weeks I reached the 5000 points required, by testing, ranking and reporting app compatibility, writing comments and sending screen shots. I’ve kept testing my favorite games even after so if you’re willing to help the Wine community you don’t have to pay for subscription. You can also get free stuff in exchange for your points.
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Hope you don't use Steam though for anything pre-Win 10-11 from Jan 1 2024.
Steam Support :: Windows 7 and Windows 8 Support
I know exactly what you mean...had to settle for a 3060Ti a while back...I was so tempted to go all the way to the 4080 but I do have a wife who would have gone ballistic if I spend *that* much
Luckily we have Good Old Games and also because it is Windows there are like a hundred workarounds.Hope you don't use Steam though for anything pre-Win 10-11 from Jan 1 2024.
Steam Support :: Windows 7 and Windows 8 Support
help.steampowered.com
Use Windows 10 or 11...
It's not like MacOS where everything breaks all the time. If you really really need Windows 7 for some reason then crack the game.
Now that they have removed the version info from the game while playing referring to GA as 1.0 may not be confusing.
Yeah the initial release of the game on PC was pants. It got better, but should have been good out the gate.
I think BG3 release with as few bugs as it has is a real kick in the pants to these mega-publishers that are now claiming folks should not expect that level of polish from them.
That's one of the biggest things to hold me back on upgrading my desktop, AM5 and the DDR requirement is too big of a hurdle for me. I'm generally happy with my desktop, so a GPU is the only thing on my short list
Intel still supports DDR4 on 12/13th Gen. Though the motherboards that do tend to not be top of the line ones.
Back when DDR5 was very new, I chose to build a 12700K-based system with my existing DDR4 memory - I ended up saving $200-$300 at that point. It’s less bad now, but the performance difference hasn’t been substantial enough for me to care.
For me it was never about cost, just stability. Don't get me wrong - I'm a tech guy (still build soldering kits from time to time), but when I want to play a game, I just want it to work. The ongoing it works/it doesn't brain damage wasn't worth it in the long run. Add in that a lot of my native games were 32-bit, and my library of playable games has shrunk by 80-90% over the past few years. GoG hasn't even updated many of the 'native' mac games to 64-bit (between that and Galaxy's issues, I've surrendered to the Steam Borg).
I tried, I really tried - didn't want to have another machine to maintain (especially a windows one), but in the end, mac gaming is just sub-par compared to Windows on a lot of levels.
Put it another way - I'm sure I'll never have major issues gaming on Windows. I'm pretty sure I will on a mac.
I switched to Mac in 2006, and helped build one of the largest mac deployments in the world. But like most things, if you're not in the apple sandbox (or the reality distortion field), things get painful. To be clear, I'm not challenging anyone else's decision, just sharing my own journey.
Congrats on the new toy. That monitor is only getting you 60 hz though. Might want to consider selling it and getting a 1440p OLED 240hz. There are about six different brands now, but I think they are all the same panel. Or go ultrawide (those are usually 144-175 hz). That 34" Alienware is awesome. Plus, running at the lower resolution is really going to make the video card cooler and quieter.
Curious, what game runs on Windows 7 and doesn't on 10/11?
I have 3 of the ultrafine I use for work, so don't really have room for a 4th. For the kind of games that I play, fps at 60 is just fine. I haven't had to downscale yet on the new machine.
Tex Murphy Overseer is one I've never gotten to work on anything later than 7.
I just saw Crossover released a new version with a lot of updates. Oh well, #timing.
What you said about wanting to just sit down and game is still true. Crossover is less pain, but not pain-free. Windows will always have the best selection and the best performance on these things.
Fair point, and the Sonoma comment reminds me that it's always an arms race between windows/game developers/crossover/wine/apple to see who can break something first. If I weren't in the position to invest in a dedicated gaming pc, I'd pursue it for sure, but I have the luxury of not having to.