Newly announced games for Mac.

[Colstan]

Looks like we're starting to see the first of the Unreal Engine 5 games for Mac. Fallen Leaf studios has announced that Fort Solis will be released on the Mac.

Description: "Fort Solis is a single player third person thriller set over one long night on Mars. Engineer Jack Leary responds to a routine alarm where events unravel and escalate out of control in a way he could never have imagined."

More details on the Steam page. The latest trailer:

 

[Colstan]

Another Unreal Engine 5 game just dropped. Bloober Team announced that "Layers of Fear" is coming to Apple Silicon, and "takes full advantage of the Metal framework".

Description: "All stories must come to an end, even twisted and eerie ones. The canvas. The stage. The novel. This narrative-focused psychological horror experience is ready for its final brushstrokes, its curtain call, its final chapter. Are you ready to return and face your fears one last time?"

Freshly baked trailer specifically for the Apple Silicon announcement:



It has the same release date as other platforms, June 15th, for release on the Mac App Store. This should be the first Unreal Engine 5 game released for the Mac.

(Note: I edited the title of this thread to include all Unreal Engine 5 games, if and when they arrive, instead of just Fort Solis, as originally posted.)

 

[Jimmyjames]

Wasn’t able to login from my previous account due to some weirdness with the Google login link!

In any case Fort Solis looks great and its cool that it’s coming to macOS day one.

Is it me or am I seeing a slow uptick in Mac games? It could be wild optimism! We still need NMS however and the Feral interactive game promised last year.

 

[Colstan]

Wasn’t able to login from my previous account due to some weirdness with the Google login link!

Glad to have you back. Drop @Eric a note and perhaps he can help out. If not, I welcome the artist formerly known as Jimmyjames.

Is it me or am I seeing a slow uptick in Mac games? It could be wild optimism! We still need NMS however and the Feral interactive game promised last year.

I'm getting that impression, as well. I got dunked on at MacRumors for suggesting otherwise, but I think the selection is improving. I've been watching MrMacRight's videos for years now, and in the past, there was maybe one "AAA" game, a couple of "AA" games, and a shedload of indie titles. In his most recent video about Mac games for 2023, almost all of the games are "AAA" or "AA" titles. Keep in mind that he made that video before Fort Solis and Layers of Fear were announced.

Sure, this isn't an explosion of games that will match the PC catalog, but it's far better than it was just a year ago. I think Apple's efforts at courting game developers has been paying off.

 

[Jimmyjames]

Glad to have you back. Drop @Eric a note and perhaps he can help out. If not, I welcome the artist formerly known as Jimmyjames.

Thanks, I will consider it.

I'm getting that impression, as well. I got dunked on at MacRumors for suggesting otherwise, but I think the selection is improving. I've been watching MrMacRight's videos for years now, and in the past, there was maybe one "AAA" game, a couple of "AA" games, and a shedload of indie titles. In his most recent video about Mac games for 2023, almost all of the games are "AAA" or "AA" titles. Keep in mind that he made that video before Fort Solis and Layers of Fear were announced.

Grrrr Macrumors. I can't even think about engaging there. I occasionally browse the forums to catch up with some interesting posts from a few people (yourself, leman, Homy etc). Then like a bolt out of the blue, I am confronted by the devil themself m***y and G*****Coder. Nothing but crapping on any green shoots emerging for mac gaming.

Sure, this isn't an explosion of games that will match the PC catalog, but it's far better than it was just a year ago. I think Apple's efforts at courting game developers has been paying off.

In any case I agree with you. I wonder if we'll see even more announcements at WWDC? Given the unveiling of the VR headset, I would bet yes on that!

 

[Colstan]

Grrrr Macrumors. I can't even think about engaging there. I occasionally browse the forums to catch up with some interesting posts from a few people (yourself, leman, Homy etc).

You've probably noticed that my attendance at MacRumors has reduced considerably.

Then like a bolt out of the blue, I am confronted by the devil themself m***y and G*****Coder. Nothing but crapping on any green shoots emerging for mac gaming.

i7troll and Grumps are two of the names that I scroll right by. If you pay them no mind, then they can't bother you.

Remember, never argue with a moron, they'll just drag you down to their level, and then beat you with experience.

In any case I agree with you. I wonder if we'll see even more announcements at WWDC? Given the unveiling of the VR headset, I would bet yes on that!

I'm not expecting much Mac stuff at WWDC. I hope I'm wrong, but I think the gimmick goggles are going to take center stage, and eat up all of the press attention. Then there's the yearly iPhone event in September. I wouldn't be surprised if major Mac announcements don't come until October or November, which includes the forlorn, much neglected Mac Pro. As I said, I hope I'm wrong.

 

[Jimmyjames]

Hideo Kojima has been spotted near Apple’s campus. I’d link to the tweet, but Gurman blocked me! in any case could be more exciting gaming news.

 

[Colstan]

 

[Jimmyjames]

Another nail in the coffin of Mac gaming. /s

"Multiverse Adventure RPG Dragonheir: Silent Gods to Host its Second Closed Beta Test" - Games Press

Press releases and assets from across the games industry - screenshots, videos, logos, packshots, artwork, PR contacts, release dates

www.gamespress.com

 

[Colstan]

Another nail in the coffin of Mac gaming. /s

Honestly, I saw that title announced, but didn't post it. At first, I was intrigued, because I'm a big fan of RPGs and D&D. Then I took a look at the system requirements, and how paltry they are, because it's optimized to work on iPhone and Android. While I'm glad to have more games on Mac, I'm only personally interested in releases that take advantage of the performance provided by desktop computers, which this title does not. It's a mobile game that's being upscaled to desktop, simple as that. There are many reasons to be optimistic about Mac gaming, but in my opinion, this ain't one of them.

 

[Jimmyjames]

Honestly, I saw that title announced, but didn't post it. At first, I was intrigued, because I'm a big fan of RPGs and D&D. Then I took a look at the system requirements, and how paltry they are, because it's optimized to work on iPhone and Android. While I'm glad to have more games on Mac, I'm only personally interested in releases that take advantage of the performance provided by desktop computers, which this title does not. It's a mobile game that's being upscaled to desktop, simple as that. There are many reasons to be optimistic about Mac gaming, but in my opinion, this ain't one of them.

Irrespective of whether it's a "desktop" game or "AAA" game, my post is reflective of a trickle becoming a stream. I dont think these announcements are a coincidence this close to WWDC.

 

[Colstan]

Irrespective of whether it's a "desktop" game or "AAA" game, my post is reflective of a trickle becoming a stream. I dont think these announcements are a coincidence this close to WWDC.

That's a fair point, as I said, the trend is positive. I was simply addressing this particular title, and compared to the Unreal Engine 5 games, this one doesn't strike me as particularly notable.

 

[Colstan]

By the way, is it just me, or are the major "AAA" game announcements trending toward horror titles? We've got Resident Evil Village - Winters' Expansion, The Medium, and now Layers of Fear and Fort Solis. Are the collective developers community trying to scare Mac users to death?

 

[Jimmyjames]

By the way, is it just me, or are the major "AAA" game announcements trending toward horror titles? We've got Resident Evil Village - Winters' Expansion, The Medium, and now Layers of Fear and Fort Solis. Are the collective developers community trying to scare Mac users to death?

Hmmm that’s interesting. I would have thought Apple would prefer more family friendly content. Perhaps I misunderstood them.

Speaking of misunderstandings, I had assumed Apple has been approaching game devs, and that may be the case, but I think the amount may be overstated. Over at the other place it’s been stated that RE:Village on macOS was the result of Apple’s approach, and that the RE4 remake has been held back due to some upsets over bugs. I doubt that either Capcom or Apple would allow an opportunity to make money to be held hostage over a bug! I’m trying to recall where, but I’m sure Apple has publicly stated that Capcom approached them.

 

[Colstan]

Hmmm that’s interesting. I would have thought Apple would prefer more family friendly content. Perhaps I misunderstood them.

If Apple wants in on the "AAA" gaming market, then they're going to need to allow R-rated content. That's the sort of experience that many in the target demographic cares about. However, I think a horror focus is more happenstance, rather than planned.

Speaking of misunderstandings, I had assumed Apple has been approaching game devs, and that may be the case, but I think the amount may be overstated.

I agree. I think there's an assumption that, just because many of these titles are exclusive to the Mac App Store, that Apple must be funding them. They may simply be bidding for exclusivity rights, just like Epic or Valve would do. The Mac App Store could use the traffic, and high profile games are part of that. It also ties directly to Apple Silicon marketing.

My hunch is that it's a little bit of both. Apple puts out feelers, says that they've got this unified model under Metal 3, and is much more console-like compared to the vast configurations in PC land. That's a potential draw. I recently purchased Dying Light with all the DLCs for like $5, but it only works with Radeon cards, limiting its potential audience, back when it was released. That's probably part of the reason that Dying Light 2 never made it to Mac. With Apple Silicon, developers have a much more simplified process to deal with.

Apple can also tout these games during keynotes. With millions of people watching, it's free advertising, and Larian has benefited from that for years now. Add on top of that the increase in Mac market share and user base, which allows Apple to make a case to developers.

I doubt that Apple is outright funding these titles, perhaps developers reached out to Apple, perhaps Apple did with them, maybe a combination of the two. Likely, nobody really knows outside of the relevant companies.

 

[Colstan]

Piranha Bites and THQ Nordic have ported ELEX II to the Mac, and will be available on the Mac App Store this June. It's not a UE5 game, using the custom Genome Engine. The developers claim that it took about eight months to port to Metal, and had assistance from Apple's engineers during the process.



On a more fundamental level, is the technical FAQ sheet, which covers the process of porting to Metal.

Bringing ELEX II to Mac

Piranha Bytes always strives to deliver more complex and enhanced games, and bringing ELEX II to Mac was no exception. ELEX II takes advantage of the Metal shading language to tap into Apple silicon performance. With Metal's Indirect Command Buffer (ICB) approach on Mac, the game also fully embraces GPU driven pipelines. In a little over eight months, a team specializing in GPU and Metal ported the DX12 version of ELEX II to Mac

Tech FAQ of ELEX II on Mac
Overview
• GPU driven pipeline with ICB filled at the end of culling process
• There are more than 6+ GPU culling segments (Depth Pre-Pass, Shadows) in the
frame with ICB used in every segment

Tech Features Deep Dive
ELEX II worked closely with Metal engineers to take full advantage of the many powerful features and tools to deliver a truly wonderful game. We’ve outlined some of these features below:

ICB: ICB was used with the following parameters
• Inherited pipelines
• Inherited buffers
• Render only (not compute)
• All types of draw + tessellation as well

Shaders
• Slang tool ported to macOS with the source level HLSL->Metal 2.x conversion for: - Vertex and Fragment shaders
- Geometry shaders
- Tessellation shaders
- On/Off support for argument buffers
- Emulation of DX12 RootSignatures
- Support for most of ‘non-typical’ stuff like atomics, SIMD groups

Metal approaches on macOS
• Utilizing multi-threaded Command Buffer encoding and submission, which means the game can efficiently render the massive open-world in a parallel manner
• The game uses double buffering and not a single ‘wait’, everything is happening without any CPU-GPU synchronization point.
• The game fully embraces Argument buffers for passing textures and samplers inside shaders.

Game Technology used and ported to Metal
• Global Illumination
• Volumetric Fog
• Deferred Clustered Lighting • Procedural Sky
• GPU driven cloth
• GPU driven particles
• Realistic snow and rain
• Day/night cycles with relit reflection probes

Full compatibility with Metal
Tessellation shaders:
• Conversion of normal HLSL shaders into Metal based approaches
• Massive use of tessellation in effects (fire, water), extremely tessellated objects (alien lifeforms)
• Nothing was compromised, every aspect of tessellation was preserved

DX12 API to Metal
• Imitation of Root Signatures
• Imitation of Resources allocation/usage/DescriptorTables
• Behind the scenes switching of Render Command Encoder and pipeline states, into a separate library, which Engine just normally uses unaware of Metal API

Game Technologies Ported
• Full controller support with haptic feedback
• On-the-fly keyboard / gamepad switching
• Game ability to choose monitor to render
• Game cooking and packing is fully done on Mac • ARM and x64 support
• Xcode 13.x used as main build tool
• Xcode 14.x used as main development tool • GameCenter integration with achievements • AppStore ready bundle with Sandboxing

 

[Jimmyjames]

First No Man’s Sky and now Stray. I don’t think either is a UE 5 game, but it seemed like the best place to post the news. Apologies if it isn’t.

Post-apocalyptic cat platformer ‘Stray’ coming for Apple silicon Macs

The Mac game train continues onward. Just one year after the announcement, No Man’s Sky dropped on the Mac this...

9to5mac.com

 

[Colstan]

First No Man’s Sky and now Stray. I don’t think either is a UE 5 game, but it seemed like the best place to post the news. Apologies if it isn’t.

I originally started this thread to only cover Fort Solis being announced for Mac. Then, Layers of Fear joined it, so it became about UE 5 titles. Now, with a deluge of new Mac games being announced before WWDC, it reflects all of the latest Mac gaming announcements, so that we can have a single consolidated thread to discuss them as they are announced.

Here's Andrew Tsai's video on No Man's Sky:



Apple Insider released an interview with Sean Murray, CEO of Hello Games, about the Mac port of No Man's Sky. Of note, they were working on the Mac version for a year before Apple got involved:

We've been working on this move to Metal for nearly two years now. About halfway through, Apple got involved as a close and very helpful partner, we couldn't have done it without them.

It would probably be easier to just do a basic port of a game to a new architecture, but we wanted this to feel like a native game, something built for the hardware. It meant adopting a new rendering pipeline, shifting development to Xcode and Mac machines, and revisiting everything from controls to load times to reimplementing multiplayer. Certainly, it's painstaking and meticulous work, but it wasn't painful, it's the type of challenge we enjoy.

In other news, developer M2H and BlackMill Games have announced that Isonzo will be released for Mac this Summer.

Description: "Ferocious Alpine warfare will test your tactical skills in this authentic WW1 FPS. Battle among the scenic peaks, rugged valleys and idyllic towns of northern Italy. The Great War on the Italian Front is brought to life and elevated to unexpected heights!"



Finally, according to the latest update to the Steam survey, Apple Silicon continues to displace the old Intel models among Mac gamers.

I agree with @Formerly_Jimmyjames that it's not a coincidence that all of these major game titles are being announced right before WWDC. It's almost as if Apple is communicating with developers to build as much anticipation as possible by staggering these announcements. It's also notable that CodeWeavers just announced DirectX 12 support for CrossOver, which I mentioned in this post. I'm sure these are complete coincidences and have nothing to do with WWDC happening in a few days.

 

[Jimmyjames]

Apple Insider released an interview with Sean Murray, CEO of Hello Games, about the Mac port of No Man's Sky. Of note, they were working on the Mac version for a year before Apple got involved:

Thanks, I just read this. Very interesting. I'm in two minds about it. Obviously it's great that companies are deciding to port games to the Mac unprompted, but I'm also confused. I had thought that some of these ports were at the behest of Apple. That may still be the case, and I hope so. I really hope Apple understands that getting into this market is going to take money and persistence.

 

[dada_dave]

Thanks, I just read this. Very interesting. I'm in two minds about it. Obviously it's great that companies are deciding to port games to the Mac unprompted, but I'm also confused. I had thought that some of these ports were at the behest of Apple. That may still be the case, and I hope so. I really hope Apple understands that getting into this market is going to take money and persistence.

Both? But even if they didn’t originate it, it’s still a very positive sign that Apple is getting involved in all of these projects. Apparently Microsoft is very good at that, working with game developers, beyond being a behemoth. I know grumpy_coder at Macrumors ain’t our collective favorite poster in the world but I’ve seen his past complaints with respect to Apple in this respect, not being super helpful to game developers, mirrored elsewhere by others. So if Apple is turning that around and getting more involved regardless of initiating said projects versus helping an already started project along, that’s a very, very positive step.