Windows games on Mac – The future of gaming on macOS
Apple releases toolkit to allow Windows games on Macs
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It’s finally here, the day that gaming on Mac changes forever. At the WWDC, Apple gave us some exciting news regarding gaming on Mac. This will most likely change how we game on Macs forever. Here’s how we can now get Windows games on Mac.
Apple has made a unique tool for games that works a little like Proton for the Steam Deck, reports TheVerge. This tool uses code from CrossOver, which helps run Windows games on Mac computers. With Apple’s tool, Windows games can be quickly converted to run on Macs.
This lets developers try out the game on a Mac without changing anything first, so they can see if it works well before making a full version for Mac.
Apple’s new Toolkit lets you run Windows games on Macs.
Gaming on an Apple Mac has been a bit of a meme in the gaming industry for some years now, thanks to developers not optimizing games for Apple Macs. Resident Evil Village and No Man’s Sky are rare exceptions, as they did receive a macOS port.
Aiswariya Sreenivassan, an engineering project manager for GPUs and graphics at Apple stated at Apples WWDC 2023 “The new Game Porting Toolkit provides an emulation environment to run your existing unmodified Windows game and you can use it to quickly understand the graphics feature usage and performance potential of your game when running on a Mac,”
The Toolkit even supports DirectX 12 games such as The Medium. During a demonstration by Sreenivassan, Apple showcased a method to run games using their translation layer. This approach is similar to how Wine and Proton work together to create a software layer that translates Windows commands for Linux. In this case, Apple is employing a comparable technique to convert these Windows commands into their Metal commands.
@tomwarren on Twitter reports:
Using this tool results in a game made only for Windows running on macOS. Users are free to install the Game Porting Toolkit and play around for themselves.
Reddit User gets Cyberpunk running on macOS
A Reddit user by the name of u/isaa6 managed to get Cyberpunk 2077, a particularly difficult game to run, running on an M1 MacBook, and the results are pretty impressive considering.
u/isaa6 managed this astounding feat with the Whisky tool, a version of the Game Porting Toolkit wrapped up in a user-made UI. Whisky was developed by IsaacMarovitz.
Developers have faced challenges when porting Windows games to Mac. The process usually involves intricate steps such as recompiling source code, converting custom shaders, re-implementing the graphics system, and adapting audio, input, and HDR rendering. While using a cross-platform game engine can simplify some aspects for targeting multiple platforms, debugging and optimizing performance on macOS remain necessary.
Now, Apple offers a tool that helps developers assess the amount of work needed to fix bugs and optimize their games for macOS. Additionally, they have introduced a new Metal Shader Converter that automatically converts existing GPU shaders to Metal. These tools significantly reduce the time and effort required to port games from Windows to Mac.
