Apple’s new Proton-like tool can run Windows games on a Mac
www.theverge.com
Developers now have some serious tools to get Windows games on Mac

(Pardon the pun)

  • araquen@beehaw.org
    5·
    2 years ago

    IIRC, Apple licensed Codeweaver’s source and is extending it privately. My take is that this code, along with Game Mode is basically “Rosetta” for Windows, optimized for games. That would mean that you would launch a windows game on an M-chip Mac and it would launch without having to kick off an emulation mode. Folks playing FFXIV on Mac would have the feel.

    I do think that PC devs will need to do something, I don’t think executables will work. Rather Apple is subsidizing the investment that the consumer and the developer needs to invoke to have a more prolific gaming experience.

    • jasonEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      Did they license it? The CW blog post was vague on that, though they did call out that they “did not work with Apple on this tool”.

      I’d have thought that if some money exchanged hands that Apple would have also had their help in development.

      • araquen@beehaw.orgEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

        Apple is using the source code. Not sure if they just bought it or licensed it. But what this means is that Apple is using the Codeweaver’s source code to build out their own, headless, emulation layer (like Rosetta). This also means that Apple doesn’t have to wait for a third party (which is why it took Square Enix so long to get their FFXIV launcher for M chip Macs) and they can sweeten the code to work with their architecture.

        This is pretty impressive, because now we have Apple-flavored “Wine” Third Party bundled Wine (FFXIV) and Crossover as options.

  • Slashzero@hakbox.social
    4·
    2 years ago

    That’s pretty neat. Proton works great on my Steam Deck. I can even play World of Warcraft on my Steam Deck via proton.

  • SleeperAgent@lemmy.world
    3·
    2 years ago

    Sometimes I just wanna play smaller indie games on my M1 Air. But I usually find they don’t have a macOS version. Hopefully, this can easily handle those.

    • subito@beehaw.orgOP
      6·
      2 years ago

      When game studios the size of CD Projekt Red and Respawn Entertainment can’t figure out how to make their game work in a single OS for PC (Windows) how do you expect them to make it work on well on MacOS?

      This makes cross-platform games closer to reality because Apple’s doing the heavy lifting.

  • pnelego@lemmy.world
    2·
    2 years ago

    My only question, if they are gonna implement it like a compatibility layer. Otherwise im worried it will only be popular as a dev tool. Amazing to see either way