[Suggestion] Time for a native mac client

[Defmetal]

I play this game on multiple platforms, including pc and ps5, but when I travel I bring my mac with me. I just upgraded to the Macbook Pro M1 Max, the 'ultimate' and best mac that apple has available. And this has demonstrated one thing, the poor performance of the mac client is software not hardware. The m1 max has the equiv of a 3070/3080 laptop gpu. I only get about 30-50 fps at 1600x900.


Shadow of the Tomb Raider gets about 100 fps.
By making a native mac client, truly native, we could get the benefit of iPad versions and iPhone as well.

[Titivillus]

I play exclusively on a Mac and I rather not do this. Not many play on Macs and that would severely limit grouping and end content. I like that they have cross play, but that is my opinion.

[savageink]

I play exclusively on a Mac and I rather not do this. Not many play on Macs and that would severely limit grouping and end content. I like that they have cross play, but that is my opinion.

You misunderstand what he is asking for. Currently the Mac client is an overblown Wine wrapper, so it uses less than the computer's full capacity of anything. He's asking them to recode it so it is native. It would still work in groups just fine. As a person who switches back and forth, I agree with him.

edit: I don't think iPads are likely or needed however.

[Shibi]

Its a lot of developer time to rewrite the client. As everything is a budget... what other development would you like cut to get a native OS X client?

(I play on an M1 too when I am away from home)

[savageink]

Its a lot of developer time to rewrite the client. As everything is a budget... what other development would you like cut to get a native OS X client?

(I play on an M1 too when I am away from home)

maybe they should compute how many people pay them for the middling quality of the current client and pay them with that money? No, seriously, that's a BS excuse when we know the client has been around since HW and they are currently getting a bazillion more monthly sub fees than ever before.

[Yahallo]

I can agree to this. While I use windows personally, as I prefer being able to build my computer, I have some friends who exclusively use macs and would probably enjoy this game. Not fully sure how difficult it would be to rewrite the client for Mac, but definitely something to consider. Though I think their next goal is probably an xbox version.

[Defmetal]

Square can always outsource it to another company or division, for money obviously. Again if you made a native app, an ipad version would be awesome. Imagine pairing a ps5 controller to your ipad and playing at a cafe.
Once we can you know, log in without a 3 hour queue obv. More importantly though, the current mac app has some limitation. Maybe it only allows so much % of the gpu, or cpu, or memory, who knows. But it seems you can't brute force this client to having good performance. Now that macs no longer have Bootcamp, it's time to recode the client.

[AkaeiNox]

Aren't the new macs on ARM? Both Windows PC and PS4/PS5 are on Intel/Amd 64.
This game isn't even compatible with ARM Windows devices.

[Defmetal]

Aren't the new macs on ARM? Both Windows PC and PS4/PS5 are on Intel/Amd 64.
This game isn't even compatible with ARM Windows devices.

It runs through Emulation called Rosetta, which is itself emulating Windows. Making a native mac app would open a lot of doors for future uses. Such as when apple discards rosetta entirely. It's gonna happen someday.
But, imagine being able to play this game natively on your iphone. Yeah you can adjust or reduce the menus but you could. The iphone powerful enough. Add in a controller dock, perfect playing on a bus or train in short bursts.

[Shibi]

maybe they should compute how many people pay them for the middling quality of the current client and pay them with that money? No, seriously, that's a BS excuse when we know the client has been around since HW and they are currently getting a bazillion more monthly sub fees than ever before.

Honestly, I'd be super surprised if they didn't calculate this already and factor it into all the decisions made since 2013 and earlier. Software development is a budget and SE have a lot of metrics to help them make those decisions.

They know how many people are on the OS X client (including me)
They know how many engine developers/QA they have and how much they can produce
They know how much budget the C-Suite have given them to hire more heads for the engine
They know what other tasks need doing in the engine
They know the coding difficulties inherent in their engine

If OS X is important they will assign the resources, if their metrics show it's a relatively small number of us using the Mac Client, then it won't be as near as the top of the list as we would hope.

If the number of people playing on Intel drops and the number of people on ARM rises (which would be wonderful for many reasons!) then it moves up the list.

But at this time... it's clearly not ranking highly. The solution of the Crossover/WINE wrapper is working for now. So, until the day ARM dethrones Intel in a wider sense (again, I hope it will as it's clearly superior)... to push the ARM native version up the list the question remains: What do we cut?

Our best hope, to be frank, will be that Windows on ARM takes off more than it has, and they can then use that impetus to budget in a more native codeset.