With news doing the rounds about the latest update to macOS, it turns out they're finally admitting they're doing nothing with their support of OpenGL and it's to be deprecated.
See here, where it says:
Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL
Apps built using OpenGL and OpenCL will continue to run in macOS 10.14, but these legacy technologies are deprecated in macOS 10.14. Games and graphics-intensive apps that use OpenGL should now adopt Metal. Similarly, apps that use OpenCL for computational tasks should now adopt Metal and Metal Performance Shaders.
I've seen so many complaints about the poor OpenGL support on macOS for quite some time, so it's not exactly a surprise. It's going to be a shock for those game developers not using a pre-made game engine like Unity and the likes.
"This isn't a Mac news website" I hear you scream at your monitor. Yeah, I know. However, this could have a big impact on Linux gaming, for better or worse. It could lead to developers either dropping Mac support due to the small market share and not being worth having to learn another (closed) API, or it could mean them dropping OpenGL in favour of Metal and not doing Linux version for the smaller again market share.
Interesting times we live in. Thankfully, the big game engines will take away some of the pain for developers. My Twitter feed has been—colourful this evening when news of this came in. Here's some initial reactions:
Jupiter Hell + DRL - D**m, the Roguelike developer:
Jupiter Hell is the last game that I'll do that will have OSX support. https://t.co/662OLJ0hqj
— Kornel Kisielewicz (@epyoncf) June 4, 2018
Defender's Quest developer:
If Apple thinks this is going to drive Metal adoption, they're nuts. All this means is "All aboard the Vulkan train!"https://t.co/szY0WuJ2Oz
— Lars Doucet (@larsiusprime) June 4, 2018
(Or just ignore Mac entirely, as Apple itself is doing more each day themselves)
MidBoss developer:
Fuck Apple. If they insist on going this route I may just have to start exclusively shipping Electron web builds of my games on Mac to ensure things will keep working. Sorry for those of you on Macs but 2% of my games users is not worth implementing a whole new back end for. https://t.co/lPoqpwOL9n
— 'Shark Hugs' Eniko (@Enichan) June 4, 2018
Starsector developer:
This would mean the end of OS X support by Starsector. Unless @LWJGL comes up with some dark magic? https://t.co/2RaKk0Q5fw
— Alexander Mosolov (@amosolov) June 4, 2018
Maia developer:
I won't port thousands of lines of my engine to a non standard proprietary API. Neither will many other developers either on principle or due to OSX's tiny install base. Here lies the end of games on Apple's desktop platform. pic.twitter.com/nKUWiMKwDS
— Simon Roth (@SimoRoth) June 4, 2018
The list goes on and on like that. What will be interesting to see, is if more developers who are building the tools themselves look to projects like MoltenVK to use Vulkan on both Linux and Mac.
I do have to wonder, if Valve knew this was coming and helped get MoltenVK open sourced to help for when this situation eventually came.
What are your thoughts?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
GustyGhost Jun 5, 2018
Quoting: tonRWarning: tonR harping about Linux/FOSS mobile devices again!
Well, nuff said. Mobile devices/Smartphone is right here and right now. It's no longer "the future". Apple shows they willing to throw away (not so) "open platform" Mac for (totally) "close platform" iOS. So, it is time for Linux/FOSS community to seriously R&D-ing on mobile devices. If not, our (not so distant) future generations might never know what is meaning of open platform.
And no, Android is NOT our viable future. I don't think "cocktail license" OS should become our future platform.
Open(ish)) platforms are a fluke of history. If the tech giants could go back and do it all over again, their platforms would be full-on lock down and lock in from day one.
Mountain Man Jun 5, 2018
Quoting: tonRWarning: tonR harping about Linux/FOSS mobile devices again!I've heard it said that the personal computer being an open platform was purely an accident partly because IBM didn't recognize the importance of controlling the software market, and partly because Bill Gates screwed them when he pulled out of OS/2 and released Windows 95 a short time later. Numerous companies have been attempting to "fix" that miscalculation ever since because an open platform is a threat to any company that wants to control their customers' spending habits, which is pretty much every tech company in existence today.
Well, nuff said. Mobile devices/Smartphone is right here and right now. It's no longer "the future". Apple shows they willing to throw away (not so) "open platform" Mac for (totally) "close platform" iOS. So, it is time for Linux/FOSS community to seriously R&D-ing on mobile devices. If not, our (not so distant) future generations might never know what is meaning of open platform.
And no, Android is NOT our viable future. I don't think "cocktail license" OS should become our future platform.
wvstolzing Jun 5, 2018
Quoting: FireStarWDoesn't this also mean for mac users that their back catalog of opengl games will be unable to be playable on new versions of macos? What a crazy decision.
'Crazy' is an understatement for how Apple's been abusing 'forced obsolescence' these past few years.
... and I can't fathom how their Mac (MacBook at least) sales are still on the rise. Haven't enough people discovered that a forced, arbitrary update can render their software unusable overnight?
In the past, they may have had good reasons to end support for compatibility layers that they had introduced after architecture changes (though even that's doubtful) -- but as of today, you can't even keep a web browser up to date on a Mac that's older than 5-6 years.
I have a 2007 Mac Mini that's perfectly adequate for the tasks it's assigned to -- but only because it runs Linux nowadays. With OS X 10.6 on it, it had been reduced to a paper weight essentially. (This model is notoriously difficult to get Linux working on, by the way [some odd quirk with the bootloader]; otherwise I would have switched much earlier.)
Quoting: subQuoting: ArdjeI've heard a developer say that the only reason he also has mac as a platform is because it is so easy to generate the mac version. As for money it wasn't worth any hassle. Now I don't know what he said about the linux version, as I was playing edeejay at the same time.
I think this could be seriously problematic. This affects indie devs not using one of the big engines, that include Linux targets. If it is not possible anymore to at least more or less cover Mac+Linux with the same effort, than the little Linux alone market share won't cut it for many devs, I'm afraid.
With the bulk of indies using xna or unity it wont really effect that
Quoting: Mountain ManQuoting: JanAs a developer, if you also plan to release on iOS (which is the biggest mobile gaming platform) you have to support Metal anyway.Pretty sure Android dwarfs iOS in that arena.
At least according to this source, Android sits above 80% of the market while iOS is less than 20%:
https://www.idc.com/promo/smartphone-market-share/os
Income wise it is the opposite.
Quoting: GuestQuoting: LeonardKThis can also mean that less games come to Linux, unfortunately. On mac OS they'd need Metal (Vulkan via Molten *might* be an option), on Windows they usually rely on DirectX12 often enough, unfortunately. Then only Linux is the reason for OGL and Vulkan, so basically the market share of OGL/Vulkan just dropped by quite some percentage. Sad.
Also I wonder about WebGL.
Development has been moving away from OpenGL since the new generation of APIs was announced, so I don't think this news will impact GNU/Linux desktop gaming much. Don't forget about the mobile sector, which has been OpenGL ES dominated in the past, but is really shifting to Vulkan and Metal anyway. So there are big reasons to be using Vulkan anyway - the real question is if it's enough to convince developers to go all-in on a cross-platform API, or if they'll maintain a DX12 version first & foremost. That will really depend on the developer and how much they want a mobile version of their game.
There's also big reason for not using Vulkan which is even emphasized by the Vulkan devs. Especially in the non-videogames sector, which is huge, demand for OGL is there too. Fortunately there OGL is on par with the usage of DirectX, so it's less of an issue there, but still it's quite a bummer to loose a former OGL platform.
Quoting: [email protected]Quoting: elmapuli hate to say that, but that decision will have an negative effect on us, and positive on then.
iOS is a "money making machine" so many game engines support metal or will support metal so they can be used to make iOS apps, now that apple will ditch support for iOS its more likely that more games will support metal than they will keep suporting openGL.
we have an lower marketshare, most big companies will ditch support for linux insteda of mac.
apple is the richest tech company, even if some companies dont want to support then, they can afford to purchase some support including exclusive games.
The same can be said for Android which in fact is a bigger pie than iOS alone.
Most Android implementations ship with some form of OpenGL and more modern, higher end ones also ship with Vulkan too.
i forgot android indeed, but still, iOS development seems to be more profitable than android development
Quoting: GuestQuoting: elmapulwhy would you develop for an platform with 10.000 users when you can develop for an platform like ps4 with 70 millions of users?Why you think making a game for AtariVCS is making a game for only 10.000 users when Atari uses Linux?? When you make a game for Linux you're making a game for AtariVCS.
i know, but atari VCS is an weak machine (4GB of ram vs 8 from PS4 or XboxOne), i dont think that an increase of 10.000 users on our platform will help us much, especially considering that among those 10k there might be some linux users
Last edited by elmapul on 5 June 2018 at 6:58 pm UTC
Mountain Man Jun 5, 2018
Quoting: wvstolzing'Crazy' is an understatement for how Apple's been abusing 'forced obsolescence' these past few years.I think for the typical Mac user, these changes are unnoticeable. After all, you don't need OpenGL to check Facebook, surf the web, and run Microsoft Office. As long as college hipsters can still run Safari and iTunes, what do they care what changes are made under the hood? And the Adobe suite, which I suspect is used by the majority of Apple's professional consumers, has been Metal compatible for at least 2-years.
... and I can't fathom how their Mac (MacBook at least) sales are still on the rise. Haven't enough people discovered that a forced, arbitrary update can render their software unusable overnight?
We might think they're making dumb decisions, but Apple didn't become the richest company in the world by being stupid.
Quoting: Mountain ManWe might think they're making dumb decisions, but Apple didn't become the richest company in the world by being stupid.Wait, where is this from? Richest company? I can only find one article supporting that statement. It seems like they are high up but not highest, unless you are looking at value, not riches?
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