Performance improvements to come?

Performance improvements to come?

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Posted by: diabluz.2860

diabluz.2860

This question is for anyone familiar with Cider ports. Can we expect any significant gains in performance by the time this client exits beta or is this close to what the final build will be like, ie no high textures, i.e. significantly lower performance vs Windows, i.e. framerate drops when turning camera etc?

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Posted by: NerfedWar.8749

NerfedWar.8749

Some other games have forced simplified geometry/reduced particles/reduced draw-distance when going via the Cider wrapper, giving the impression of similar FPS under bootcamp and osx (all an illusion really as what is being rendered under coder/osx is much less GPU intensive).

Not that I really care as I just want a playable GW2 OSX experience, but comparing screenshots from GW2 running max settings under Windows/Bootcamp and the same settings under Cider/OSX seems to indicate that the Cider wrapper does not apply (or does not support) all the DirectX effects/shaders by default anyway.

Myself, I’d be happy with some heavy-handed performance tweaks for when I don’t want to reboot into Windows to get a quick GW2 fix, even at the expense of the game looking like a low poly EverQuest or similar.

(edited by NerfedWar.8749)

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Posted by: Selthus.3174

Selthus.3174

I’d be interested in what kind of gains they expect as far as performance as well. While this client is awesome for a beta client, I hope there will be a pretty significant performance increase or it is back to windows for me.

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Posted by: pmiles.3489

pmiles.3489

The port was intended for those who don’t have access to Windows. It was never intended to get those of us running bootcamp to switch back to the Mac side. Based on the plethora of performance posts thus far, you’re better off staying with bootcamp than using this port.

While I’d like to boot directly into the game from OSX, I’m not going to upgrade my OS to do so and take a 50% performance hit to boot. The game is a Windows game, it wasn’t written for the Mac. This port isn’t rewriting the game in any way… it’s just a wrapper to allow you to play it… you could have done the same thing yourself by trying one of the various wrappers out there… they just provided one to you, that is all.

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Posted by: vince.5937

vince.5937

Considering the bulk of the work that needs to be done on the Mac client is directly on the shoulders of Transgaming, and further considering that Transgaming has a track record of being utterly silent when game companies ask for updates, don’t hold your breath on any performance boosts coming to the GW2 Mac port.

vince.5937 — Tarnished Coast — Les Saintes
R.I.P. City of Heroes, 2004-2012
Long Live Atlas Park 33

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Posted by: diabluz.2860

diabluz.2860

It’s just disappointing. I mean it’s great that they have an option for people that won’t dual boot but still, it’s 2012 and Windows 8 is supposedly going to be kitten for gaming.

It’s about time these developers realize they need to release their games multi platform, i.e. Windows, Mac and Linux.

I’m not an expert on game dev but I would think that once you create a Mac client it would be fairly easy to then port it to Linux and vice versa being they are both Unix.

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Posted by: Carmine.9217

Carmine.9217

they are both Unix’s like and no cider != port to linux, though cedega compatability might.

thegamechronicler.com – keeping Games Alive

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Posted by: GroteDwerg.4752

GroteDwerg.4752

…considering that Transgaming has a track record of being utterly silent when game companies ask for updates…

Is this true? We paid the same price as windows users did, so I expect the same support and updates that windows users get. Else I’m getting the feeling A-net just wants our money and doesn’t care about our concerns.

I know that there is truth in what you said, because I’ve played many games that were suspose to be supported on mac. To make a long story short about those games: allot of bugs and no updates. The companies just wanted a little more money and didn’t care if we were satisfied. So I hope this isn’t going to be the same story!

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Posted by: pmiles.3489

pmiles.3489

In some respects, I think this was a poor decision on ArenaNet’s part… mainly because they have little control over the performance of their game through a third party product. It’s probably why the minimum requirements are so steep on the Mac side… to allow them to say your system isn’t supported when issues arise.

I applaud them for making the effort, but I think they really do need to rephrase their Mac support to “Limited Mac Support” so that everyone is crystal clear that “mileage may vary” is going to be the norm for the Mac client. That if you want to play the game, they “highly recommend” running it under bootcamp for 100% game support.

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Posted by: GroteDwerg.4752

GroteDwerg.4752

Indeed, still it’s Anet’s descision to use a third party company so they are liable for our experience ingame (including performance). I just hope they aren’t going to ignore the mac community and give us the same support as windows users.

I just ran GW2 bootcamp on higher settings and smoother FPS then the ported version. So the hardware can handle it, but the port is just not finished yet, hence why it’s beta ofc.

So I’m looking forward to a mac patch!

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Posted by: pmiles.3489

pmiles.3489

If PC games were written with OpenGL in mind, there would be less issues… but alas, they are written with DirectX in mind. It’s trying to convert DirectX to OpenGL that is the issue, hence the big reliance on the latest OpenGL drivers to make that happen.

ArenaNet’s hands are tied. If Apple doesn’t address the driver issues, they really can’t address the performance issues. A direct port would be the better solution, this is merely a band-aid solution by comparison.

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Posted by: Tanira.8157

Tanira.8157

I own around 100 mac games, where some are native, some are cider wrapped and some are even wrapped with wine.
Native games can be the best, they can achieve almost 100% of the performance in windows/d3d. OSX does use OpenGL, but have usually had old drivers, and old Open GL.
Snow Leopard f.ex does only support OpenGL 2.1, and even GeForce 8xxx series does support OpenGL 3.3, and those cards are from 2006.

The big native games for mac the last few years are valves source games (portal, team fortress, cs, good, l4d, etc) and might be the best mac games around.
The other big games are blizzard games. Wow have always had a mac client, and I’ve played since the start and there have been tons of issues. Feature that PC users got when Cata came, just got to mac users with the Mop patch. (Turning up liquid details and sun shafts while having AA..) The Mac 64 bit client doesn’t support in game video cutscenes, iTunes overlay and so forth. Don’t even wanna mention problems in Diablo 3.

Some native mac games like Crusader Kings 2 have never worked on my system at a playable setting, or have you ever tried Civ 5 multiplayer on a big map, I’ve been sitting at 5-10 FPS on a MacPro on the ends of the games. KIng’s Bounty series runs faster in wine for me than the native mac version.

When it comes to cider, there are several big games around, the Dragon Age series, Sims, Command and Conquer, GTA series, Warhammer Online, etc.
These games might not reach the performance of the best games available on Mac, but they are usually far better than some of the games.

Cider is a solution that makes updating and patching the client very easy for the devs, it requires less maintenance and does offer ok performance.

As for future improvements, I do not believe we’ll get a big boost on mac, unless the PC clients gets faster too. Cider does run at 70-80% of windows speed in best case scenarios, and on my system we’re already there.

Also, Guild Wars 2 was never announced as a mac game, but got a mac beta after launch, Anet is clear about this, but maybe some retailers try to milk it already.

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Posted by: vince.5937

vince.5937

Is this true? We paid the same price as windows users did, so I expect the same support and updates that windows users get. Else I’m getting the feeling A-net just wants our money and doesn’t care about our concerns.

Unless Transgaming pulls a sharp turnaround from their work on another NCSoft title I wouldn’t waste any time holding your breath waiting for the GW2 Mac client to get any serious performance-related tweaks (seriously, go ask some of the City of Heroes mac players how they feel about Transgaming).

vince.5937 — Tarnished Coast — Les Saintes
R.I.P. City of Heroes, 2004-2012
Long Live Atlas Park 33

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Posted by: DarkVengeance.5042

DarkVengeance.5042

In the future please use Open GL and develop your games for both mac and windows …. if you want to takle large gaming companies like Blizzard than this is a no brainer. You can windows fanboy all you want but the fact remains mac has outsold windows for the past 7 years and will continue to do so. So you might as well embrace it.

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Posted by: GroteDwerg.4752

GroteDwerg.4752

Why would Anet use a company like Transgaming, if they know they have a bad reputation? They should have made the game for windows/mac from the beginning. A well 50€ waste isn’t so bad …

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Posted by: vince.5937

vince.5937

Why would Anet use a company like Transgaming, if they know they have a bad reputation? They should have made the game for windows/mac from the beginning. A well 50€ waste isn’t so bad …

IIRC it’s not ANet who has the contract with Transgaming, it’s NCSoft.

vince.5937 — Tarnished Coast — Les Saintes
R.I.P. City of Heroes, 2004-2012
Long Live Atlas Park 33

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Posted by: GroteDwerg.4752

GroteDwerg.4752

Why would Anet use a company like Transgaming, if they know they have a bad reputation? They should have made the game for windows/mac from the beginning. A well 50€ waste isn’t so bad …

IIRC it’s not ANet who has the contract with Transgaming, it’s NCSoft.

Doesn’t make a difference. Before I judge them I will wait after beta. It’s playable atm, but could use some improvements.

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Posted by: Xellahmai.4350

Xellahmai.4350

Is this true? We paid the same price as windows users did, so I expect the same support and updates that windows users get. Else I’m getting the feeling A-net just wants our money and doesn’t care about our concerns.

I wasn’t aware that Guild Wars 2 was being actively sold as a Mac product yet. I purchased a great Windows game that just happens to now offer beta access to a Mac port at no additional cost. I don’t expect anything at this point since I paid nothing for this beta product and no one is forcing me to use it.

I’m pleasantly surprised that the beta works pretty darn well, even with the FPS drop and low fidelity audio on my nvidia-based rMBP.

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Posted by: Kuthix.2015

Kuthix.2015

I’m not interested in how “pretty” the game looks. I don’t care if i have to turn every single graphical setting to the lowest setting to play. All I care about is being able to play this game with ZERO lag. Whether it’s zerg-fest dynamic events or WvW. Right now, this does not happen. I have a late 2011 MacBook Pro, and the game is barely playable. This is the greatest MMO I have EVER played. What little I have been able to experience has been absolutely phenominal. BUT….due to the fact that I can’t run the game with decent FPS, I have been forced to go back to WoW. I hate WoW. I swore I would never play pandas. But the fact of the matter is, I can run that game with no lag. It runs almost perfectly. I realize that there is a higher graphical requirement for this game, but I really don’t want to spend 600-1200 dollars on a new system just to play a 60 dollar game. PLEASE! I’m absolutely begging you, Arenanet! Optimize this thing to where I can run this game! I want you to take my money! I want to buy things from the BLTP! Save me from the crappy abomination that is WoW! Pull the plug on that gear treadmill for me guys! I’m on my knees here!….Seriously. I love this game with a passion. Let me play it.