this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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Apple
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It's mind boggling that Apple would drop 32bit support. Adding 64 bit support can be a lot of effort, especially on older code bases, and there's a whole bunch of games that'll never receive updates again. You could've had arm32 support, with the ability to run any x86 games.
It’s bad on both sides. Apple broke userspace but Valve could almost certainly compile for modern Apple systems without too much effort.
I can see how you might come to that conclusion, but porting to 64bit is way more involved than it may seem. x86-64 is different enough to x86 that you're basically porting to a new architecture: all your assembly will break just like it would porting to arm. On top of that all your sizes have changed and caused all sorts of bugs, for instance:
longis 4 bytes under 32 bit on all platforms, but it's 8 bytes on macOS & Linux and 4 bytes on Windows under 64 bit.But they’ve done it before… Other Source engine games, like Counter Strike Global Offensive, have been recompiled to run on modern macs. I understand it takes some effort but it’s still dumb.
Yes, but it's highly unlikely they can reuse that effort. TF2 uses an older version of source, so you either end up having to update everything to a newer version or redo all the effort you've already put in to porting source, but for an older version. Now multiply that by the number of source games.
Valve is worth billions of dollars. TF2 almost certainly generates enough income to justify the resources needed to recompile the game. Again, I totally understand that it requires effort but it’s still dumb.
Oh I'm sure they can justify spending the time porting the game. I just can't blame them for not doing so when Apple's policy is to not give a shit.
Thank you for this perspective. It brings my irritation levels down a …. Bit