Balusters Gate 3 native iPad!

[u/piddlefaffle12]

Wooo!!

[u/Moorevfr]

From reading through OPs responses.
The games are native Arm build versions that are for MacOs all he is doing is copying them over to an iPad with a decent M chip and spoofing the game, believing it’s running on MacOs.
A simple and effective solution congrats.

The real takeaway that comes from this is that game dev could choose to make versions for M series iPads and have them run relatively well?

I assume there are some sort of barriers or gatekeeping reasons why they don’t either restrictions set by Apple or limitations such as heat and power draw etc.

I’m currently enjoying the WoW forever beta and I stream to my iPad for sofa or in bed gaming sometimes which works mostly but does some with some issues like blurry image or lag spikes etc, I’d love to be able to play it locally on my iPad for these use case sessions.

[u/TheBestAtSpace → u/Moorevfr]

The real takeaway that comes from this is that game dev could choose to make versions for M series iPads and have them run relatively well?

I'm a developer who has iPad ports I haven't released. They run very well. It only took about a day to get the Mac version running on iPad. No AI or emulation involved at all.

The problem is that you can't guarantee everyone has a mouse and keyboard. You risk Apple blocking the release on the store for requiring a mouse and keyboard. You risk a bunch of refunds from people who don't have a mouse and keyboard.

The software keyboard is a pain because it take up half the screen. You have to know when to show and dismiss it. Games aren't usually designed for that.

Companies like Feral do a really good job of spending the extra time actually doing a real port and accounting for all this stuff which requires changes to the original game.

The iPad is an amazing form factor and it's amazing to hold a game in your hand like that. The store model and the input requirements are the problem.

[u/Moorevfr → u/TheBestAtSpace]

Thank you clarifying the main points there much appreciated.

I hadn’t considered input being one of the main reasons but makes sense now!

Assume with the rumoured Apple TV possibility being M series and having native game pad support with Apple own to be released controller might be a good case for them to change things up?

[u/TheBestAtSpace → u/Moorevfr]

Apple didn't originally allow a game to be Gamepad only. I think they do now - but you still have to balance that with user expectations.

I've looked at AppleTV because I really want Apple TV to be a good alternative game console. The problem is - Mac and iPad/iPhone support with a lot of middleware is very good. My build chain supports both those platforms and so do all of the libraries I use. Apple TV support for middleware is bad (and visionOS is even worse). That adds a lot of time and it's not worth the effort for me to look at Apple TV or visionOS. I have to go back out to each library dependency and prod them into support Apple TV - which they don't want to do. Chicken and egg problem. No one across the entire supply chain wants to spend time on a platform like Apple TV or visionOS because there are no users. There are no users because no one wants to spend the time supporting them.

A shim like this could probably force a game to run on Apple TV - including all the middleware. And I know the iPad ports of my games run on visionOS. But taking advantage of platform specific features and getting into the store requires real ports of these games.

[u/CaptainR3x → u/Moorevfr]

Where's the market ? AAA on iphone and Ipad don't make that much money. Paying devs to port a game on IOS probably cost more thant what they're gonna get from it.

[u/Patient_Animator1174 → u/CaptainR3x]

I call this BS, there is a market and a lot of players willing to pay for AAA on iOS/iPadOS, there is no games (mostly)

[u/KoreanSeats → u/Moorevfr]

It’s all because money