Whisky Developer Halts Work on Mac Gaming Tool, Endorses CrossOver

[.wojtek]

Amount of people with overpriced machines being buthurt and complaining that free solution is no longer and they should pay for CrossOver is just amusing xD

 

[MacBH928]

ah yes, CodeWeavers Crossover , the $64 app a year app with no guarantees of anything working

 

[venom600]

Amount of people with overpriced machines being buthurt and complaining that free solution is no longer and they should pay for CrossOver is just amusing xD

Hey, I feel VERY exposed by the comment!!! 😂 But it's a legitimate concern. Crossover is expensive. $80 a year or almost $500 for lifetime upgrades for a product that you won't use often? The lifetime support costs more than a new Switch 2, PS5, or Xbox Series X. An open source, free solution was a nice alternative.

 

[.wojtek]

Hey, I feel VERY exposed by the comment!!! 😂 But it's a legitimate concern. Crossover is expensive. $80 a year or almost $500 for lifetime upgrades for a product that you won't use often? The lifetime support costs more than a new Switch 2, PS5, or Xbox Series X. An open source, free solution was a nice alternative.

You are paying for convenience? same like with getting mac instead of using Linux in a way?

CrossOver may be a bit pricey but two things - you can get it with a nice discount around black Friday (it usually runs around half the price or less, and then upgrades are also covered by the discount so you can't renew for about 20 USD if memory serves me right) and the other - you don't have to renew every year - you can get it once and run it. after a year you keep valid licence but don't get new updates so if your apps are running fine with that version then just stay with it

of course you can also use wine, but it's more hardcore

I don't game all that much but got CrossOver either way just to suport wine, same with getting SteamDeck - supporting gaming on non-Windows. I do hope that one day Valve would make proton available in steam on mac- that would be brilliant 😍

 

[toughboy]

Which serious gamer games on mac

What is "serous" anyways? I have a 16" MBP M1Pro which is more than capable of running games at 60+fps with moderate settings on Whisky.

I will continue to appreciate Isaac's hardwork till the day it finally breaks, after that we'll see about solutions. Thanks to his selfless efforts, I could play a game which is not available to MacOS with no issues whatsoever...

 

[toughboy]

Just read Isaac's long post on discontinuation, he says "TLDR; Whisky harms Wine on Mac." I would strongly argue the complete opposite but yea, it's his project, his time, his point of view..

 

[sejoki]

Wishful thinking, but it would be great if Valve hired this guy to fix the Mac version of Steam and get Proton working on Mac.

For that, there'd have to be a feature complete implementation/translation of Direct X for Metal, which is possible without Apple's involvement, but it's a mammoth (D3DMetal doesn't support all DX12 features and shaders)

To get Apple interested in helping out, they'd want some prospect of revenue. But since a translation layer like Proton would be incompatible with the App Store, I highly doubt they're even remotely interested because App Store sales is the only reason they show any interest in gaming to begin with.

 

[mike.coulter]

Sounds just like Porting Kit which is also free. No need to use CrossOver unless you want the latest compatibility

Porting Kit | Install Windows apps in Mac

With Porting Kit, you can install Windows games and apps on macOS easily using Wineskin technology!

www.portingkit.com

This looks interesting! Does anyone know how well it works? Just setting it up now to see if I can run my copy of the original Oblivion.

Edit: It technically ran, but not fantastically...

 

[MacFarmer]

hopefully he was nicely payed.

 

[kipwheeler]

They might in 4 years after he graduates.

I had no idea he was just a kid, he must have been 17 when he started working on it. I can't imagine the pressure of developing an app used by so many when you're 18 years old.

15, is my understanding.

 

[kipwheeler]

Age 15 is my understanding, or at least I'm pretty sure Whisky has been around since 2022, given the players using it for Dwarf Fortress (or who used to use it to play Dwarf Fortress).