[BearOso]

This isn't anything. The game porting toolkit is literally just Wine, and only there to "test how your game runs." They basically leveraged the work those all those Valve contractors have done lately, and are hiding it behind a massive single patch.

They go on about how if you're using middleware it might support macos already, and if not, you can port to the native APIs anyway!

Lastly, they tout their HLSL to Metal shader converter, which is likely just SPIRV-Cross behind the scenes.

It's just pure evangelism, and it kind of makes me mad.

Edit: This article from a couple of days ago seems to confirm my suspicion: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/06/new-directx-12-to-met...

[gjsman-1000]

According to CrossOver the DX12 implementation is mostly unique to Apple and is a separate implementation. Most of the rest is open-source CrossOver.

https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/mjohnson/2023/6/6/wine-come...

Worth remembering Apple doesn’t want developers to just release games using it, but rather use it as a launch point.

This would, frankly, make sense considering it’s DirectX to Metal. Proton previously doesn’t target Metal directly as far as I know, except through MoltenVK. Which is really ugly…

As far as I understand:

Previously: DirectX -> Proton -> Vulkan -> MoltenVK -> Metal (quite inefficient)

Now: DirectX -> Apple Game Porting Toolkit -> Metal (more efficient)

[BearOso]

That article didn't really clarify on the actual D3D to Metal conversion, so the specifics are still unknown.

From what I see, though, it doesn't look like Apple's solution is novel, and I doubt it would be considering this is a throwaway testing framework.