Off topic, but I was excited to find out Another World is on Steam... but isn't available to play on macOS 10.15 Catalina or above.
The incompatibility with 32-bit makes me extremely frustrated; it seems as if in 2023, with quantum computing, DL models, and people porting games like this to FPGA, there should be a way to get 32-bit software to run on modern hardware. It's bizarre to me.
Steam specifically recommends not upgrading your mac OS to play these older games.
Is all this software going to become unusable because of this sort of thing?
Yes, yes it will. How many other Amiga games can you run on anything besides an Amiga, real or emulated? What happens when you try to run the 2013 version of anything you still depend on?
There is a ton of stuff that broke when Apple moved to 32-bit and didn't bother making any kind of compatibility layer. Games are probably hit the worst because (a) almost nobody gives a shit about updating a game they finished working on a decade ago, and (b) almost nobody gives a shit about making a game work on the Mac anyway. I've been a Mac user since 2000 and I've been doing the vast majority of my gaming on consoles for all that time. The 2013 remake of Another World's available on my PS4, as well as the PS3, Vita, Wii U, Switch, Xbone, Android, iOS (well, assuming Apple didn't break that too), and more.
Steam says the remake works fine on the Steam Deck I just got, too, thanks to the work they put into their fork of WINE. Old software ends up in virtual machines, one way or another.
There's no business case in making sure those old titles persist and publishers mostly forget about them after initial sales are made.
You can play the MS-DOS port in QEMU, so I presume there will eventually be some emulation layer capable of running the HD release.
True, I run a vanilla fedora, never touched the driver and buy most games on steam without thinking about compatibility. ( I play low demanding games, but still )
You can run Steam in Crossover Games to get some Windows games on your Mac. And Apple has a new compatibility layer themselves, though it takes finagling for the end user to use.
The incompatibility with 32-bit makes me extremely frustrated; it seems as if in 2023, with quantum computing, DL models, and people porting games like this to FPGA, there should be a way to get 32-bit software to run on modern hardware. It's bizarre to me.
Steam specifically recommends not upgrading your mac OS to play these older games.
Is all this software going to become unusable because of this sort of thing?