"@drake_mccarty;c-17044625" wrote:
I don’t know where you are getting your information but Apple is absolutely dropping OpenGL from the MacOS and requiring developers to use the Metal framework instead. This is old news at this point.
I think it’s way too soon to assume the end of 32bit support is going to eliminate limitations or produce some massive shift in the game’s capabilities. We don’t know that, and frankly I don’t think it’s reasonable to jump the gun and assume it will. The under the hood changes happened in 2015, the game has been 64bit since then but they did nothing with that until C&D in 2017. Let’s remain realistic here Jack.
Personally I think the game is reaching a point where the studio is having a lot of problems maintaining it. Clearly they are contracted to keep building it, but performance and quality are steadily on the decline, bugs aren’t being fixed, and content is not coming out nearly at the rate it was even a few years ago. Why drop 32bit? Well it means the studio will have to do less optimization, and they won’t have to worry about everything they add on top of each other crashing the game by trying to use 4GB or more of memory. Anyone expecting this to somehow molt Sims 4 into a new game, or a different game, you will be disappointed.
OpenGL is no longer being updated, which means newer games should probably use Metal, but as most of Apple's applications still use Open GL, it will be supported for years to come. To transfer a game from OpenGL to Metal now, when the game came is closer to its end point than its start point, makes no sense. It would be like EA making The Sims 3 64 bit on Mac so it's still supported, only to remove it a year from now from sale.
Surely, if they are going to future-proof the Sims 4 on Mac now, so that when Open GL is officially removed from MacOS in a few years time it's playable, it means there's a significant future for the Sims 4. Because let's be real, EA don't care about "quality of life" updates for Mac users.
EA are spending money right now porting the game to a completely different API, so they can continue to sell the game when OpenGL is removed. Yet with The Sims 3, they are still selling it on Mac, even though the game stopped working correctly halfway through the original run, and will completely fail to load without hacking the game on Macs older than 2012.
EA didn't feel the need to update anything about the game to support newer Macs for Sims 3 (all they had to do was update the patcher tool and support new graphics cards) while they had 1 - 2 years worth of content to push, I doubt they're making a whole new move to an API for 2 years of content due to a change of heart?
Also, I agree. I don't think this will change much about the game being non-metal and 32 bit players. That's the point I'm making. I doubt there will be major upgrades post this patch, so IF there's only 2 or so years left, it doesn't make sense to do this
unless there IS a major upgrade (unlikely) or they're doing this to support the game for a much longer time (more likely).
The Sims 4 is one of the only existing games to be moving from OpenGL to Metal. They're doing it way before everyone else. If everyone else was doing it, then we would know Apple has internally given an end date. But as no one is doing it, OpenGL is here to stay and EA for whatever reason are deciding to futlureproof themselves, which they didn't for The Sims 3. They obviously didn't think it was worth it for 3 Expansion Packs, 2 Stuff Packs and 2 years of monthly store content.
So unless the player base for the Sims 4 is significantly higher than 3's was, I can't see them having such a change of heart unless there's a whole lot more coming than 2 or so years worth of content.
