It looks crazy

Hey r/macgaming. I released KartPad, a native ARM64 version of Mario Kart Wii for Apple Silicon Macs.

Using WiiCompiled, we compile the game’s PowerPC code ahead of time into native ARM64 instead of running it through a traditional Wii emulator. The same project also runs on iPhone and iPad, with no PowerPC JIT and no gameplay streaming from another device.

WiiCompiled provides the static-recompilation pipeline and Aurora/Dawn compatibility runtime. KartPad brings that work to Apple platforms with native Mac, iPhone, and iPad apps, Metal presentation, audio, input, storage, saves, and lifecycle support.

To be completely clear about the work and use of AI: WiiCompiled’s maintainers disclose that AI coding tools were used during its development. I also used Codex extensively while building and debugging KartPad’s Apple integration, including Darwin and ARM64 support, touch and motion controls, game-data import, controllers, diagnostics, testing, and release tooling. Dolphin’s hardware research was an important reference throughout this work.

The hardest part was bringing WiiCompiled’s Windows and x86-64-oriented runtime to Darwin and ARM64. That required replacing Windows-specific memory and fiber systems, implementing the PowerPC-to-AArch64 runtime boundary, and validating floating-point behavior across the full 29,065-function translated game. I used deterministic tests, pinned Dolphin behavior, save hashes, ghosts, and complete native runs rather than treating a successful build as proof of correctness.

Current status:

• Native macOS title screens, menus, races, saves, ghosts, Battle, and split-screen gameplay work through Metal.
• All 32 original retail tracks have complete native-run evidence.
• Keyboard input and four independent controller slots are implemented.
• Locally signed builds have been installed and accepted on physical iPhone and iPad hardware.
• The mobile build supports touch controls, tilt steering, physical controllers, private game-data import, and save preservation.
• Online multiplayer is a work in progress.
• Retro Rewind support is being implemented soon.
• Performance is still active work. Warm, simpler scenes can reach 60 FPS, but first-use shader compilation can cause track-dependent slowdown and audio drops.

I’m also pushing the Personal IPA Builder today. It will let users provide their own supported Mario Kart Wii disc image on an Apple Silicon Mac and build a private unsigned IPA locally. It will not distribute a universal playable IPA, Nintendo data, or translated game code.

You must provide your own legally obtained PAL RMCP01 revision 0 WBFS or ISO. No game image, extracted Nintendo assets, translated game code, saves, or signing material are included in the repository.

This is an unofficial community project and is not affiliated with Nintendo.

GitHub: chrissotraidis/kartpad

A while ago, I posted here about the macOS app I built for the REDMAGIC VC Cooler 6 Pro.
The app is now fully open source under the MIT license, so anyone can use, modify, and contribute to it:
https://github.com/hajarrashidi/redmagic-cooler-mac
It controls the cooler over Bluetooth and automatically adjusts the cooling based on your Mac’s temperature.
Currently, only the VC Cooler 6 Pro is supported. I’d really appreciate help adding support for newer models, especially the Cryo Cooler 8 Pro.
If you own another model, you can help by testing, sharing its Bluetooth information, opening an issue, or submitting a pull request. Even partial information is useful!

I play OW2 with a friend on two 16 GB Apple Silicon Macs (M1 Pro 16", fanless Air M5) via CrossOver 26.3. It mostly worked, but long sessions degraded badly: killcams and respawns dropped to 22–28 fps, the system swapped hard, and the game process footprint grew to 13 GB — on a 16 GB machine.

The investigation: footprint showed 9.4 GB of it was MALLOC_SMALL heap. malloc_history pointed at DXMT's shader translator: it keeps the parsed IR of every shader it has ever seen resident forever — millions of 64–176 byte allocations. But once a shader variant is in DXMT's persistent cache, that IR is never read again.

The fix: a fork patch (d3d11.releaseShaderIR, on by default) that releases the IR right after shader creation and re-materializes it from the stored DXBC only on a cache miss. Results on the M1 Pro:

• process footprint: 13 GB → 3.9 GB
• shader-IR heap: 9.4 GB → ~0.1 GB
• swap growth during play: zero
• killcam/respawn: 22–28 fps → 59.9 fps (it was swap-thrash, not GPU)

Validated over several days of real matches on both machines.

Also in the fork:

• DXMT_FRAME_LOG — per-frame CSV telemetry (frame interval + where the time went: encode, drawable wait, latency fence, shader compiles per frame). This is how we hunted the stutter — happy to share the methodology.
• A ready-made config for flat-frametime 60: d3d11.preferredMaxFrameRate pacing + optional MetalFX spatial output upscale (1.33x on the M1 16" is the sweet spot; 2.0x overwhelms the GPU, don't).
• install.sh that backs up the stock CrossOver DXMT first; uninstall.sh restores it.

Honest caveats:

• The shader cache starts empty and builds as you play. Every new hero, skin, ability effect, and map compiles its shader variants once (a brief hitch) and then they're cached forever. First sessions hitch more; after a few days of varied play it settles and stays smooth. The cache is per-machine and can't be shared (it's derived game content).
• Tested only on OW2 / CrossOver 26.3 / macOS 26.5 / M1 Pro + M5. Other games should work (it's a general DXMT memory fix) but are untested.
• A CrossOver update overwrites the libs — just re-run install.sh.
• This is a fork of the excellent 3Shain/dxmt — all credit for DXMT itself goes upstream. Source is LGPL, tagged at the release.

Link: https://github.com/NerRobDog/dxmt/releases

If you try it on other games/machines, I'd love reports (issues are open).

I built COPA because I wanted something between Football Manager and a casual game: real management decisions, but without spending hours learning menus or being pushed into microtransactions

It started as a game I wanted to play myself, and seeing it reach the Mac App Store charts has been pretty surreal. You manage national teams, build squads, play tournaments and rewrite football history

I’m the solo developer, so I’d genuinely love feedback, especially from other Football Manager players. Happy to answer anything about the game or how I built it

Hello! I just ordered a macbook pro m5 14 inch with 24gb ram and 1tb of storage. I didn’t get it for gaming but I am curious how well it could run Minecraft with some light shaders/mods (300+) does anyone have the same model?

+6 to 8 fps when not recording

Every time I try to launch the game, I get this error:

Let me know if anyone is interested I plan to release some time in September.

Arm64 Tahoe onwards.

I recently came across reports of games such as Overwatch dropping from 250–300 FPS to the display’s refresh rate whenever the mouse moves. Here is one example: Overwatch FPS drops when moving the mouse.

I identified the Wine macOS cursor behavior responsible for this and submitted a fix upstream: Wine merge request !11799.

The merge request also adds high-polling-rate raw mouse movement on macOS 14 and newer. When a Windows application registers a mouse through the Raw Input API, Wine uses Apple’s GCMouse API to deliver unaccelerated movement without being limited to the display refresh rate. Normal cursor positioning, mouse buttons and scrolling continue through the existing macOS event path.

The changes are still under review and need testing across more games and hardware. If you are familiar with compiling Wine or replacing CrossOver libraries, I would appreciate testing with:

• Different games that use Raw Input
• 500 Hz, 1000 Hz or higher polling rates
• Gameplay, menus and Alt-Tab transitions
• Before-and-after FPS and mouse polling-rate measurements

Please include your macOS version, mouse model, polling rate and game when reporting results.

If you are not comfortable compiling Wine, there is nothing you need to do. If the changes are accepted by Wine and subsequently integrated by CodeWeavers, they should eventually become available in a future CrossOver Preview build.

No subscription plans. No Watermarks. Just one flat fee and the product is yours to use forever on 3 personal Macs. Your activations can be transferred between those Macs, with integrated Steam Workshop importing for your Wallpaper Engine collection through DepotDownloader.

Meet Allure— An application that makes your wallpapers yours. With simple controls for casual users, and deeper customization for power users !

Allure uses a native Metal-powered renderer to bring compatible Wallpaper Engine projects to macOS. She does not just create a video file and play it on the background. She supports Scene, Web, and Video wallpapers with relative ease. No more recording your old wallpapers !!

Allure’s quality speaks for herself, and you have 3 days to believe in her as much as I do !!

Allure is 5.99 for a lifetime license if you buy her from my website. With a soon-to-be Steam Release as well.

Wallpaper Engine was $5 and it gave Windows users everything they needed. Allure seeks to do the same thing and a little more. No subscriptions, no paying before you're sure you want it, and no premium tiers hiding the experience you downloaded Allure for. This app was made for end-users, by an end-user.

Here are some of my favorite features:

• Native support for Scene, Web, and Video wallpapers !! 
• Themes !! By default there are 5 Beautiful Themes based on the Seasons, but users of Allure may be able to discover so many more if they dig a little deeper… (Even Trial users are not exempt !)
• Metal-powered rendering that preserves resolution, layering, animation, and aspect ratio — It doesn’t just play a video file on your desktop. 
• Import through Steam QR sign-in, an existing Wallpaper Engine library, or local HTML, JSON, project, and video files
• Tested with 114 real wallpapers across particles, shaders, Puppet Warp, SceneScripts, audio, water, lighting, and other complex effects — Tested across two MacBook Pro M4 Pro, one 16’’ and the other 14’’ !! Heavily Debugged, and still leaving room for improvement. 
• Custom wallpaper names, thumbnails, visual layers, playback settings, mouse parallax, positioning, filters, and soundtracks
• Add a single custom song—or an entire folder of music—to any wallpaper
• Favorites, search, playlists, automatic rotation, live previews, sorting, bulk deletion, and duplicate management
• Private wallpapers and playlists protected with a passcode or Touch ID
• Different wallpapers on multiple displays, with Retina-quality scaling
• Menu-bar controls for changing, pausing, muting, capturing, and recording wallpapers
• Performance presets, custom frame-rate limits, anti-aliasing, 4K upscaling, battery controls, and automatic Low Power Mode support — All under a clean UI. 
• Local-first privacy, with remembered Steam sessions protected by the macOS Keychain
• Built for Apple-silicon Macs running macOS 14 or later

Some highly creator-specific effects or interactions may differ from Wallpaper Engine, but Allure checks compatibility during import and lets you know what is ready.

Allure was also developed on macOS 27 Golden Gate, so she will be ready for your setup on the release of that update !

What Allure does different:

Allure is Apple-notarized, and is also in process for a Steam release. No disabling Gatekeeper or changing your Mac's security settings required. Allure is not a generic Wallpaper Engine clone, she has identity. I am so confident in her ability to provide you with a good experience that I want nothing more from her potential users than 72 hours to give her a chance. Additionally, I have no desire to charge you much more than what her original inspiration, Wallpaper Engine, sought to charge its users. Only a dollar more. Allure is about personality and making your Mac device YOURS. 

And if you do decide to purchase Allure, your license supports up to 3 MacBooks of your choosing. You are completely free to deactivate a license off of one Mac and add it to another. 

Please meet her for yourself and see if she’s something worth your time. 

🌸 https://tryallure.co 🌸

Hey everyone,
I'm playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey on macOS via CrossOver, and after running fine initially, the game suddenly developed severe visual corruption.
The most noticeable issue is a complete breakdown of the skybox/volumetric sky and character lighting—the entire background turns into a massive, solid black wall (rendering the horizon and sky completely black), while character models and vegetation suffer from crushed, pitch-black shading and flickering.
System & Bottle Setup:
Mac Model: MacBook Air M4
Platform: CrossOver (running via Ubisoft Connect)
Graphics Backend: D3DMetal with MSync enabled.
Everything I have already tried:
1. Graphics API:
Switching to DXVK results in a persistent black screen on startup (deadlock/fails to initialize render targets).
D3DMetal boots and runs smoothly FPS-wise, but exhibits the broken skybox and black rendering artifacts shown in the screenshot.
2. In-Game Settings Adjustments:
Volumetric Clouds: Set to Low.
Ambient Occlusion: Turned completely Off.
Screen Space Reflections: Turned completely Off.
Clutter & Environment Details: Dropped to Medium / Low.
Anti-Aliasing: Tested both Low and Adaptive Quality turned Off.
3. Configuration & Cache:
Tested different ⁠WindowMode⁠ values (Borderless vs Fullscreen/Windowed) in ⁠ACOdyssey.ini⁠.
Cleared system/CrossOver Metal shader caches (⁠~/Library/Caches⁠).
Fast traveled across different map regions and tested older manual saves—the corrupted sky rendering persists regardless of location.
Has anyone encountered this specific sky rendering / D3DMetal buffer failure with the Anvil engine on Apple Silicon, and is there any known Wine DLL override, registry tweak, or config parameter to fix it?
Thanks in advance!

This is The Shovelguard from our indie game, The Rusted. We wanted him to feel like a serious threat the moment he enters the screen. Big, ugly, and equipped with way too many ways to ruin your day. Here’s a quick look at the fight :)

Over the past year, I have been trying to find a head tracking solution for native and Crossover games on Mac. I managed to get an older version of OpenTrack working with Smoothtrack on Crossover, but I wanted to use a webcam (it doesn't work with OT via crossover) because Smoothtrack drains my phone battery really quickly and sometimes Crossover just refuses to run OT at all.

I found a native OpenTrack for Mac by a user called "Matatata". This is completely free:
https://github.com/matatata/opentrack

To get it working with Crossover, you need a small paid addon from the same author called "OpenTrack Wine Bridge", which costs around three fiddy. There is also a fully functional demo version, which stops tracking after 30 minutes, so you can test it out before spending money. You can find a link for it in authors github releases page, I can't post it here bacause reddit filters are removing post for no reason.

There is a lengthy readme inside wine-bridge folder on authors github explaining how to get it working:

Since I'm to dump to do all that wine prefixes and other stuff, I just installed OpenTrack and the bridge add-on, and it somehow worked with my cheap webcam in American Truck Simulator in Crossover.

I would be very grateful if someone could make a simple guide for it, as head tracking on Macs is basically non-existent, and a good guide would be an awesome addition to Mac gaming. 

We didn't get CoH 3 like CoH 2 when it was released three years ago in Feb 2023 but five months ago four Mac depots were created on Steam. They are still empty but this could mean a possible port is on its way.

https://steamdb.info/app/1677280/depots/

Runs surprisingly well.

Over 55 fps the entire time. Actually easier to get up and running than crossover.

I have 18gb system ram...with 12 allocated to my Windows 11 environment.

Not sure why this game stopped running through Crossover...but Parallels does a good job with it. May even run it better.

is there any updates with crossover? i still cant play with gta v enhanced

Tavrik released on Steam today, with the native macOS build launching alongside Windows.

It's a turn-based roguelike deckbuilder where cards reshape a procedural hex map instead of attacking. You build roads and bridges to reach a visible exit before your energy runs out. There's no combat or health bar, and runs are designed for short sessions.

Mac requirements listed on the Steam page:

- macOS 11 or later

- Apple M1, or Intel Core i7-9750H or better

- 8 GB RAM

- Radeon Pro 5300M 4 GB or equivalent

- 2 GB storage

The free demo is live, so you can check performance on your own setup before buying. If you try it, model and performance details would be genuinely useful to us and to other Mac players here.

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4482350/Tavrik/

Hi,

I don’t play games other than a few exceptions, like W3, F4 or CB2077.

I’m on ugpraded m4 pro with 64gb ram.
Native Cyberpunk build works well in 4k, I thought I will get 720p max. 😹

Anyway I wonder if anyone with similar Mac has tried playing W3?

I have crossover but need to pay for newer version, although I’m waiting for black friday or something.

Just wondering if the dream of playing reworked W3 with new DLC on this machine in 1080p+ is realistic lol.

I guess “new” W3 will have way worse performance, but time will tell.

Also new W3 will be DX12 only, not sure what impact this will have.

Thanks

Edit:
Forgot to mention I only play GOG games.
Is playing W3 through GoG galaxy now even an option? (For achievements)

Back in the sc2 days i put way more hours into Line Tower Wars than i ever put into the actual game. Now whenever i went into the game to play, the lobbies are empty. I've waited like an hour in one and no one came. so i spent the last few months building a standalone version of it in godot by myself, and its up on steam.

Its free, and it runs native on apple silicon. I'm on an m-series mac myself so the mac build was the primary one the whole time. It's also cross platform (windows and mac) and fully multiplayer. Goes up to 12 players a round. And its all free.

I also added an optional DLC with a 'Gauntlet Mode' for $5. It adds an entire single player experience that is similar to a lot of rogue-lites like slay the spire, hades, etc. You clime 8 floors through 4 environments, fight bosses, deal with different random modifiers, and pick a relic at the end of each floor to permanently upgrade your run.

There are still bugs, because I can only find so many playing solo or with a few friends. Bug reporting I built in to help expediate. I'm activley developing it still, basically cause i love playing it against the computer. lol

Thinking of added a bonus Poison tower set and hero for anyone that beats the DLC, but haven't added that yet.

Happy to answer whatever. Come play :)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4954340/Line_Tower_Wars/

English learner here. I want to practice and improve my speaking skills. What MMORPG games do you recommend for good friendly interactions?