A MacOS port of No Man’s Sky dropped this past week. Let’s try it out! This will be a short stream (half hour?) at 10 Central time today, and I’ll give it a quick trial.
This is all shiny and new, so I’m not going to be shocked if it crashes a few times. I also have no idea about performance — I’ve been running this on an Intel machine running PopOS Linux before this, and now I’m going to try it on a Mac Mini with an M1 chip and 16GB. Fingers crossed — it would be nice to see the Mac become a viable machine for gaming.
Wow, that went smoothly. No crashes. Performance was far better on my inexpensive little Mac then it is on my bigger, fancier Linux box (but to be fair, the Linux machine is 7 or 8 years old).
Apologies if you tuned in expecting nothing but gamer/gearhead talk, I mainly chattered away about our current research project. And spiders, naturally.
That’s a disturbing headline given Wozniak’s comment (approximate, and may be somewhat apocryphal) that one should never trust a computer that one cannot throw out the window.
It seems pretty smooth to me! I’m normally playing NMS on an XBOX One and it’s not as nice as this. I suspect my enormous bases are not helping. On XBOX One the game often crashes when my freighter is around, so I often dismiss it from the system when I don’t need it (you can still access the Freighter’s inventory even when dismissed).
Anyway this is good news given I’m planning to buy a new Mac soon, for work and home use.
Yeah, this was a fresh save, so no bases, nothing complicated. I was still greatly impressed at how creamy smooth this was on a $600 Mac Mini.
Add nozzles and a tank with hydrogen peroxide.
Although I’m not into gaming, I’ll keep your comments in mind as I consider what I need to replace the MacBook Pro I’m using on my desk. A Mac mini might be just the thing.
As time spirals go, I used to like RTS games, like RA2. Before that it was…well, you know.
I gave up gaming some time ago, but I think I might like to try something. Maybe.
I am so goddamn old I never “got into” PCs beyond the absolute minimum needed at work.
PC games means “new stuff, like the things in the film with the computer playing Global Nuclear War with a kid. BTW what happened to Wham?”
🤔
PZ, thanks for sharing that. I’ve never tried an online game. I’m impressed by your PopOs Linux box. I’ve never been able to afford Mac’s. I’m online now with using a 16 year old Dell running puppy linux. I’ve enjoyed text adventure games for years. The first I tried was colossal cave by woods and crowther in the mid-1970s using a 300 baud acoustic coupled dialup modem to the USC mainframe from a friend’s house..
Yeah, in one sense you get what you pay for with a Mac – generally something very well optimized. What you trade for that is – customization, and some level of control over the OS. Which means when “new” tech comes out, even if you know what to do to make it run just as smooth, good luck actually getting the same performance out of it that a PC person could, at much less cost.
But, there is a huge bloody gap between, “What someone that knows what they are doing can get out of a PC.”, and, “What Apple already figured out how to get out of what they consider optimal hardware.” Mind – this is less the case today, since they practically are PCs, but… its still mostly accurate, even if the price gap has gotten stupid.
Research projects are nice.
Now, please increase oxygen levels to carbonaceous levels so the critters get big enough I no longer need a microscope.
BTW those weakly lunches for keeping connected sound like a very good idea.
Nit-picking: The systems seem suspiciously interesting.
I bet you do not get any of those utterly boring red-dwarf systems where the terrestrial planets inevitably are deep-fried or frozen, most of them facing only one side to the star while stellar flares sterilize everything every week or so.
Kagehi @ 9, another good thing with Mac computers is, they tend to not swiftly become too slow for the latest applications. 5 years on, they’re about as current for software as when they were new.
OT, just saw an interesting blurb. Apparently, Russian bots are blathering on Twitter that Ukraine is selling our Javelin missiles to Mexican cartels, showing a video of someone wandering around with an antitank rocket slung on his shoulder. Specifically, a training model inert AT4. Which are made in Sweden. A yellow band on the tube indicating it’s inert, two black bands would indicate it’s a live unit.
I wonder if the Ruskies are paying Elon extra…
@wzrd1, #12:
Agreed – I have a 2013 retina MBP that I’ve kept going with a battery replacement over the winter. $100 to keep a working computer with a (still) great screen and reasonably up-to-date software was for me a great deal. I use it regularly in outdoor situations where there can be a lot of dust.
Will your Mac fly?
Depends on how hard you throw it.
It is impossible to throw a computer too hard or too far.
~The IT guy/gal/indeterminate