Current best guess at requirements:
MacOS 10.14 or later (definitely required): this is available on most Macs starting with 2012 models, except the lower-end MacBooks, which require 2015 or later models (though MacBook Pro models 2012 or later should be okay). Specific machine requirements for 10.14 are at https://support.apple.com/kb/SP777?locale=en_US
Processor: Intel processor (So far, Macs that meet other requirements don’t seem to be limited by CPU; Unreal support for M1 Macs is not released yet)
8GB DRAM (probably, we need more data on this, and this may increase as more of the game is released)
10GB free disk space (for current Avatar Builder release, full game is going to be much larger)
AMD discrete graphics. At least some more recent Intel integrated graphics GPUs seem to work, but frame rates are very poor unless graphics settings are very low, and the frame rates are still pretty low even with low graphics settings. NVIDIA GPUs are no longer supported by Unreal Engine, and it only sort of worked in our test, we saw lots of graphics artifacts.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team [/color]
Just attempted to install the current mac client.
My computer is a 27 inch mid-2011 iMac.
macOS High Sierra 10.13.6
Processor: 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory: 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Graphics: AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2048 MB
The installer can be copied into the Applications folder from the (opened) .dmg download ... but my OS version is too low to meet the minimum requirements.
So I can certainly verify that 10.14+ is a minimum OS version requirement for the current Mac client.
I plan (at some point) to purchase my first new Mac (in a decade) sometime either later this year or next year once Apple Silicon has iterated another chip or so (and can support a mini-LED screen).
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
I *think* the AB should run on that hardware, if you upgraded MacOS. Not entirely sure about the 2GB GDRAM, though. We haven't done a lot of testing on machines with less than 16GB of main DRAM, either, but I'm less worried about that.
Please note that currently we can't support Apple Silicon Macs, since Epic hasn't released the M1-native version of Unreal Engine. And we have no ETA on that, that I know of. My vague understanding is that Unreal Engine "sorta works, sometimes" on M1 Macs. Not sure if this is special custom builds of UE4 (which developers can do from source), or running under x86 emulation, or both.
Given the current war between Epic and Apple, I'm not sure Epic has a lot of interest in putting resources toward Mac support right now, so I'm crossing my fingers on this, but not holding my breath. There was some small indication in the last update of Unreal Engine that seemed like they were moving toward support of multiple binary code formats on Mac (i.e. both Apple Silicon and x86 Macs), which is a minor hopeful sign. Also, they've done a lot of the necessary work already, in supporting Unreal on iOS. But it's also something they can withhold as leverage over Apple.
As soon as Epic puts out something like an official M1 build of UE4, I'll probably go pick up an M1-based Mac, most likely a Mini, and start trying to build and run CoT on it. For now, we're limited to Intel-based Macs.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team [/color]
Hardware limitations mean that my OS version is "orphaned" at 10.13.6 in perpetuity. So there is definitely a hard cutoff in terms of "vintage" of a hardware involved.
The spat between the two companies isn't/can't/shouldn't last forever ... there's simply too much money to be made (by both of them) to allow the current standoff to persist in perpetuity.
Of course, that's assuming pragmatic and/or rational actors are involved, rather than overgrown spiteful egomaniacs ...
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Ah, I hadn't realized that the 10.14 cutoff was 2011. I should have, I've got some older machines around here, still. But then I generally don't try to keep the older machines up to date, they're often around because some old piece of software is on them that might not survive the update.
I do hope the Apple/Epic fight gets resolved, but I fear that Epic's real goal is to get their store onto iOS, and there are very good reasons why Apple isn't likely to let that happen unless forced by legislation or a court decree. Whether there's a middle ground they can settle on, I have no idea.
I was kind of hoping the new Apple TV would gain an M1 chip and be more oriented to higher end gaming, but they didn't go that route. That said, I have no evidence for how well UE4 might run on M1s. Just comparing specs, it looks like it might work about as well as my old 2015 MacBook Pro with the AMD GPU, which i was using for development here for quite a while, but it's very hard to say for sure.
I'm not *quite* bored enough to try to build UE4 from scratch for the M1, just to see. I'd rather let Epic deal with it, but I'm willing to be an early adopter.
I updated the requirements post up top with the machine info; thanks for bringing that to my attention.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team [/color]
/em hat tip
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Soooo… I got a 13" MBP with the 8-core GPU/16GB RAM M1 configuration, decided to f*** around, and found out that [i]the Intel build Just Works™ under Rosetta 2[/i]. I haven't done any exhaustive testing yet, just grabbed one of the Rooks costumes and ran around the test island for a bit (because game navigation with a laptop touchpad sucks), but the fundamentals seem to be there, and it seemed to be locked at 60fps at 1440x900.
Twitter: @SisterSilicon
An update: Hooked the Mac up to a 4K display for some testing with a real keyboard and mouse. I set the graphics settings to 1920x1080/Epic preset, spent an "appropriate" amount of time in the avatar builder for a costume contest participant (which would be inappropriate for a normal person), and loaded into the test island. At those settings, I mostly saw around 30 fps, with drops into the mid-high 20s when I stood in the town square and faced the lighthouse or when the jack-o-lantern particle effects fired. For alpha software running in instruction set emulation, that's more than decent. While on the test island I took the resolution up to 3840x2160/Epic, for science, and got 9-10 fps. But it never crashed, and the Mac's fan kept things warm but not hot.
[img]https://dm2301files.storage.live.com/y4mU74Sugm1lQ6uYnGUyzdMZiCE5_KCxdsovrhZ7LhxMBe1fq7yFmInBMnPV8tV2b8Q8umX3wwJjEZ1HZOlLrTjlyX8i9QBkFVmId-EluEnjVec3wr4i6wEpOJ_avuK7DSW7N_6aYOfhIrt-g9ShEX70j1fdNcZw3KAA2zLPhmFeLI7qeR4rGjPYDitVxbhlbtu?width=3840&height=2160&cropmode=none[/img]
Looks good on any OS, doesn't it?
Twitter: @SisterSilicon
Okay, that's pretty amazing, and thank you so much for trying that!
I'm running on the last Intel 16" MacBook Pro with the highest end Radeon chipset, and at 1536x960, the island runs at about 55-60fps on the default graphics settings, which is High. On Epic, it runs about 45fps.
As far as trackpad navigation goes, I know that pain, that's what I use almost all the time, though I do use a mouse once in a while. I usually hold down the W key to move around and just steer with one finger on the trackpad. Note that, in theory, you can use a gamepad to move around on the island. I don't know if anyone has tested that, but the input bindings are there for gamepads. Most of the UI isn't set up for gamepad navigation, though, except it should work in the ESC menu.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team [/color]
Again, thank you for doing all that testing!
One thing I would like to know is what the settings switch to if you use the "Benchmark" button in the Graphics settings menu, both for the native screen and the 4k. That button runs Unreal's graphics benchmark tests and changes the settings to what they think is optimum for the particular machine setup.
I am frankly amazed that it's running that fast on a 4k display with the M1 integrated graphics; I knew they were supposed to be good, but that's really close to what I'm getting with the maxed-out Radeon mobile chip on my 16" Intel MBP. I don't have a 4k display to try it on, would be interesting to get a comparison.
For a comparison point, one of the devs ran the AB on a fairly old Mac Mini with integrated Intel graphics. It worked. Sorta. At a very low frame rate. What a major advance!
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team [/color]
I was genuinely impressed that 4K was still measurable in frames per second, not seconds per frame, running on a jumped-up phone GPU.
Controller support: I paired a DualShock 4 via Bluetooth, and it's a bit flaky. I could mostly navigate option lists in menus with the d-pad, unless the list had a scroll bar. If I tried to scroll past the last visible item, it snapped back to the top. I couldn't get to the Apply/Back/etc. buttons at the bottom. O to go back worked, though. Once on the test island, though, things went south. The left stick worked fine for walking and running, but the right stick only moved the camera on the y-axis. I couldn't turn the camera or the character. When I went into the gamepad bindings, the only listed options were Jump and "Crouch". (I'm guessing from the lack of keyboard binding for crouch that it's not supposed to be there for controllers.) Jump was pre-bound to A/X, and I was able to bind "Crouch" to B/O. LB/L1 and RB/R1 also worked. I tried LT/L2 for Jump and it's strictly on/off. I haven't tried using a controller in Windows, so I don't know if that's expected or if jump height should be analog. (I was hoping "Crouch" was just a mislabeled Sprint but it was not to be. Couldn't sprint at all with the controller.)
UPDATE: I tried an Xbox One controller with Windows, and saw exactly the same behaviors as the DS4 on macOS, so at best there are no regressions in controller support on an M1 Mac.
If I tried the Esc menu from the island, I could Resume or enter Options, but if I tried to move down to "Back to Main Menu", the selection box disappeared. That happens with the keyboard as well.
Built-in display, 1440x900 resolution: Benchmark came up with the High preset (all Quality options to High, TAA anti-aliasing method), Far View Distance and all toggles On under Advanced, all Ray Tracing options Off, DLSS Off, 87% resolution scale. Frame rates were around 60 as long as the camera wasn't aimed at the far end of the island, dipping to 45 when a jack-o-lantern was triggered. Looking at the far end of the island, frame rates dropped down to around 35, with jack-o-lanterns dropping to 25. The fireworks didn't have any noticeable affect on frame rate.
Built-in display, max resolution: Something is capping the built-in display to 2560x1600 in the game, but I don't know if it's macOS or Unreal Engine. (macOS only lets me scale the desktop to a logical 1680x1050 even though the native resolution is 2880x1800, so that might be part of it. It's more lax with desktop scaling on external displays.) At 2560x1600, the benchmark settings are surprisingly the same as 1440x900. On the test island, frame rates varied more, from 30 to 40 when not looking end-to-end. Aiming the camera end-to-end dropped frame rates to around 21.
Hopefully, I'll have time tomorrow to run 4K external display tests. It depends on when Amazon remembers which truck is carrying the new SSD for my Windows rig (that was supposed to be delivered yesterday but still isn't here today).
Twitter: @SisterSilicon
Finally got around to that 3840x2160 test. The benchmark was identical to 1440x900, except Lens Flares were turned Off. I'm not sure if the benchmark came up with that, or if I had previously turned it off and it wasn't affected. (They're a bit [i]much[/i] for my tastes.) At those settings, I saw around 21 fps if I wasn't facing the far end of the island, dropping to 13 for jack-o-lantern effects. Facing the far end of the island, 13-17, dropping to 12-15 for jack-o-lanterns.
I wanted to see if I could at least get to 30 fps without facing the far end of the island, and as long as I stayed at 87% resolution scaling, I could get there with the Medium preset, AA off, and dropping Effects and Post-Processing to Low. (Those last two seem to be heavy hitters for frame time.) One benefit of M1: I could run Epic textures with no adverse effect thanks to the unified memory architecture. 16GB of shared RAM meant it was never starved for texture memory. The View Distance setting doesn't seem to have any effect, however. No matter what setting I used, I could stand on the lighthouse at one end of the island and see the other lighthouse without any visible change in distance or level of detail.
Twitter: @SisterSilicon
Much thanks for all your hard work testing out various configurations!
I'm truly amazed at how much the M1 is able to do. Not sure how much the unified memory helps with that, but Unreal has been running on iOS for a while, so I assume they use the integrated graphics architecture fairly efficiently, even if they think they're running on a desktop-grade OS.
Supported resolutions: those are decided by Unreal, though I think they can be overridden in one of the Unreal config .ini files. My 16" MacBook Pro shows the highest option at 3584x2240, along with some other resolutions in that range. I have no idea where Unreal got that from, since the native screen is 3072x1920 and it's never been hooked up to an external monitor.
Thanks for the all the gamepad testing and bug notes. I have been assuming that if arrow key navigation is working correctly in the menus, then the gamepad should be also. Apparently that's not true. The menu package has its own set of internal bindings for gamepads, and it's supposed to have pretty robust gamepad support; the devs for that package do gamepad primarily, I think. So I probably broke something when I adapted their code to our game... Not sure when I can get a chance to look at the gamepad issues; I do have a PS4 in the house, so I hope I can test with its controllers when I need to. I would expect the island to work; the gamepad bindings should be Unreal's standard gamepad keybinding setup for movement and camera. It may be we're missing one or more gamepad events that don't come through the Unreal keybinding system, though. That's probably a quick fix, when I get a chance to try to set up a controller.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team [/color]
1.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo CPU
4 GB RAM
80 GB HDD
802.1 1n (laptop)
OS X 10.6
Microphone and Camera built-in [URL=https://spicemoneylogin.in]spice money login[/URL]
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OSX 10.14 is an absolute minimum, Unreal will not run on anything earlier. 10.6 is far too old.
Even if that were fixed, the machine specs are almost certainly too low as well. The Avatar Builder is already around 10GB, and the game is likely to grow much larger as we get real zones added to it, so the 80GB drive is almost certain to be too small at some point; it probably isn’t even big enough for recent OSX releases. You don’t list the GPU, but from the other specs, I’m guessing it’s probably a fairly old Intel integrated GPU, which is very unlikely to perform well, if it works at all.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team [/color]
Does the switch to Apple Silicon have any impact on minimum Mac system requirements?
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Essentially it already has.
As time goes on, the legacy intel chip Apple products are going to age out of the customer base.
Apple is already in the process of migrating to the M1+ chipset and consequently the OS is evolving in ways that aren't necessarily backwards compatible.
There's going to be a point (quite possibly before or soon after City of Titans release) in which backwards compatibility to pre-Apple Silicon won't be worth the trouble from a programming Return On Investment.
CAN you do it?
Yes.
Will it be WORTH doing?
Very likely not.
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[i]Verbogeny is one of many pleasurettes afforded a creatific thinkerizer.[/i][/center]
At the current time, Apple Silicon isn’t supported by Unreal Engine, and the development tools aren’t stable on Apple Silicon Macs, last time I checked.
We have a report or two that the Avatar Builder seems to run fine on M1 hardware using Rosetta, but I don’t have an M1 machine, myself, so I can’t test that.
I suspect Apple Silicon support in Unreal may be being affected by the current fracas between Apple and Epic, or it may be that they only plan to support Apple Silicon in UE5, which we currently aren’t planning to use, at least for anything near-term. UE5 is only in its earliest public release form right now, it’s basically a public beta or similar.
Basically, we’re waiting on Epic to get official Apple Silicon support into the development chain. There are signs of this happening in the version of Unreal we’re currently using, but we have no information on when official support might happen.
So for now, I’m still using an Intel MacBook Pro to support the CoT development that I do. We probably have to live with CoT running via Rosetta on Apple Silicon until Epic releases UE support for it.
As far as specs go, judging from the reports of CoT under Rosetta, it looks like the base M1 machines have quite adequate CPU and GPU power for CoT. The other specs should be about the same as for Intel Macs.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team [/color]
Apparently Microsoft is moving to ARM based Windows: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3662313/microsoft-is-building-an-arm-powered-windows-mini.html
If so, and if Unreal engine will become ARM native, it may make UE an eventual native application for Apple Silicon as well. Whether that would mean backwards compatibility to UE4 is another question, but the space is certainly interesting to follow.
[hr]I like to take your ideas and supersize them. This isn't criticism, it is flattery. I come with nothing but good will and a spirit of team-building. If you take what I write any other way, that is probably just because I wasn't very clear.
Intel CISC architecture makes great space heaters that have computer-adjacent functions on the side.
People who want to do efficient computing are moving to ARM.
I'm still wanting to find out when an [url=https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/06/apple-unveils-m2-with-breakthrough-performance-and-capabilities/][b]M2[/b][/url] Mac Mini will become available so I can finally upgrade my (now ancient) 2011 iMac that I bought almost 11 years ago now.
[img]https://www.apple.com/newsroom/images/live-action/wwdc-2022/Apple-WWDC22-M2-chip-M1-chip-2up-220606_big.jpg.large.jpg[/img]
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UE already supports ARM for mobile, and UE4 already contains some signs of forthcoming Apple Silicon support for Mac.
The major missing pieces are full support for Apple’s Metal graphics pipeline on Mac, and native versions of the Unreal editor. People have been trying to run the editor under Rosetta, and there are some issues, which mostly look like problems with the Unreal Metal driver. I haven’t heard anything new recently, though I suspect Epic is focused on getting UE5 stable on Windows first.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team [/color]
Processor: Intel processor (So far, Macs that meet other requirements don’t seem to be limited by CPU; Unreal support for M1 Macs is not released yet)
Hello Tech Team,
I have a MacStudio(2022) with an M1 Ultra, fully loaded. I recently updated my very old CoT launcher, and tried both the Avatar Builder and the game itself. Everything seemed great until I got in-game, and then the frame rate seems to take a real hit. Is there anything I can do to improve this, or is this because of the chipset?
Any and all help would be greatly appreciated!
P.S. I also own a pretty good Falcon Northwest Tiki(PC), which I intend to try out the game on that once I update there too.
Co-Creator
Life is an illusion
a dream,
a bubble,
a shadow.
Nothing is permanent.
Nothing is worthy of Anger.
Nothing is worthy of dispute.
Nothing.
I see that this current version/update of the game is only for PC. Sorry for the confusion. I'll try it on my Falcon NW Tiki(PC).
Cheers all,
Co-Creator
Life is an illusion
a dream,
a bubble,
a shadow.
Nothing is permanent.
Nothing is worthy of Anger.
Nothing is worthy of dispute.
Nothing.
I don’t have an Apple Silicon Mac yet to test with, so it’s a bit hard to say, but your machine is running Intel code under Rosetta 2 emulation, so there’s going to be *some* performance hit. I’d also suggest tweaking the graphics settings in the setup (ESC) menus. Some of those can have a big impact, shadows especially. It’s also possible it will smooth out after a while since some things may be cached once the game runs for a bit.
When we get the Mac build done for the city release, we’ll have the option to include a native Apple Silicon build, but we have limited testing ability for that right now. I’m not sure how we’ll handle that. Note that there will only be a single “universal binary” Mac client, with both Intel and Apple Silicon code versions inside, you won’t need to pick the right one.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team [/color]
Yeah, there are some logistical issues holding up getting the Mac version built. We don’t expect there to be additional problems with the Mac version, but we have run into some in the past. Windows or Mac, it’s all built from the same code base, but it does have to be compiled on the right target system, and there are only two of us set up to build Mac versions right now, and we have limited availability.
[color=#ff0000]Tech Team [/color]