A question for our OS/X Users

Please read the question here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/planetaryannihilation/comments/1xmjc9/planetary_annihilation_osx_user_query/

You can answer here however if you don't have a reddit account. We're simply trying to understand the reasons people haven't moved to 10.9 yet, so we can be better informed about what to move our support to.

If there are compelling reasons for people not to move to 10.9, we may simply up our OpenGL profile to 3.2 which still has backward support to 10.7 and 10.8, but it does mean the extension overlap to 3.3 may mean we can't get as good performance or behavior as if we could simply rely on 10.9 as the baseline.

Anyway, comments, concerns welcome! We want to figure this out sooner rather than later.

Does 10.9 fix the HDR glitch? I can't remember what you exactly said about it, so I just wanted to make sure if it did, because it doesn't on my Mbp, which runs 10.9. Everything is black when HDR is enabled!

The reason why I did not yet upgrade is because I am a developer myself and I have some development tools that are not yet 100% compatible, and also because I did not yet buy the new Parallels version that is compatible with 10.9. However I will update in the next weeks, so for me it would not be a problem if you set 10.9 as the new baseline. 10.10 is already on the horizon.

Please, Please, Please shift to 10.9 as the min requirement if it's going to simplify things and improve the game on Mac!

I waited few weeks before to upgrade to 10.9, but just out of prudence, 'cos I use my Macs mainly for work. So I can't føck it up, if you allow me the indelicate expression.

But OS X 10.9.x is awesome. I'm confident that it will be the new baseline very quickly. Plus, it comes free of charge.

Going to answer the poll.

I am not aware of any reasons to not update to Mavericks. New features. Increased security.

Good on you for seeking feedback prior to acting.
However, as the forums only represent a subset of users, can i suggest you cast the net wider and put this in a KS update?

Personally I would rather you stick to 10.9 to get the best possible performance. Not to mention, but the time the game is "done" 10.10 will either be in developer beta or released.

The only machine I have that isn't running 10.9 is my work laptop. And the only reason I am not running 10.9 is because I haven't had the time to upgrade. I need to re-compile a crap load of macports, blah blah blah. I don't plan on running PA on it anyway (It's a Macbook Air so never gonna happen anyway)

As a dev I am forward looking. Doing iOS development I only support iOS 7, best video performance out of it. Once iOS 8 comes out, I will drop iOS 7 support.

When I see recent updates on KS there is very few comments so I doubt many people actually check it.

Still Uber posted it on facebook and I guess it's good idea to push it on Twitter as well. At lease here people watch for such updates.

Not commenting does not mean not reading.

To really get it out, you'd need to check OS in the game and pop up a short form (woofoo?) for the affected users.

I have a newer machine now, but I had one on 10.6 for years. I didn't bother upgrading because I didn't want to take the time to deal with breakage in development tools, and I didn't see compelling features, plus upgrades were getting mixed reviews from peers. Because it was older hardware, I was also afraid that performance would degrade as the OS got tuned for newer machines.

However, given the machine's age (I bought it on the tail of 10.4) I wouldn't have been too terribly surprised if a game now in development didn't support it.

I'm still on 10.8. I haven't updated yet because I will have to reinstall a bunch of software. If you support 10.8 that is obviously more convenient for me, but if I need to upgrade to 10.9 to play then I'll probably decide to upgrade sooner.

Actually, one thing i'm wondering about, is what the metrics are for the game? What percentage of mac games play on which OS, what machines etc?

That would be very interesting to see.

We don't have the metrics on our own users for this. I based my numbers purely off the Steam Hardware Survey, which tends to be a pretty accurate distribution. It probably varies a bit for our players, but over the long term, the SHS tends to be statistically accurate.

Link to the Steam Hardware Survey for the lazy.

I'm kinda surprised by how few people updated to the latest version of OS X.

Ok with 10.9 as a min req...

10.9 Mavericks should be the baseline for your final release:

• 10.9 Mavericks supports OpenGL 4.1 and OpenCL 1.2 with a baseline of OpenGL 3.3 (support.apple.com/kb/HT5942)
• all new macs since 2012 support OpenGL 4.1
• a minimum of OpenGL 3.3 seems appropriate for performance
• PA would be like a slideshow late game on hardware that can't run 10.9
• the PA release will be at least 6 months after the October 2013 release of 10.9
• 10.9 is a free upgrade

Refund anyone who purchased based on 10.7 compatibility and can't upgrade.

Question: Can you baseline on OpenGL 3.3 and require OpenGL 4.1+ for higher quality settings?

As a developer I keep separate partitions and Parallels virtual machines for 10.7 and 10.8 testing.

I have three 10.9 hardware sets for testing PA.

MacBook Pro Retina (late 2013 full spec)

• PA settings: Uber/High
• 10.9.2
• MacBookPro11,3
• Intel Core i7 2.6 GHZ (4 cores, 8 threads)
• 16GB DDR 1600 MHz
• 2048MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M
• 2880 x 1800 (Retina LCD)
• 2560 x 1440 (Thunderbolt Display)
• 1920 x 1200 (LED Cinema Display via Thunderbolt/DisplayPort)
• 1920 x 1200 (DELL 2407WFP via HDMI/DVI)

Mac mini (mid 2011 mid spec)

• PA settings: medium/off
• 10.9.1
• Macmini5,2
• Intel Core i5 2.5 GHz (2 cores, 4 threads)
• 8GB DDR 1333 MHz
• 256MB AMD Radeon HD 6630M
• 1600 x 900

MacBookPro (mid 2009 high spec):

• PA settings: Low/Off (slow and barely usable late game)
• 10.9.2
• MacBook Pro5,2
• Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8 GHz (2 cores)
• 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT
• 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 9400M
• 1920 x 1200

In latest stream Garat said that next update will be use 3.2 so at least next update won't use 3.3

Yes, for the time being, we've upped the minimum to 3.2, which still supports 10.7, 10.8 and 10.9. With further investigation, we may push to move to 3.3 if we determine it will not have a negative impact on the OS/X players as a whole.

For now, it seems simply going to 3.2 should take care of 90% of our concerns, but as V continues to work on graphics optimizations, we'll be looking carefully to see if the difference between 3.2 and 3.3 is enough to warrant forcing the issue.

That said, having 10.9 as the only baseline makes everything a little simpler and better, but so far, we've seen enough justifications (app back compat preventing people from upgrading), we'll hold off for a while before we revisit the issue.