Valve's superb Steam service finally launched for the Apple Mac this week, with the sublime Portal being the first title available for Mac gamers to try out for free.
Most importantly, Valve also plans to introduce its Steamworks suite of publishing and development tools to games developers, free of charge.
The developer is also now set to release its forthcoming games simultaneously on PC and Mac, (with Portal 2 being the next major release on the schedule).
Gamers and developers alike have been pondering the implications of Valve's announcement and what it might mean for the future of gaming on Apple laptops and desktops. Is this going to kick off a new, slightly-belated 'renaissance' in the Mac gaming scene?
A gameplay demo of the cancelled Portal prequel F-Stop using recreated assets features no portals, and a unique camera that duplicates items.
From GamesReviews:"Portal with RTX is a fresh look for the 2007 classic. But it's not easy to run, and the results may not impress everybody."
Portal RTX may look like a quant remaster, but that couldn't be further from the truth. It's one of the most demanding games available today.
And in a bad way! This is not where gaming should be going. We should focus more on better physics, AI, more meaningful writing, substance in storytelling and overall art over reflections and lighting effects. But hey, you've got billion dollar companies trying to sell you stuff, so I guess you have to make a whole ecosystem around ray tracing because people make a living out of it on youtube. Talk about losing touch with reality and taking eye off the ball. Advancing gaming as a whole my ass!
This is Portal. Are you expecting them to remake it for different physics or something? What else should they have done other than make it pretty? Besides, this isn't just run of the mill ray-tracing. It's path traced. Richard on DF said path tracing with 4 bounces is very demanding.
Yeah this isn't basic RT like doing some shadows and reflections and that's it, it's doing a lot more, that's why the original Doom games and Quake 2 etc look so good with it turned on. Most other games that have RT don't have much of an effect at all because it's doing much more basic and limited fx, it's too demanding.
I get it, I'm a PC enthusiast, but I just feel that what we, and I do, way too much is checking out puddles and mirrors for reflections, rooms for lighting effects and rocks and trees for shadows.
I understand Path Tracing is expensive, and I get the DF side of things and all that. I listen to them and learn everyday, and I really like their cast and what they are doing.
I just genuinely think that the narrative and discussion is revolving too much on the technical aspects of the games nowadays, and I fully understand it when games are shipped in a poor condition today more and more.
I just mean that maybe we could have just done without this Portal RT update, and maybe we are at a point where we talk about RT as much as we talk about music or story when a new game comes out. I'm just saying that I think the discussion is unbalanced and skewed towards these relatively insignificant aspects of games.
Anyway, enjoy the Portal 2 RT.
And we shouldnt expect other advancements because Portal RTX is literally just a Tech Demo for Nvidia RTX Remix. Its just made to show what is possible using the RTX Remix tool and it looks like people can't wait for the release of it
I think most devs are too lazy to do all their games openGL, but I hope i'm wrong :(
edit : lazy money wise, investment...
There's always going to be differences between DX and OpenGL both in performance and graphics.
Just needs a little optimizing and polish, that's all :)