wine VS Whisky

Sometimes when a detail of Windows isn't documented, the Wine source code can be useful. Have you tried looking at it for details of win64 SEH? For example:

https://github.com/wine-mirror/wine/blob/master/dlls/ntdll/e...

https://github.com/wine-mirror/wine/blob/master/dlls/msvcrt/...

Source code: https://github.com/wine-mirror/wine/tree/master/programs/wor...

It's Wine with some special sauce (Apple couldn't reuse VKD3D because they chose to invent Metal rather than stick with OpenGL/Vulkan so they had to build their graphics translation themselves). Crossover is built on the same technology. In fact, Apple's brew script literally links to Crossover's sources: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apple/homebrew-apple/main/...

Things like the crypto API should be implemented if you can find the reference for your specific API calls here: https://github.com/wine-mirror/wine/tree/master/dlls/crypt32

Apple's version of Wine is aimed at developers, though. It shouldn't take too long for someone to make an app or script to easily set up environments with the developer runtime, but I doubt they'll support it as well as Valve supports Proton. If your application of choice doesn't need any fancy graphics, there's a decent chance Wine/Crossover can already run it anyway, no need to mess with Apple's SDK.

With the M2 Max outputting 28fps at 1080p (screenshot linked), I wouldn't expect too much from the gaming performance of this thing, though.

Not the OP, but Github's stats on https://github.com/wine-mirror/wine say the current Wine codebase is 95.1% C, 0.3% C++

Take a look at Wine's commit log. It's really well curated. https://github.com/wine-mirror/wine/commits/master

Fixes Overwatch 2 game freeze after a few seconds in game. After a long bisect it was found that wine-mirror/wine@4bf9d24 from upstream wine wine 7.13 and higher needed to be backported.

git clone https://github.com/wine-mirror/wine \ cd wine \ ./configure \ make \ make install \ wine ./Anomaly.exe

Well, I personally can't confirm nor deny that (the only "old" game I play is Plants vs Zombies (2009), and surprisingly it still works great with latest Proton). But the reality is that Wine/Proton are very large and complex projects, developed by pretty much just reverse engineering Windows; Couple this with the fact that a lot of changes happen in-between versions (especially in Wine), and even though an one-line change fixes an issue, it might end up breaking something, elsewhere. My point is, it's almost inevitable not to break stuff eventually. This is why Valve gives us older Proton versions to choose from.

I don't think Apple really does much, at least nothing they've announced publicly.

However, Codeweavers (the company) makes Crossover, which can utilize GPT in its recent versions: https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover/

There is also Whisky, a FOSS app that uses Wine and GPT: https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky/ (unlike Codeweavers, it doesn't have per-game profiles, so you just have to look at its wiki and issues and try to get games to run on your own)

In my experience, neither is very good, and both are way more difficult to use than a real PC.

Maybe things will get better if the Apple VR headset spurs a game rush, but I doubt it will. In the meantime, I do all my Mac gaming on Geforce Now and it's been truly wonderful: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce-now/games/ You get a 4080 in the cloud for $20/mo, and no local heat or noise since the rendering happens remotely.

(Not affiliated with any of these companies, I just really like GeForce Now and use it every day, and have waited a loooooooong time for this to happen, hoping that Microsoft will do us a solid. They finally did!)

Thanks to Microsoft's acquisition of Activision (and them handing cloud streaming rights over to Ubisoft [1]), Diablo IV will soon be coming to Nvidia's cloud streaming service, GeForce Now [2].

GeForce Now offloads rendering to the cloud and makes your computer/tablet/phone act as a thin client that just receives the rendered frames and sends back control inputs. It's similar to how Google's failed Stadia program works, except Nvidia's offering uses your existing Steam/Epic/Xbox/etc. library, offers much more powerful hardware, and utilizes a lot of Nvidia-specific optimizations that Stadia never had.

Between DLSS, Reflex, and the upcoming cloud G-Sync, the game will likely run better on in the cloud than many desktop gaming PCs. The GeForce Now Ultimate tier comes with a RTX 4080 GPU, which is out of reach for many gamers due to its high price.

This will also finally allow Mac gamers to play Diablo IV without Crossover (which has poor performance) or Whisky and GPT (which often breaks and stays broken for weeks at a time [3]). GFN has much more powerful GPUs than even a M3 Max.

For Linux or Steam Deck gamers, D4 is already Proton Gold rated and Steam Deck verified [4], but GeForce Now should allow you to play it on much higher graphics, using less battery, and without using the fans.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/13/23915780/ubisoft-activis...

[2] https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/CES-2024-geforce-now-activisio...

[3] https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky/issues/682

[4] https://www.protondb.com/app/2344520

Have you tried Apple Porting Toolkit? It’s able to get most of my Steam library working well (Cyberpunk and Halo for example). There is an app called Whisky that removes the hoops.

https://getwhisky.app/

https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky/issues/682

Today you just go to https://getwhisky.app/ and grab the app.

Whisky is amazing. It uses an older — free — version of CrossOver (proprietary and commercial software built on Wine). I'm able to play GTA V on very high graphics settings with amazingly fluid fps on my M1 Pro, with DXVK enabled in Whisky!

Whisky makes playing Windows games much more feasible with Apple's Game Porting Toolkit.