Apple Silicon / ARM GMS2 IDE Discussion

[NanoSharkGames]

I have used GMS2 on my M1 MacBook Pro using Rosetta translation extensively and works great. However, the first Rosetta dropped support a few years after it was released during the previous transition. So, if an ARM version is not released if/when Rosetta 2 drops support, then GM will no longer run on M1 Macs due to the nature of different ARM instruction sets with no translation. As someone who appreciates the M1 MBP's battery life and performance, that would be disappointing to me.

I did install a virtual Windows 11 ARM on my Parallels Desktop 17 software and tested GMS2 through its built-in x86/64 emulation. It works smoothly and has thrown no errors so far. The Windows 11 ARM emulation layer is my backup in case Rosetta 2 support is dropped.

However, I think that M1 MacBook users would benefit from a native M1/ARM IDE due to an increase in battery life and performance due to the nature of native ARM instruction sets being more optimized than x64/86 translated/emulated code. This could also be a benefit to GMS2 users who use Windows ARM laptops, such as a Microsoft Surface. I think ARM support should happen and I submitted in a feature request earlier this year to YYG.

What are your thoughts on what I discussed?

 

[Roldy]

I don't think there is much to say.

Either contact YoYo and suggest making a Native/Universal Binary or contact Apple and ask about Rosetta 2 roadmap plans.

Rosetta 1 support lasted 4-6 years (3 OS versions) depending on how you count. So maybe plan on Rosetta 2 ending in 2025?

 

[NanoSharkGames]

I don't think there is much to say.

Either contact YoYo and suggest making a Native/Universal Binary or contact Apple and ask about Rosetta 2 roadmap plans.

Rosetta 1 support lasted 4-6 years (3 OS versions) depending on how you count. So maybe plan on Rosetta 2 ending in 2025?

I have already submitted a feature request to YYG regarding ARM support for GMS2 long before, as stated in the original post. However, I mentioned an ARM IDE, but did not think about requesting a universal binary build. Thanks so much for that suggestion. Also, I might consult Apple on Rosetta 2 support for the future. But, I am not sure if that information is under non-disclosure. But, I'll look into that.

Thanks for your input!

 

[rwkay]

Microsoft have only just released support for ARM64 on Visual Studio for Mac, we are looking to upgrade the IDE as soon as we can we will be targeting support for September or October.

Russell

 

[NanoSharkGames]

That's awesome to hear! Thank you and the development team for this update, looking forward to seeing it.

 

[NanoSharkGames]

Microsoft have only just released support for ARM64 on Visual Studio for Mac, we are looking to upgrade the IDE as soon as we can we will be targeting support for September or October.

Russell

Good afternoon, wanted to follow up with this feature request. With the number of bugs/issues that other users have recently reported with the newest versions of GMS2, I would assume the QA department has a lot on its plate. That said, would you expect the September/October target release with ARM64 to be pushed back?

 

[rwkay]

I got ARM64 (M1 Apple Silicon for everyone else) working last week but we will not be releasing it in September (v2.3.5) timeframe but I am looking to get it into the October (v2.3.6) release.

There are a few things to iron out on the build process but it is looking very promising.

Russell

 

[brian]

I got ARM64 (M1 Apple Silicon for everyone else) working last week but we will not be releasing it in September (v2.3.5) timeframe but I am looking to get it into the October (v2.3.6) release.

There are a few things to iron out on the build process but it is looking very promising.

Russell

Good stuff @rwkay !

Although not directly related - very happy for the last year and all of the ARM-related progress that's occurred! Y'all are knocking it out of the park

 

[NanoSharkGames]

Thanks for the update! I am so glad to hear that the ARM build is going well. Cannot wait for next month to try it out for myself.

 

[NanoSharkGames]

I got ARM64 (M1 Apple Silicon for everyone else) working last week but we will not be releasing it in September (v2.3.5) timeframe but I am looking to get it into the October (v2.3.6) release.

There are a few things to iron out on the build process but it is looking very promising.

Russell

Hey, @rwkay. I downloaded 2.3.6 and I do not see Apple Silicon native support. Is it still in the pipeline to be released?

 

[rwkay]

Yes it is - sorry for the delay, I did not get it into the build pipeline in time for 2.3.6 final version - still looking to get it into 2.3.7 though

Russell

 

[NanoSharkGames]

Yes it is - sorry for the delay, I did not get it into the build pipeline in time for 2.3.6 final version - still looking to get it into 2.3.7 though

Russell

It’s all good. Thanks for the update.

 

[rwkay]

I just wanted to let you know that the upcoming Beta (should be released tomorrow) has the changes for the IDE to work on Apple Silicon chips (M1 and above), though we do not have a M1 Pro / Max to try it out on - so it would be good if anyone out there that does have one to try it out.

Russell

 

[XanthorXIII]

I just wanted to let you know that the upcoming Beta (should be released tomorrow) has the changes for the IDE to work on Apple Silicon chips (M1 and above), though we do not have a M1 Pro / Max to try it out on - so it would be good if anyone out there that does have one to try it out.

Russell

Crap I won’t be getting my Max till end of November. I’ll try it out as soon as I get it. Thanks for all the hard work!

 

[NanoSharkGames]

I just wanted to let you know that the upcoming Beta (should be released tomorrow) has the changes for the IDE to work on Apple Silicon chips (M1 and above), though we do not have a M1 Pro / Max to try it out on - so it would be good if anyone out there that does have one to try it out.

Russell

Thanks so much for the support from you and the rest of the team! Just downloaded the Beta and will test it out.

Crap I won’t be getting my Max till end of November. I’ll try it out as soon as I get it. Thanks for all the hard work!

I originally ordered the 16" M1 Max, but I decided to cancel that and order the 16" M1 Pro yesterday for the best possible battery life. Because of that, I won't get mine until mid-December, so I understand your waiting dilemma. Hope you get your Mac sooner.

 

[NanoSharkGames]

I have been testing the M1 native beta build for the past 3 hours and I have to say that I definitely notice the battery draining a LOT slower. So, I am super impressed with this build and hope that you will continue to support M1 native builds in the future.

Edit: It's also a lot snappier than the Rosetta emulated build.

 

[catsforhats]

Hello everyone

I was googling if GM2 has support for Apple Silicon and I stumbled on this post.

I got an M1 MBA recently and I couldn't wait to install GM2 (this is my first mac system). I installed the 2.3.6 version and it was working fine and a lot snappier than my extremely old hp windows laptop, except for the odd engine freeze here and there (mostly when importing assets).

But I did notice that my mac would get hot when using GM2, it's true the air doesn't have a fan, but so far with every other app I've used the machine would stay cool - literally I touch it and it's cold.

Biggest con though is if I'm on battery I would get around 3 hours of battery life which isn't bad at all, but relative to how long lasting the M1 batteries are, it was a bit disappointing. According to the activity monitor, the energy impact of GM2 would be 95 at its lowest, going all the way up to 135, for relativity other apps at most have had a 10 energy impact at their peak.

Hopefully with the new 2.3.7 build things will improve all of the above. If it will be a while before this build is released, I might install the beta to see if it's promising.

Thanks for all your hard work yoyo staff!

 

[chamaeleon]

Biggest con though is if I'm on battery I would get around 3 hours of battery life which isn't bad at all, but relative to how long lasting the M1 batteries are, it was a bit disappointing. According to the activity monitor, the energy impact of GM2 would be 95 at its lowest, going all the way up to 135, for relativity other apps at most have had a 10 energy impact at their peak.

Play with the power settings in preferences. You might be able to reduce it a little bit. I'm sticking to my belief that using immediate mode gui for an IDE is not ideal. An IDE is not a game that needs a frame rate. My opinion, and I'm not privy to details that influenced the decision.

Edit: I don't use Apple products myself, so I can't speak to things are platform specific like what @Ricardo mention below (a program that keeps running needlessly would of course be a power drain)

 

[Ricardo]

@catsforhats I've noticed that a process called mono-sgen64 sometimes get stuck after compiling/running the game and it draws a lot of energy. Manually killing it using the Activity Monitor has solved the battery drain for me when I'm not plugged.

 

[NanoSharkGames]

I got a new MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro chip, and there are 3 concerns so far.

1. When installing the IDE (Beta at the time) on my factory-reset M1 Mac, it still requires Rosetta 2 to install it. After installing Rosetta and GM, Application Oven is still Intel, not Apple Silicon.

2. When running the latest version of the Beta IDE on the machine, workspaces when working on a project are much slower than 2.3.6 stable being run under Rosetta. I already filed a bug report for that and am still awaiting a solution after a clean install and submitting my System Report.

3. The battery drains significantly due to high energy usage, as @catsforhats mentioned.

Aside from those three concerns, it works well and I hope support is continued on M1 Macs, @rwkay. Thank you for all your ongoing support.

 

[Ricardo]

I got a new MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro chip, and there are 3 concerns so far.

1. When installing the IDE (Beta at the time) on my factory-reset M1 Mac, it still requires Rosetta 2 to install it. After installing Rosetta and GM, Application Oven is still Intel, not Apple Silicon.

2. When running the latest version of the Beta IDE on the machine, workspaces when working on a project are much slower than 2.3.6 stable being run under Rosetta. I already filed a bug report for that and am still awaiting a solution after a clean install and submitting my System Report.

3. The battery drains significantly due to high energy usage, as @catsforhats mentioned.

Aside from those three concerns, it works well and I hope support is continued on M1 Macs, @rwkay. Thank you for all your ongoing support.

I think the slowdown/battery drain on the latest Beta has something to do with DPI override (I also filled a bug). It runs fine if you disable it (or if you use an external monitor). Problem is the IDE is almost unusable without DPI adjustment because everything gets too big.

 

[NanoSharkGames]

I think the slowdown/battery drain on the latest Beta has something to do with DPI override (I also filled a bug). It runs fine if you disable it (or if you use an external monitor). Problem is the IDE is almost unusable without DPI adjustment because everything gets too big.

While testing, I've always had DPI override disabled. Oversized workspaces and windows are not an issue on my 16" MacBook. I'm curious, do you have the 14" version?

 

[Ricardo]

While testing, I've always had DPI override disabled. Oversized workspaces and windows are not an issue on my 16" MacBook. I'm curious, do you have the 14" version?

I have the new 16" (M1 Pro model). I don't really like it without DPI override (when using on the laptop screen itself) because I usually work from two big 4k displays and I'm too used to have lots of space.
Maybe the problem is still there with or without DPI override, but having it enabled makes it even worse.

 

[NanoSharkGames]

I have the new 16" (M1 Pro model). I don't really like it without DPI override (when using on the laptop screen itself) because I usually work from two big 4k displays and I'm too used to have lots of space.
Maybe the problem is still there with or without DPI override, but having it enabled makes it even worse.

That's fair. Hopefully one of the next few patches will fix this issue as well as the other 2 I listed.

 

[NanoSharkGames]

Play with the power settings in preferences. You might be able to reduce it a little bit. I'm sticking to my belief that using immediate mode gui for an IDE is not ideal. An IDE is not a game that needs a frame rate. My opinion, and I'm not privy to details that influenced the decision.

Edit: I don't use Apple products myself, so I can't speak to things are platform specific like what @Ricardo mention below (a program that keeps running needlessly would of course be a power drain)

A few months later, I tweaked the battery power frame rate from 100% (for some reason) and I switched it back to the factory default of 35%. I notice a slim difference in performance, yet the Energy Impact from Activity Monitor went from the 40s to just around 4 on average. So, I got a big boost in energy saving by toggling this feature alone. Thanks for your advice, now the battery can last longer on a full charge while using GMS2!

 

[NanoSharkGames]

It turns out that my 16" M1 Pro MacBook Pro's battery life has not improved much while using GMS2 despite the changes I made in the power saving preferences. The low Energy Impact from Activity Monitor was via background processing, not from actually using the IDE. I apologize if the numbers I shared in the above post misled anybody, it wasn't my intention.

@rwkay Do you and the rest of the YoYo development team plan on implementing further optimizations (pertaining IDE rendering, compiling, etc.) for the M1 architecture?

 

[Sam (Deleted User)]

Microsoft have only just released support for ARM64 on Visual Studio for Mac, we are looking to upgrade the IDE as soon as we can we will be targeting support for September or October.

Russell

I want to say that you are YoYoGames' official bringer of good news. I'm really glad this is the case. I'm going to be getting an M1 at some point and I definitely want to support it. Thank you!

 

[rwkay]

It turns out that my 16" M1 Pro MacBook Pro's battery life has not improved much while using GMS2 despite the changes I made in the power saving preferences. The low Energy Impact from Activity Monitor was via background processing, not from actually using the IDE. I apologize if the numbers I shared in the above post misled anybody, it wasn't my intention.

@rwkay Do you and the rest of the YoYo development team plan on implementing further optimizations (pertaining IDE rendering, compiling, etc.) for the M1 architecture?

We have changes coming soon as we move from using mono to dotNet 6 on all IDE platforms - this should improve performance generally, but we are still finalising various issues and problems just now so we do not have anything definitive just now to say about it.

Russell

 

[LunaticEdit]

I'm an M1 user and can say that GMS2 runs pretty well on M1 natively with the Arm64 build. CPU usage hangs around 30% and uses 1.3GB of ram, but to be fair, the IDE is a bit obscene when it comes to its special effects, plus the fact it's gotta render everything custom (non native controls).

Really the only issue I have is that when I close the debugger, it does this weird stretch thing for half a second, not a big deal, just weird looking. Everything else runs perfectly well.

 

[NanoSharkGames]

In terms of performance and lack of bugs so far, the IDE and compiler feels a lot faster and I am super glad that is the case.

However, the new IDE's power consumption is a bit disappointing as it still consumes roughly the same amount of power (averaging 30 Energy Impact from Activity Monitor when not in background), albeit a bit less than before, but not to the level I expected.

@rwkay Do you and your team have plans on improving optimizations for Apple Silicon, or is this what was expected on your end in terms of efficiency? Thank you for all your hard work and I hope you have a good week.

 

[NanoSharkGames]

I am super impressed with how fast project build times are in the latest Beta releases on Apple Silicon Macs. Imagine how much faster build times might be if we get ARM support for Mono or a different build process native on Apple Silicon.

@rwkay Do you have anything to share regarding this?

 

[NanoSharkGames]

@rwkay I tried installing the latest version of the GameMaker IDE (2022.11) onto a fresh copy of MacOS, and it says it still requires Rosetta to install.

Do you know why that is? Are there any tools that GMS requires that need Intel?

 

[rwkay]

not that I am aware - but something may still be lurking in there, I have Rosetta installed (some apps I use still need it) so I am not aware myself.

Everything major has M1 compatible apps so it will be something small that it needs.

Russell

 

[NanoSharkGames]

not that I am aware - but something may still be lurking in there, I have Rosetta installed (some apps I use still need it) so I am not aware myself.

Everything major has M1 compatible apps so it will be something small that it needs.

Russell

There's probably not a need to investigate this at the moment since Rosetta 2 is still available. That said, the original Rosetta became unavailable years after the Mac began their transition from PowerPC to Intel. So, the same would likely be true for Rosetta 2 based on Apple's history. Once Rosetta 2 becomes unavailable, GameMaker will be unusable on Apple Silicon Macs, which is my primary device type now (16" M1 MacBook Pro). Hopefully once the need arises, this could be investigated further.

 

[NanoSharkGames]

A few updates to mention:

1. On an M2 Pro MacBook; having double the efficiency cores makes a noticeable difference in battery life to me when using the IDE.

2. It still requires Rosetta to install GameMaker. It could be a tool or plugin under the hood that still runs on x86. Though the IDE, compiler, and Application Oven are all ARM native.

3. ProMotion support is being planned in the near future, so that will be great to test that feature when it arrives.

Overall, I am impressed with how GM on MacOS is turning out so far.