Deprecation of OpenGL Support for MacOS and Linux

[PDX-Trinexx]

Hello everyone!

We're announcing today that with the release of Wards & Wardens, Crusader Kings III will no longer support the OpenGL renderer on MacOS and Linux as we shift our focus towards better support for the Vulkan rendering API. OpenGL served us faithfully for many years now, but we believe it has been thoroughly superseded by Vulkan at this stage and our time is best spent focusing on more modern technologies.

This change will not affect the minimum requirements for Crusader Kings III going forward, but will allow existing hardware configurations to take advantage of the performance and efficiency benefits offered by Vulkan. OpenGL has effectively already been deprecated on MacOS and (to varying degrees) Linux, so by using a more modern rendering API we're able to ensure better support for these platforms going forward. MacOS players on newer ARM chipsets especially should see notable performance gains from using Vulkan for this reason.

What does this mean for existing players? Not much! If you're currently using OpenGL, CKIII will automatically switch to Vulkan next time you start it. Beyond that, we anticipate this will have no negative impact on affected players, as Vulkan is already supported on all GPUs that meet CKIII's minimum requirements.

If you have any questions, please ask below and we'll do our best to answer them!

 

[fodazd]

My personal experience: While it is true that the GPUs that meet the minimum requirements support vulkan, a lot of Linux *drivers* for them do not. I ran into this problem with a bunch of other games on Linux already, and while I could eventually fix it by installing different (proprietary) drivers, and the CK3 vulkan renderer works very well for me right now, it did cause me a bunch of headaches before I got it to work.

 

[m00zesss]

i hope this fixes the 15min load time when starting the game on a mac

 

[KCalo]

For those of us who have no idea what this technobabble means, it will still run on Mac?

 

[PDX-Trinexx]

For those of us who have no idea what this technobabble means, it will still run on Mac?

It should, yes.

This is more of a heads up to users who are deliberately using OpenGL; if you're not sure what this thread means, then you're almost certainly not impacted by it.

 

[mhvg1994]

Hello everyone!

We're announcing today that with the release of Wards & Wardens, Crusader Kings III will no longer support the OpenGL renderer on MacOS and Linux as we shift our focus towards better support for the Vulkan rendering API. OpenGL served us faithfully for many years now, but we believe it has been thoroughly superseded by Vulkan at this stage and our time is best spent focusing on more modern technologies.

This change will not affect the minimum requirements for Crusader Kings III going forward, but will allow existing hardware configurations to take advantage of the performance and efficiency benefits offered by Vulkan. OpenGL has effectively already been deprecated on MacOS and (to varying degrees) Linux, so by using a more modern rendering API we're able to ensure better support for these platforms going forward. MacOS players on newer ARM chipsets especially should see notable performance gains from using Vulkan for this reason.

What does this mean for existing players? Not much! If you're currently using OpenGL, CKIII will automatically switch to Vulkan next time you start it. Beyond that, we anticipate this will have no negative impact on affected players, as Vulkan is already supported on all GPUs that meet CKIII's minimum requirements.

If you have any questions, please ask below and we'll do our best to answer them!

Vulkan is good for Linux and Windows, but I didn't think Mac supported it...? I thought Macs used Metal as its renderer.

 

[grommile]

Vulkan is good for Linux and Windows, but I didn't think Mac supported it...? I thought Macs used Metal as its renderer.

MoltenVK - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[mhvg1994]

MoltenVK - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I’d heard about that, but I don’t know much about it. Either way, wouldn’t an emulator on top of an emulator perform quite poorly?

 

[grommile]

I’d heard about that, but I don’t know much about it. Either way, wouldn’t an emulator on top of an emulator perform quite poorly?

It has some performance loss compared to native Metal support, but it looks to me like the Khronos Group take performance seriously, since one of their objectives is for Vulkan to work acceptably everywhere.

 

[Comrade_Boris]

In case anyone else has tried -

I ran the game on Linux with Vulkan and noticed that some of the skins for clothing (specifically northern and northern lords clothing models - though maybe other cultures) were being applied to the wrong models. This resulted in like a lamellar armor pattern being applied to regular northern clothes among other things. It's hard to tell if this associated with the change to Vulkan, an issue with my setup or an old bug. Never had this issue on windows.

If someone else can confirm I'll write a bug report.

 

[Hellfell]

In case anyone else has tried -

I ran the game on Linux with Vulkan and noticed that some of the skins for clothing (specifically northern and northern lords clothing models - though maybe other cultures) were being applied to the wrong models. This resulted in like a lamellar armor pattern being applied to regular northern clothes among other things. It's hard to tell if this associated with the change to Vulkan, an issue with my setup or an old bug. Never had this issue on windows.

If someone else can confirm I'll write a bug report.

I have the same issue on steam deck and hope it gets fixed soon!
The clothes affected:
Northern clothes and head gear have lammellar patterns
Steppe armors and muslim armors have weird white and brown patterns and dont have the metal patterns as they should
Sick clothes are shiny and bright with weird lines

 

[AndrewT]

For those of us who have no idea what this technobabble means, it will still run on Mac?

It will ... if you have supported video hardware, which is to say AMD. I already have one case where the game will no longer run on Intel video hardware on a MacBook Pro.

Apple Silicon is strictly speaking not supported hardware either, but does run Vulkan just fine (via Rosetta) so should still work.

 

[Proferno00]

It will ... if you have supported video hardware, which is to say AMD. I already have one case where the game will no longer run on Intel video hardware on a MacBook Pro.

Apple Silicon is strictly speaking not supported hardware either, but does run Vulkan just fine (via Rosetta) so should still work.

I have this problem. Intel Macbook Pro 2019 and I used to specifically play on OpenGL because the game on Vulkan did not get past the loading screen. Since the recent update I can't switch to opengl in the launcher anymore, what do I do now? Get an eGPU?

 

[anroid]

Apple Silicon is strictly speaking not supported hardware either, but does run Vulkan just fine (via Rosetta) so should still work.

Are there any plans to change this and add official Silicon Support for CK3?

 

[AndrewT]

I have this problem. Intel Macbook Pro 2019 and I used to specifically play on OpenGL because the game on Vulkan did not get past the loading screen. Since the recent update I can't switch to opengl in the launcher anymore, what do I do now? Get an eGPU?

That, or use a service such as GeForce Now, are the only options I can think of for you.

 

[AndrewT]

Are there any plans to change this and add official Silicon Support for CK3?

Not that I'm aware of, sorry. But I'm not in the development loop for thia game.

 

[Commander_A]

Hello everyone!

We're announcing today that with the release of Wards & Wardens, Crusader Kings III will no longer support the OpenGL renderer on MacOS and Linux as we shift our focus towards better support for the Vulkan rendering API. OpenGL served us faithfully for many years now, but we believe it has been thoroughly superseded by Vulkan at this stage and our time is best spent focusing on more modern technologies.

This change will not affect the minimum requirements for Crusader Kings III going forward, but will allow existing hardware configurations to take advantage of the performance and efficiency benefits offered by Vulkan. OpenGL has effectively already been deprecated on MacOS and (to varying degrees) Linux, so by using a more modern rendering API we're able to ensure better support for these platforms going forward. MacOS players on newer ARM chipsets especially should see notable performance gains from using Vulkan for this reason.

What does this mean for existing players? Not much! If you're currently using OpenGL, CKIII will automatically switch to Vulkan next time you start it. Beyond that, we anticipate this will have no negative impact on affected players, as Vulkan is already supported on all GPUs that meet CKIII's minimum requirements.

If you have any questions, please ask below and we'll do our best to answer them!

You just broke the game for me. Thanks, I can't play it anymore. Real good one there bud

 

[Sangiro]

Thank you for breaking my favorite game, CK 2 to 3 was a mess and it simply went a bit more crap. The worst of it all when we bought the game the minimum requirements worked. Will you be refunding us?

 

[grommile]

Thank you for breaking my favorite game, CK 2 to 3 was a mess and it simply went a bit more crap. The worst of it all when we bought the game the minimum requirements worked. Will you be refunding us?

If you bought the game on Steam while it still used OpenGL, there's no convincing reason for them to refund you. The game you bought is still available to you.

If you bought on a distribution platform that doesn't let you roll back to old versions, you have a stronger argument.

 

[AndrewT]

PC Update 1.11.3

Hello everybody! We've got one more update before the holidays releasing today. It's a small one reenabling the OpenGL renderer for MacOS users. Please note that this renderer is still unsupported, we're just restoring the option to use it...

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