Apple technologies for game developers
Apple silicon provides amazing graphics performance across iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple TV. And Metal is the software that brings games to life on Apple platforms. Combined with a full array of game-oriented OS technologies and powerful developer tools, your games can deliver an incredible gaming experience to millions of players. This year, the game porting toolkit makes it easier than ever to bring games from other platforms to Mac.
What’s new
Game porting toolkit
Use the game porting toolkit to eliminate months of up-front work and evaluate how well your game could run on Mac before writing any code.
Metal shader converter
Convert your shaders and graphics code so that your game can take full advantage of the powerful features and performance of Apple silicon.
MetalFX Upscaling
Render complex scenes in less time per frame with high-performance upscaling and anti-aliasing. This year, MetalFX Upscaling supports more devices with improved quality and increased scaling.
Offline shader compilation
Generate GPU binaries at build time and eliminate in-app shader compilation, improve game performance, and reduce load times. Now, the GPU binary compiler supports ray tracing and dynamically linked libraries with a toolchain for macOS or Windows.
Metal Developer Tools for Windows 4 beta
Frame pacing
Provide smooth frame rates and more responsive interactions using the new CAMetalDisplayLink.
Game Controller framework
Get the best low-latency input from game input devices including keyboard, mouse, controllers, joysticks, steering wheels, and more. A wide variety of new and existing game controllers are supported by the Game Controller framework across Apple platforms.
Metal performance HUD
Monitor gameplay performance using Metal with real-time stats and logging, including CPU and GPU render time and frame presentation deadlines.
ScreenCaptureKit
Capture any combination of windows, apps, and displays with minimal CPU and GPU overhead. Create custom content filters and take advantage of dynamic controls for your content stream.
Game Center
Use Apple’s social gaming network to bring more engagement, connection, and discovery to your games. This year, achievements now support rarity, leaderboards and achievements can be configured and archived via API, and multiplayer matchmaking now supports custom matchmaking rules.
Plan your game
If you’re new to developing games for Apple platforms, take a moment to familiarize yourself with the tools and technologies you need to get started. Apple provides the hardware, graphics, audio, social gaming, and distribution tools you need to create the next generation of games on Apple platforms.
Metal
Metal powers hardware-accelerated graphics on Apple platforms by providing a low-overhead API, rich shading language, tight integration between graphics and compute, and an unparalleled suite of GPU profiling and debugging tools.
Metal tools for Windows
Download the collection of Windows-hosted tools, headers, and libraries that enable developers to build their Metal shader programs and assets for deployment on iOS, macOS, and tvOS.
Background download API
Deliver and manage large game assets in the background, even while your app isn’t running. This helps keep your main app bundle smaller and lets users multitask while the download completes.
Core Haptics
Use haptics to engage users physically, with tactile and audio feedback.
Unity plug-ins
Take advantage of powerful Apple technologies for your Unity-based game. Unity plug-ins connect your game to Game Center, Core Haptics, PHASE audio, the Accessibility framework, and the Game Controller framework.
Apple Arcade
We’re looking for games that redefine games.
If you’re working on a groundbreaking, unreleased game and would like it to be considered for Apple Arcade, we’d love to hear from you.