archived-dots

[late mural]

ah, how would i implement that?

[rotund token]

just inherit from as well

[late mural]

oh ok, thanks a ton!

ok now i just gotta workout how to add the parents correctly, as it seems doing it like this: ```cs
state.EntityManager.AddComponent<Parent>(SomeChildEntity);
state.EntityManager.SetComponentData<Parent>(SomeChildEntity, new Parent
{
Value = WhateverParentEntity
});

[rotund token]

turn off burst and get the full error

[late mural]

clever, thanks!

hmm, how would i get a component out of an IJobEntity? i thought to use a NativeReference<TheComponent> but unfortunately nested native containers are illegal

[late mural]

hmm perhaps i could instead pass an entity instead of the component, and then just grab the component from the entity later? But i would have no clue how to get an entity inside an IJobEntity... Update: think i found a way!

[late mural]

hmm the entity that it is now passing to me seems to not exist, weird Update: got it working finally!!!

[late mural]

how would i instantiate an entity, and have it keep all the components of that entity?

[rotund token]

CommandBuffer.Instantiate

or EntityManager.Instantiate

[late mural]

tried that, but it isnt keeping the components, well isnt keeping the local transform component atleast

i suppose i could manually go through every component the entity has, then add that to the instantiated entity? Or is there a better way?

perhaps im doing something wrong in the baking? Is GetEntity(GameObjectPrefab) the correct way to get an entity version of a gameobject prefab?

is there anyway i can check how baking has converted the GameObject prefab into an Entity?

[robust scaffold]

how?

[late mural]

?

using GetEntity(), if that is what you mean?

[robust scaffold]

Do you wish to see the baked entity? As in the entity hierarchy information?

or do you want to step through the baking process?

[late mural]

i want to see the components of the entity created by GetEntity() to see if it has the right components

[robust scaffold]

Switch entity hierarchy view to runtime (the yellow circle next to the triple dots) and the baked entity will be shown under the relevant subscene

[late mural]

ok, and then from there how do i see the entity created by GetEntity()?

[robust scaffold]

You might need to hunt for it as if it was baked previously, the entity should resolve to link to the original GO

[robust scaffold]

Well for one, you can create a debugging component that contains the entity as a field. Then check that in the inspector.

[late mural]

oh, so check the gameobject prefab! Thanks

[late mural]

oh ok, i tried that but cause im using an array of structs containing an entity it refuses to serialize

[robust scaffold]

Arrays are not allowed in components. Have you tried a buffer component?

[late mural]

really, even native arrays, as my other components with native arrays seem to work fine?

[robust scaffold]

Native arrays can not be baked because they are unmanaged and must be disposed manually.

[late mural]

ah, that is unfortunate, so what should i use instead?

[robust scaffold]

Buffer components.

[robust scaffold]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@1.0/manual/components-buffer.html

[late mural]

ok thanks a ton

how about native lists, they fine, or do i also have to replace them aswell?

[robust scaffold]

A dynamic buffer component is a native list. And yes, you need to replace them with a buffer.

[late mural]

ok thanks

[robust scaffold]

Nothing NativeX is allowed.

[late mural]

ah ok thanks so much!

ok so if im understanding this right, i add 1 buffer for every element in the array, right?

[robust scaffold]

The buffer itself is the native array / native list. And you add one element for every element in your array.

For each array you add a buffer and for each element, well it's just a native list tacked onto an entity.

[late mural]

fascinating, so i put the native arrays and lists inside the buffer component then? Or am i completely misunderstanding this?

oh wait i think i get it, so i treat the component like one element in an array, and when i add the component to an entity, i can specify elements and stuff that is itself?

[robust scaffold]

No no, the buffer component itself is the native list. As in the buffer = native list. Here's an example of a buffer baking:csharp DynamicBuffer<EntitySceneReference> scenes = AddBuffer<RequiredClient>().Reinterpret<EntitySceneReference>(); foreach (BakedSubSceneReference subScene in authoring.client) scenes.Add(subScene.GetEntitySceneReference());

[late mural]

ok fascinating, thanks so much

[robust scaffold]

Where RequiredClient is:csharp public struct RequiredClient : IBufferElementData { public EntitySceneReference Value; }

[late mural]

seems you bake buffers very similarly to the way you convert an array of structs to be entities instead of gameobjects, thanks so much!

[robust scaffold]

The equivalent list would be a NativeList<EntitySceneReference> scenes = new NativeList<RequiredClient>(Allocator.Persistant).Reinterpret<EntitySceneReference>();

[late mural]

ok fascinating, thanks so much!

[late mural]

is there anyway to get RW access to a singleton form of a buffer? Sadly GetSingletonBufferRW<>() seems to not exist...

[robust scaffold]

GetSingletonBuffer<>(Entity, false)

The boolean after the entity indicates RW state (false = RW, true = RO)

[late mural]

wow, and it is a reference, meaning i wont have to set it afterwards?

[robust scaffold]

Yea, you can directly use it as a reference to the buffer.

[late mural]

awesome, thanks so much!

[robust scaffold]

Right, an i'm off to sleep. If you have any further questions, hopefully someone else can help ya out. Good luck and see you tomorrow.

[late mural]

good job, and thanks a ton!

[late mural]

now that i know you cant use native stuff in components, what would be the replacement of a NativeHashMap?

[rustic rain]

you can, but it won't bake

[late mural]

i dont need to bake it, so can i just use it then?

[rustic rain]

yeah, I think so

[late mural]

so it is only native array and native list that can't be used in components?

[rustic rain]

all native containers can be used

as of 1.0

[late mural]

oh wow, judging by what KornFlak said i thought i would have to replace them, was what they said incorrect?

[rotund token]

while yes you can put native containers on components

it won't really work how you want

you can't access the container in a job

you can only access it in a system and then pass it to a job

[late mural]

oh ok fascinating, so i should use the buffer components when im planning to do something in a job with them, and native containers when i dont plan to use it in a job?

[rotund token]

i would suggest, for the most part just don't put containers on entities

unless you really know what you are doing and have a very specific reason for it

[late mural]

well i need to store containers somewhere, unless there are replacements?

[rotund token]

basically only put them on singleton entities you get on main thread then pass to jobs

to share a container between systems

[late mural]

ok fascinating!

[hushed lichen]

I've got a project (in 0.51) with a dynamic buffer on an entity.
Very specifically on the entity - created at runtime - because storing a reference to it in a component caused problems. Unity crashed, the "solution" would probably be to update the reference every frame with GetBuffer on the entity but then why even have the reference on the component anyway?

[late mural]

also if i have an array of gameobjects and i then during baking convert it into a native array using GetEntity() is this going to mess anything up, or will this work?

[late mural]

ok i dont think it works, as it just passes me blank entities, weird

[rustic rain]

dynamic buffers

[late mural]

true, ill start using dynamic buffers where possible

[late mural]

ye it definitely doesnt work, this is a major issue as i either i can hardcode my gameobject prefabs, or i need some other way to get an entity version of a gameobject...

[hushed lichen]

How are you instantiating your prefabs?

[late mural]

state.EntityManager.Instantiate()

[hushed lichen]

I meant the process more than the function call itself 😅

[late mural]

oh sorry lol

[hushed lichen]

How are you getting the prefab and sending it to the Instantiate() call?

[late mural]

essentially i have a biome component, with an array of feature structs, each feature struct contains a gameobject and a few other details about the feature, i then bake this into a component version of the array of feature structs, with entities instead of gameobjects which i get via GetEntity(), whenever a chunk needs to be generated i grab all biome components and go through them to decide which one to generate, then go through each feature and pick a random one, once i have my random one i then instantiate it

[hushed lichen]

More complex than I expected.
Here's a sample file. I imagine it'll be easier 🙂
https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/EntityComponentSystemSamples/blob/master/EntitiesSamples/HelloCube/Assets/4. Prefabs/SpawnerAuthoring.cs

[late mural]

i've seen that before, but i cannot get it to work with my logic, either the entities i store on the components somehow become invalid, or GetEntity() is going wrong, or instantiating is going wrong, and i cant tell which

is there anyway i can debug what is going wrong?

[hushed lichen]

You've got that kind of authoring component, set the Entity reference to your prefab and get and instantiate it as the SpawnSystem does?
If so, I don't know what the problem is. I'd probably start by adding a Debug.Break() call, check the reference, check the prefab entity (in the DOTS Hierarchy window) and possibly debug print the prefab reference you get in the code. See if they match.
Makes sense to also print the entity returned from Instantiate()

Oh and, try to do it in a small environment first? Just one prefab with limited systems and not a whole slew of collections with references to prefabs or whatever.
Simplify, solve, expand.

[late mural]

ooh fascinating, ill try that thanks

ok i've done a bit of debugging and now i can confirm that my prefabs are being correctly converted into entities! But they are not getting instantiated correctly, instead of duplicating the prefab, it decides to do this:

which lets me know that i have no clue how to instantiate stuff

[late mural]

ok after many googles i can say that instantiating should be really easy, but for some reason just wont work for me, how odd

[late mural]

wait a second, do entities have to be passed by reference, as that may be the issue?

[rotund token]

entities are effectively just a key

made up of 2 ints

they do not need to be passed by reference

[hushed lichen]

You can see that on the screen grab above too. Index and Version.

[rotund token]

i just a wrote a packet fragmenter for netcode

Basically if you add any data to a DynamicBuffer<NetworkPayload> (which is just a byte) on a ghost entity

it will compress then split it into smaller 512kb ghosts and recombine them on the client's ghost NetworkPayload

designed for binary data that's mostly static between 1-20KB

i thought about writing it as a separate socket side channel

but i really wanted to be able to just tie into netcode relevancy for this

[devout prairie]

I'm guessing that during baking, the GetEntity() that you store and later use to instantiate is getting invalidated.. Normally that'll happen if for example you don't store the GetEntity() result in an IComponentData or a buffer ( because using GetEntity() during baking returns a temporary entity value which gets tracked and then updated on your components/buffers after baking is complete )..

[rustic rain]

During baking entity id is 100% not the one that will be assigned in runtime, yeah

only whatever is supported by baking will be properly remapped to actual entity

[devout prairie]

To be fair it does look like it's instantiating something.. May be it's an invalid entity value as mentioned above so it's instantiating some random entity and not the actual prefab, or as Issue is saying the gameobject isn't really baking properly so you're getting an empty entity instantiated..

[misty wedge]

How do I use WeakObjectReference during baking?

The inspector just shows me the struct contents, nothing to e.g. drop something in

[misty wedge]

Are there any serialization bottlenecks with data that large? Since it would still need to check if the data changed

(Also I'm guessing you wrote this for sending your navmesh?)

I feel like the editor for WeakObjectReference is just broken for me, WeakSceneReference shows a scene field to drop a scene into..

[rustic rain]

bruuuh, is there just any fix to avoid restarting editor if you stop play mode with entity inspected?

[vocal basin]

Does anyone have a new guide? The pinned github is gone

[robust scaffold]

https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/EntityComponentSystemSamples/

[vocal basin]

Thanks

[rustic rain]

I'm extremely frustrated

smth in my physics is doing very funny stuff

as soon as I get my trigger event

my entities are getting swapped with another

their position

is swapped somehow

and there is nothing in my code that does smth even relatively close to it

here logs are thrown before and during trigger event job

and now 1 frame afterwards

same for entity 175

[robust scaffold]

Trigger event, no collisions, just overlap?

[rustic rain]

yeah

[robust scaffold]

Do you have a image of before and after of the overlap?

[rustic rain]

Here's moment couple frames after overlap

basically

tree1 got swapped position with tree2

Tree1 should be left, Tree2 right

yet

feels like someone in Unity made a very funny joke

I did tons of records in journal

[robust scaffold]

huh... hrm

[rustic rain]

and nothing modified LocalTransform component except for Unity Physics Export System and my system that moves entities by a bit

during that trigger event time frame

And my movement system looks like this

        private partial struct MovementJob : IJobEntity
        {
            public float2 playerVelocity;

            private void Execute(Entity e, ref LocalTransform local, in Movable movable)
            {
                Discard(e.Index, local.Position.x);
                local.Position.x -= playerVelocity.x * movable.speed;
                Discard(e.Index, local.Position.x);
            }

            [BurstDiscard]
            private static void Discard(int ind, float val)
            {
                Unity.Debug.Log($"{ind} {val}");
            }
        }

and it is pretty clear from log, it's not my system

[robust scaffold]

You dont need the discard on that job but yea, try logging player velocity as well

[rustic rain]

now I will test one other thing

[rustic rain]

I used it to avoid trashing my editor with tons of messages

[robust scaffold]

ah true

[rustic rain]

now I will make a backup of LocalTransform

before physics import

and then write it back

because in my world, physics should not move anything

[robust scaffold]

Are the bodies dynamic?

Try making them kinematic or even static

[rustic rain]

kinematic

all of them

[robust scaffold]

Hrm, no clue then

[rustic rain]

if I make them static, triggers don't work

which is odd

hmm

now static works with trigger

god, this is driving me crazy

🥴

ok

seems like static thingy solved it

welp, but that only delayed me going crazy 😅

I think it's a bug

and I want to see if it's reproducable

[robust scaffold]

Okay, no clue what's going on. GL.

[rotund token]

That's the reason it's broken up to avoid bottle necks. It's got minimal priority.

It's really just designed for small static or rarely changing binary data

Checking if data has changed if as easy as change filtering the buffer and then just checking length != 0

As the payload buffer is cleared once split

[rotund token]

I have an editor script that unselects leaving play mode

[rustic rain]

is it part of library? 😅

[rotund token]

Umm no I don't think so because I changed behaviour of stuff

It's a 2 line script

[robust scaffold]

What broke and requires editor restart? I leave entities selected all the time and outside of a default inspector, it's fine.

[rustic rain]

if I leave entity selected and stop play mode, editor starts throwing 35 error per second

[rotund token]

I get disposed world issues

[robust scaffold]

That's concerning. I just get this replacing the entity inspector:

[stiff mesa]

Hey. I've got a question. In Entitas, there is a thing called Reactive System. It only updates if specific components have changed and it automatically queries for the entities that have those components changed. Is there something similar in DOTS?

[rotund token]

I think it's addressables

[robust scaffold]

Kinda. You need to manually check for change filter but it's 2 lines.

[rotund token]

The addressable header does a get hash code check on the object which for entity selection proxy hashes world

[rustic rain]

could you share it?

[robust scaffold]

This is a system that will only run if a singleton GameResources changed since last time it was checked.

[rotund token]

In bed but just subscribe to https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/EditorApplication-playModeStateChanged.html

[rustic rain]

and how to unselect?

[stiff mesa]

Thank you, exactly what I've been looking for!

[rotund token]

Unityeditor.Selection.ActiveObject = null

Or something like that

You can check if the entity proxy is selected first if you wanted etc

[rustic rain]

I guess that's it

        static EntitySelectionErrorFix()
        {
            EditorApplication.playModeStateChanged += LogPlayModeState;
        }

        private static void LogPlayModeState(PlayModeStateChange state)
        {
            if (state == PlayModeStateChange.ExitingPlayMode)
            {
                Selection.activeObject = null;
            }
        }

[rotund token]

IsEmpty is a probably tad faster and just looks nicer

[robust scaffold]

Yea. Eh. nanoseconds faster.

[rustic rain]

oh man, finally

no more wasting precious time restarting editor

[rotund token]

Kek

[rustic rain]

kek indeed

[misty wedge]

So anyone know how to use WeakObjectReference?

I just don't feel like it should look like this

[robust scaffold]

@light badger When you accept join requests from a client in your OnlineFPS sample, is the send RPC component suppose to be broadcasted to all connections?

[misty wedge]

If a client sends an RPC it's always only sent to the server

[robust scaffold]

That's server side.

[misty wedge]

Ah, my bad

That seems like a bug then

Unless the clients need the information for something 🤷‍♀️

[robust scaffold]

As in the code sample is from server accepting a specific client connection request and now is sending a join request RPC back to all connections apparently.

[misty wedge]

This is what I do

[robust scaffold]

Same here

[rotund token]

Wasted archetypes 😱

[robust scaffold]

Yeaaaaaa.... ugh

[misty wedge]

I will waste as many archetypes as I please

[rustic rain]

You suggest it'd be better to add component types set first and then set data?

[rotund token]

I'd probably do the same thing as I'm lazy but yes you should create entity with an archetype then do a set instead to avoid creating an extra unused archetype

[misty wedge]

I tried it and my FPS doubled, insane

[hushed lichen]

Looks to me like SchnozzleCat adds a RequestEnterGameRPC component and you're adding a ServerJoinAcceptRpc component as the only notable difference

[rustic rain]

I wish AddComponentData has overload for multiple component types

[rotund token]

It does

[rustic rain]

🤔

really?

[misty wedge]

There is no common component that should be used for the RPC request, these are just the names we picked

[rotund token]

Look at the componenttypeS overloaf

[misty wedge]

And mine is obviously better because I capitalized RPC violating my naming conventions

[robust scaffold]

Happy?

[rustic rain]

🤣

damn that looks horrible

[rotund token]

Much better

[robust scaffold]

I wish new[]{} was burstable. Damn bill gates and managed arrays.

[hushed lichen]

That does look kind of horribly excessive in complexity for the same end result.
Not that atypical but still

[rotund token]

same result?! he's saving 16KB of memory and removing an archetype from query searches!

game changing

[robust scaffold]

I think a better version would be AddComponent(Entity, new ComponentTypes())

But this hyperoptimized version skips one add component.

[hushed lichen]

I'm sorry, I should've specified "for the same result on the entity". My bad, I'm a horrible scrub who does not know how to code etc etc

[misty wedge]

Like I said, it doubled my FPS. I'm now a believer

[hushed lichen]

If I have a complaint with it, it's that the interface for getting that (apparently very significant) performance increase is so much more cumbersome than the simpler "add components one at a time" approach

[misty wedge]

(I was also joking with the doubled FPS 😅 )

Pretty sure you are fine with adding components one at a time. Ideally you'd instantiate a prefab most of the time and then set the data on that

(at least that's what I try to do)

[hushed lichen]

I mean, if it's 16KB of memory per time you do that, it's a significant improvement in a larger project

[misty wedge]

That's true

That's when you tell your users to just download more RAM

[rotund token]

it's once per new archetype

[hushed lichen]

Yeah same, if I know I need some components on a prefab I want to have them on there already if I can.
The one thing I haven't figured out how to do on a prefab in that regard would be adding a DynamicBuffer. Doubt you can do that on a prefab in the first place.

[rotund token]

basically the AddComponent ServerJoinAcceptabledRpc will create a { ServerJoinAcceptabledRpc } archetype
then the SendRpcCommandRequestComponent will create a { ServerJoinAcceptabledRpc, SendRpcCommandRequestComponent } archetype

[misty wedge]

Does unity never "clean up" unused archetypes?

[rotund token]

no

[misty wedge]

:[

[rotund token]

it's also not unused, you'll use it again on next connection

[misty wedge]

Not the ServerJoinAcceptabledRpc

[rotund token]

there is a limit of around 8-12k archetypes and it's really easy to hit if you add/remove a lot of components

[misty wedge]

that's just the intermediate from adding twice

[hushed lichen]

I'd say it's probably closer to "temporary" rather than "unused"

or, yeah, intermediate

[rustic rain]

16kb is 0.025 of amount of memory that would be enough for everyone

🤣

[rotund token]

in this small case, it really doesn't matter

but i have seen people have large dynamically generated entities at runtime

that just do like 50 addcomponents 1 after the other

and we did something like this at work

and using an editor analysis and pre-computing the archetype saved us over 2,000 archetypes

[hushed lichen]

Oof. That seems just plain painful.
Much cleaner to just have the components on the prefabs so you don't need to cross reference instantiation to figure out what components are associated.

[rotund token]

work project has no baking/conversion

project started before that existed

[hushed lichen]

Ah, and no time allotted to technical debt?

[rotund token]

haha you have never seen a project with more technical debt

god damn awful

can't wait till we start a new one which will be built upon my own libraries

[hushed lichen]

That sounds painful to work in

[rotund token]

so painful

being in charge has perks though, i can just assign all the painful tasks to others 😄

[rustic rain]

now imagine companies that hire for working with 2020 editor 👴

[hushed lichen]

At some point, just fucking upgrade lol

[rotund token]

we use 2020.3 😦

there's no way we could upgrade this project to 1.0

[rustic rain]

I know

I couldn't upgrade my own SMALL project from 0.51

I straight up redo it

because it's easier

[rotund token]

i tried upgrading us to 2021.3 and it was a nightmare

and too close to launch so gave up

[hushed lichen]

Don't have to go to 1.0 just because you're upgrading the editor lol

[rotund token]

the 0.51 upgrade took enough effort

[rustic rain]

entities are tied to editor

[rotund token]

you can't use 2022 without 1.0

[hushed lichen]

You can do 0.51 in 2021, I wasn't necessarily talking all the way to 2022

[rotund token]

yeah i tried 2021

[hushed lichen]

I was also not aware of this

[rotund token]

too many issues

we are just using 0.51 on 2020

and since our gold build pre is due on tuesday

be a while before i try again

[hushed lichen]

Makes sense 😅
Rough time to release too

[rotund token]

we're just going from early access to 1.0

though it's a huge update

basically a new game

[hushed lichen]

Even if it was from 1.0 to 1.1, I'd consider it a release. Probably a case of definition differences though

[rotund token]

oh yeah i got ya

[light badger]

ah, yeah that's something that should be changed

[robust scaffold]

Okay, thought so. Good network framework though. I'm going line by line and overhauling my own to largely match what you're doing. Although I am hesitant on using ECBs for deferred structural changes. Are they really better than just direct EntityManager calls for network initialization and spawning?

Maybe I'm just old but i still remember those benchmarks that showed even bursted ECBs required 2x or even 3x more execution time to structurally change the same commands as directly using entity manager calls. But this was 2018-2019 profiles back when ECBs just managed to get bursted. I havent seen any comparisons since.

[hushed lichen]

Don't know about comparisons so the only input I have (sadly) is that ECBs help with sync points since you're not doing structural changes interspersed throughout the system updates

[light badger]

direct EntityManager calls would be totally fine in most cases, although sometimes ECBs are required in order to do structural changes in a loop without invalidating data

[robust scaffold]

Yea. i'll just stick with ECBs then.

[rotund token]

the one thing i've been trying to do recently is avoid every frame empty ecbs

making sure systems early out that don't need to run or avoid using ecbs where a system needs to run constantly but only rarely writes to the ecb

i find the overhead of playing back an empty ecb a bit high

[safe lintel]

whats an empty ecb?

[rotund token]

ecbs.CreateCommandBuffer()

dont do anything with it

just the ecbs.Playback overhead on the command buffer

and disposing

this is the cost of an empty ecbs

[safe lintel]

ah

[rotund token]

0.08ms on my machine

that doesn't sound like a lot

[safe lintel]

hmm, now im paranoid if i do this alot or not

[rotund token]

but if you have 15 systems with ecbs, that's a ms per frame

[hushed lichen]

Every frame? Potentially multiple ECBs? Ouch

[rotund token]

now ok i'm a little exaggerating here from an editor profile as it's a bit less in a build

(about half that)

but you still get the point

[robust scaffold]

So what's your pattern? A TryGetECB on a system?

[rotund token]

i just removed structural changes or do them in OnUpdate for singular entities or once off changes (init)

[robust scaffold]

Ah

[misty wedge]

What if you need to destroy / create something

pool it?

[rotund token]

all my destroys go through a single system

i have a whole destroy pipeline

[hushed lichen]

Store the entities to be destroyed in a buffer or what?

[rotund token]

where you can react to things being destroyed, cancel it etc

[robust scaffold]

private void TryGetEcb(WorldUnmanaged world, out EntityCommandBuffer ecb)
{
    // * Command buffer for deferred structural changes.
    ecb = _ecb.IsCreated
        ? _ecb
        : SystemAPI.GetSingleton<BeginSimulationEntityCommandBufferSystem.Singleton>()
            .CreateCommandBuffer(world);
}```

[misty wedge]

I think the biggest thing for me is just entities being created and destroyed on the client by the server

[rotund token]

not sure what this is doing? you can't cache an ecb from a ecbs

and you can't use an ecb after its been playedback

[misty wedge]

I think they mean re-use the same one across a single frame by multiple systems

[rotund token]

oh is this for a single system?

[robust scaffold]

It's only existing temporarily per update

[rotund token]

yeah ok

[robust scaffold]

yea

At the very end you get this: _ecb = default;

[rotund token]

you could probably wrap this behaviour in your own ECBS + singleton if you really wanted

where you write a custom CreateCommandBuffer(x) that would return a cached version for a system or a new one

[rustic rain]

hmm

[rotund token]

🥳

[robust scaffold]

Oh, very nice. I thought you also had a fadeout as well? I've been kinda mirroring this implementation using ghost relevancy which is slightly buggy.

[rotund token]

fadeout for what sorry?

[robust scaffold]

fadeout for distant objects that just got spawned in on that navmesh

[rotund token]

oh the navmesh is built on server

this is showing it streaming to client

[robust scaffold]

Ah

[rotund token]

the first draw is the servers full navmesh

i decided not to regenerate it on clients and instead send it

because ghosts streaming in constantly just ends up causing it to rebuild constantly

and runtime navmesh generate with complex meshes is just not that fast

(about 1.5 seconds for this scene using 50% of threads)

what i did was add support for sending navmesh via netcode relevancy

and then added a packet fragmenter so i wouldn't run into network issues

by default compressed most of these cells are 0.5-1KB

but in the centre with a lot of details they go up to 10KB which is too large for netcode ghosts

so i wrote a generic network payload implementation

basically you put any type of binary data in a NetworkPayload buffer

and it will auto split it into 512KB chunks over X number of ghosts

then recombine them together on the client after they've all synced and assign to the clients local NetworkPayload buffer

great for static data in the 1-20KB range

[robust scaffold]

@light badger Also, is there a reason why you're not using the existing linked entity group for tracking owner relationships?

[rotund token]

when i was helping shinclef setup rival with my game library we had the same thought

adding stuff to a LEG on a ghost broke a bunch of stuff or something when we tried

[robust scaffold]

oh, huh. Hrm.

They're all just 1 element and otherwise wasted space.

[rotund token]

hate to say I am finding LEG very useful recently

though i am still at war with the forced LEG and default capacity

[robust scaffold]

I was thinking about adding a LEG to a network ID component for automatic owned ghost destruction.

[rotund token]

i think unity did something similar in the car demo

[robust scaffold]

Fighting the good fight, although the capacity override at creation system ya made works well enough that I'm not ambivalent to LEGs instead of actively hostile.

[light badger]

to be honest I can't really remember if I had a real justification for this. Some vague sense of maybe having more explicit control over things

[robust scaffold]

Yea, i'm reading through it. I'm gonna try my LEG format and if it explodes, i'll go your custom buffer way.

[rotund token]

definitely worth a shot, our use case might have been different

[robust scaffold]

I was thinking this instead of a ClientOwnedEntities buffer and also using the CommandTargetComponent to indicate player entity instead of a custom component. csharp // * Using LEG for easy cleanup of owner controlled entities when the network is destroyed. ecb.AppendToBuffer(srcEnt, new LinkedEntityGroup { Value = playerEnt });

[rotund token]

oh this is on the network connection?

yeah that's what i do

rival from memory uses network connection -> player (commands) -> character

i think we had issue putting character onto the player leg

[robust scaffold]

ah, hrm. Okay. I'll need to see if i run into the same issue

[devout prairie]

What is this LEG of which you speak..

[rotund token]

linked entity group

[devout prairie]

Ahh, LinkedEntityGroup

Need to look that one up

HNY tertle I assume you're in 2023 already

[rotund token]

well into morning 🙂 ty!

[rustic rain]

bruh

for some reason some AnimatorController gets serialized

and other don't

in subscene

[rotund token]

what do you mean by others

[rustic rain]

literally just 2 different animators

practically no difference between them

and they are simple

[rotund token]

what do you even mean by serialized?

[rustic rain]

as soon as I close subscene, it's gone

Missing

[rotund token]

(and what is AnimationController)

[rustic rain]

It's an asset for Animator

[rotund token]

oh rac

ok

[rustic rain]

🤔

turns out if I have prefab, it gets serialized

what the

[rotund token]

how are you serializing it?

on a class icd?

[rustic rain]

just this

        public override void Bake(Animator authoring)
        {
            BakingUtility.AddAdditionalCompanionComponentType(typeof(Animator));
            AddComponentObject(authoring);
        }

I'm making a build rn to test

whether it'll be fine

[rotund token]

hmm from what i understand AddAdditionalCompanionComponentType might not actually work in builds

[rustic rain]

it works

😅

[rotund token]

well that's good i guess

what do you intend to do when they remove this 😄

[rustic rain]

I'll use native animation system

🤣

[rotund token]

i love the optimism!

soon 🙏

[rustic rain]

at the worst, I'll migrate to graphics

and do my animations by swapping id

[safe lintel]

are there any plans for the foreach to ever compile to jobs in the future or is it strictly mainthread access?

[rustic rain]

which is probably the best solution rn

but I'm too lazy to implement it

😅

[rotund token]

systemapi query? it seems intended for main thread

[safe lintel]

was a little surprised it wast an all in one replacement for EFE but just curious really

[rotund token]

i'm glad it's not

i find efe just caused bad code constantly

sure the job starts out small and maintainable

then someone adds some functionality

and someone else some more

and then a bit more

next you have a 400 line EFE with 12 local fuctions

[rustic rain]

oh yeah, that was my character controller in 0.17

😅

huh

looks like my VisualTreeAssets on the other hand don't get serialized for some reason

in a build I mean

[rotund token]

😦

[rustic rain]

some do, some don't which is odd

yeah, indeed

some are nulls, some are not

what the

[rotund token]

https://github.com/needle-tools/compilation-visualizer

this is cool

[safe lintel]

ok using chat gpt to figure out ik lookat solver for animation was pretty damn neat.

https://gfycat.com/oblongunderstatedafricanaugurbuzzard

[rotund token]

oh no, the first step to being replaced

[safe lintel]

when it blends to run?
edit oh misread to instead of is 😀 - still blending could be improved to take foot position into account

[misty wedge]

I want a reload timeline

[late mural]

trying to wrap my head around buffer components, is the InternalBufferCapacity() how many bytes each element needs, or something else?

[robust scaffold]

It's how many elements you want to allocate to be located inside the chunk.

[late mural]

oh ok fascinating

[robust scaffold]

You have 2 memory locations, inside the chunk and outside on a heap. It's like stack and heap memory.

[late mural]

fascinating, im not the best with memory, so i have no clue what stack and heap memory is im afraid

[robust scaffold]

Memory inside the chunk (indicated by internal buffer cap) is fast but you balloon the size of the entity. Outside the chunk is slow but more entities can fit inside the same chunk.

Rule of thumb, just set the internal buffer capacity to 0 outside of some very small edge cases.

[late mural]

ok thanks a ton

[robust scaffold]

More entities inside a single chunk is almost always better than having immediate memory access to a dynamic buffer element.

[late mural]

ok cool!

[robust scaffold]

98% of the time, you want an IBC to be 0, 1.5% you use a fixed field. 0.4% you use a copy pasted field (like how the fixed X bytes are done). 0.1% you use a IBC of a larger value.

[late mural]

ok got it, thanks!

wondering is it possible to get a buffer in an i job entity like regular components?

[robust scaffold]

yea, DynamicBuffer<buffCompType>. Standard rules of in for RO and ref for RW.

[late mural]

thanks a ton!

do dynamic buffers get passed by reference in job fields, or do i have to instead just store a native reference to the entity and then grab the buffer afterwards? (i hope that made sense)

[robust scaffold]

You can use the dynamic buffer passed in at the parameters list directly.

[late mural]

ye but i mean i want to pass the dynamic buffer outside of the job, does that make sense?

[robust scaffold]

hrm, I think that's possible. Using a IJobEntity to query for a specific dynamic buffer then writing that buffer into a NativeArray<DynamicBuffer<BufType>>(1) for use in another job. But the safety system might throw a fit.

[late mural]

perhaps it would be better to just store the entity from the parameters in a NativeReference then, and just grab the buffer afterwards?

[robust scaffold]

Yeaaaaa, that's more advisable. Use a BufferLookup<BufType> obtained from SystemAPI

[late mural]

ok thanks a ton!

[viral sonnet]

nice tool

[robust scaffold]

Huh, I didnt realize needle made stuff rather than just being a unity repo mirror.

[late mural]

is there anyway to get a component of an entity created in an ecb before it is played back? (tryna figure out how to set the pos of an entity while using an ecb...)

[robust scaffold]

Three options.

[late mural]

ah no, im trying to set the position of an entity, and i dont think the position is a buffer?

[tribal pollen]

I've tried this, and I get an animator component added now on my entity, but it doesn't seem to actually animate... T.T

[misty wedge]

You want to get the component value of an entity created in an ECB that hasn't been played back yet?

[robust scaffold]

You can just apply the position using set component. If you're trying to read the value, that might not be possible. It depends on how you made that entity.

[late mural]

ok thanks a ton!

[robust scaffold]

@light badger All over your code, you check GhostOwnerComponent NetworkID against local connection value to operate on only local ghost owned entities. Is there a reason why you're not just using GhostOwnerIsLocal enabled component in the query?

[late mural]

wondering, is it better to do parenting first then do positioning, or should i setup positioning first and then setup the parenting? (also if the parent's position is 0 0 0 then any child's local position should be equal to its world position right?)

[robust scaffold]

Ideally, you have no parenting at all.

Parenting and inheritance in DOTS is a bad pattern. Sometimes necessary though but aim to minimize as much as possible. If you must parent, setup parenting then set positions using the TransformAspect.

[late mural]

ok fascinating, thanks a ton!

[robust scaffold]

Has anyone managed to get the IInputComponentData working for thin clients? Or is ICommandData the only way it'll be serialized?

Hrm, seems like it.

[robust scaffold]

No, input components should be working for thin clients, all the required systems are hooked up and enabled for thin worlds, but the buffer isnt being populated. Why

There we go, i forgot to set the ghost ownership on the instantiated player entity. Woops.

[robust scaffold]

@light badger Another suggestion, in AuthoringKinematicCharacterProperties, move CustomPhysicsBodyTags below the two interpolation tags. This will remove the double "General Properties" headers that appears when the imgui tag sets a header and the uielements also does so.

@light badger First is original in rivals and the second is the proposed change:

[rustic rain]

You also need to manually update animators

[tribal pollen]

How so?

[robust scaffold]

Stop abusing the poor companion GO. Just roll your own hybrid.

[rustic rain]

😅

But sir

[robust scaffold]

It works with everything, no internal access required. Just spawns a GO and mirrors the transform.

It even works in editor. Like magic

[rustic rain]

I dont want x2 gos per entity

[robust scaffold]

Replace all companion GOs with this hybrid setup.

ah, i see

well, stop being lazy.

It's more like 1 go and 1 prefab but still, laziness is bad. Companions are gonna get nuked soon.

[rustic rain]

Then we'll get alternative for sprites

[rotund token]

and this is from the companion king!

[robust scaffold]

I've converted. or just gave up and rolled my own.

[rotund token]

if netcode is anything to go by, the alternative is basically just what kornflaks posted

netcode already has a hybrid presentation implementation

which just spawns gameobjects/manages them

[rustic rain]

I only need hybrid because of sprites

[robust scaffold]

Yea, i just wholesale copied the hybrid presentation but used a component to indicate linked GO rather than a native list.

[robust scaffold]

It's one prefab, not that bad.

[rotund token]

what are you doing with your audio lights etc?

[rustic rain]

So you just store prefab on comp and then instantiate?

[rustic rain]

Al

unlit

[robust scaffold]

yep

[rustic rain]

And i use fmod

[robust scaffold]

Imagine using audio, my game will be as silent as the grave. People (i.e. me) have youtube anyways.

[rustic rain]

Workflow might be painful

[rotund token]

you're just being inclusive to the deaf

[robust scaffold]

There ya go, game is fully accessible to the audibly disabled.

[rustic rain]

How does it work in authoring?

I have many prefabs

[robust scaffold]

I shared the entire folder above but here's how it looks:

[rustic rain]

I build scene with them

[robust scaffold]

ultra simple.

[rustic rain]

Yeah, but I need to see sprite in scene view

[robust scaffold]

Works with spawning anything mono, including tilemaps that are updated like a regular monobehavior.

[rotund token]

(this is basically the same concept as my original hybrid implementation i was promoting months ago and no one was interested. suddenly 1324123 copies)

[robust scaffold]

Works in scene view.

[robust scaffold]

here in dots we love reinventing the wheel.

[robust scaffold]

So beautifully circular, so round and spherical.

[rustic rain]

How does it work in scene view? (sorry, on phone, haven't seen folder)

[robust scaffold]

[WorldSystemFilter(WorldSystemFilterFlags.ClientSimulation | WorldSystemFilterFlags.Editor)]

[rustic rain]

Ah

[robust scaffold]

If you dont have netcode, you might need to change client simulation to default.

[rustic rain]

You have editor system

[robust scaffold]

It's the same system used in runtime, just also runs while outside of playmode.

The transforms are there, the mono prefab is also there, why not also spawn the go as well?

[rustic rain]

How do you dispose gos? Im curious

In editor

[robust scaffold]

Same as companion gameobjects (I copied pasted this)

It took about 15 min to throw this together

[rotund token]

oh interesting. i just clean them all up in system ondestroy

but that seems like a maybe even more reliable approach

[rustic rain]

Huh

I forgot about this

[robust scaffold]

Note, this only works if the subscene is open, havent figured out a way to render the go's with the subscene closed like hybrid renderer but eh, it's good enough.

It renders in runtime with the subscene closed, just not in editor.

[rustic rain]

I see, Ill take a try on this, I guees

Bruh

[robust scaffold]

runtime as in play mode

not outside of play mode

ugh, im mixing up my terms

[rustic rain]

That means workflow is still miserable, sadge

[robust scaffold]

I mean, just open the prefab in scene view

This is play mode

And this is outside of play mode. Might be because of something in netcode though.

[rustic rain]

But scene view is important, in edit mode

[robust scaffold]

So just open the subscenes then

Oh and there's no picking in scene view, if that's important then uh, that'll require quite a bit of work.

[rustic rain]

Yeah, and then close them on every change... Gotta be a better way

[robust scaffold]

Just close before you enter play mode. But a better way is gonna be harder.

wait no, it does work

[rustic rain]

?

I'm confused

[robust scaffold]

I just had the subscene not loaded because I custom load them for netcode

If you have them on auto load scene, the game objects show up

[rustic rain]

🥴

Yay then

[robust scaffold]

as I said, netcode might fuck with things, lots of things are toggled off and only manually ran in code.

[rustic rain]

Jeez, networking sounds painful

[robust scaffold]

The only thing now not working is scene picking. Give me a sec i got an idea.

[robust scaffold]

It is, it really is.

[rustic rain]

Scene picking doesn't worl for companion either 😅

Needs some kind of proxy

[rotund token]

netcode is trying to make a lot of historically difficult network things a lot easier

[robust scaffold]

Dont get me wrong, netcode has made networking go from 1000 painful to 100 painful, 10x less painful but still like pulling teeth with a doornob

[rustic rain]

Btw, you can make auto switcher on awake for subcene load mode

Should help with authoring

[robust scaffold]

Probably but it's not too bad. Quite obvious if I forgot to turn off auto load if anything shows up

Or the 50 million errors on awake also halts execution until I fix it

[rustic rain]

That's the point

Auto load on default

And disab

Led in runtime

[robust scaffold]

Oh, hrm. Could work.

Alright, the picker's internal because unity is evil, gonna get some asm hacks to see if this works.

Damn, no, picking doesnt work even setting editor render data

[rustic rain]

Could use a static go registering

So on click it goes over spaawned gos and compares to registered

[robust scaffold]

Seems rather bad performance.

[rustic rain]

Editor one

[robust scaffold]

Yea, there could be a lot of things in the editor

[rustic rain]

Or other way

[robust scaffold]

Picking only happens in editor anyways

[rustic rain]

Store temporary component on go

Which stores entity

[robust scaffold]

ugh, too much work for just picking

wait, hrm

[rustic rain]

Id do it

As soon as Ill get to pc

[robust scaffold]

kk

yea, you can pick the GO itself as long as it's not hidden in the hierarchy

[robust scaffold]

https://forum.unity.com/threads/hide-object-in-hierarchy-but-still-allow-selection.536184/#post-5402763 You'll probably need to do some temporary component on the cloned GO prefab that disables the hide in hierarchy hide flag on the overlapped GO and only if the sub scene it originated from is open. Well, opened might not be necessary

[calm edge]

In ECS physics is it more performant to make a trigger collider that is added to the world or to do casts manually?

[robust scaffold]

Depends on your use case and frequency of use

[calm edge]

specifically for weapon projectiles, though in my case they can be large so just doing raycasts isn't enough

[robust scaffold]

Are they simple, like spheres? Then a sphere cast is probably better. If it's a complex mesh, a reused trigger collider will probably be more performant. Profile it.

[robust scaffold]

oh boy, 2d character controller is a lot harder than I thought.

i'll figure it out tomorrow...

[rustic rain]

same as 3d though, no?

with 1 less axis

[late mural]

in a SystemBase how would i get rid of entities?

[rotund token]

entitymanager.destroy
commandbuffer.destroy

[late mural]

thanks!

[robust scaffold]

Top down means that one should assume characters are always grounded. Which changes a key assumption at the root of the controller. So I'm gonna have to change a lot of things to accommodate that assumption.

[rustic rain]

ain't you having isometric?

this should be pure 3d

[robust scaffold]

No, it's just top down. No z axis at all.

[rustic rain]

then why do you care about being grounded at all?

[robust scaffold]

Exactly. The character controller does however. So I need to change that.

Hopefully without editing the actual package. It seems flexible enough to allow for custom overides.

[rustic rain]

are you using built in controller?

or rival?

[robust scaffold]

No, rival

[rustic rain]

you could probably just delete the whole concept of being grounded

[robust scaffold]

I don't want to edit the actual rival package.

But yea, I'm gonna try to do something along those lines and see how far I can get.

[rustic rain]

but it's literally tells you to

in rival manual

it wants you to modify package

in order to add features

[robust scaffold]

Problem is maintaining it as dots moves forward and physics might change

I don't want to maintain an entire character controller, one that I didn't write myself so I don't know it as well.

[rustic rain]

then I think Rival does not suit you really

package is built around the idea of modifying it, so...

[robust scaffold]

But I don't want to write one myself. So I'm gonna work around the existing api

One that will enable me to drag and drop any changes coming into the assets folder and not worry about maintaining compatibility with whatever the physics team does

Because rival works as I wish it to in 3d, it's just several key assumptions must be injected at the foundations of the asset for it to work in a 2d top down format. 2d sidescrollers are a lot easier than this.

[rustic rain]

could anyone remind me

how to select Entity through code?

what package

do I need to publicize?

nvm

I think I found it

[rotund token]

https://gitlab.com/tertle/com.bovinelabs.core/-/blob/master/BovineLabs.Core.Editor/Internal/EntitySelection.cs

is my little wrapper for it to read it

seems to be in Unity.Entities.Editor

[rustic rain]

yeah

now the problem

is that how do I trigger on editor clicking hybrid go

I tried this, but no luck

    [InitializeOnLoad]
    public class LinkSelection
    {
        public LinkSelection()
        {
            Selection.selectionChanged += SelectionChanged;
        }

        private void SelectionChanged()
        {
            var selectedLink = Selection.activeGameObject;
            if (selectedLink is not null && selectedLink.TryGetComponent<HybridEntityData>(out var hybridEntityData))
            {
                EntitySelectionProxy.SelectEntity(hybridEntityData.world, hybridEntityData.entity);
            }
        }
    }

[rotund token]

// Selected entities should always try to show up in Runtime mode
                            SelectionBridge.SetSelection(authoringObject, context, DataMode.Runtime);```
if you want it to play nice with data modes
otherwise yeah, EntitySelectionProxy.SelectEntity is fine since it probably doesn't matter

[rustic rain]

oh wait

my constructor is wrong 😅

it's simply not working though

seems like nothing changes

if I try to click hidden go

[late mural]

is it possible to get access to component data from a monobehaviour? (seems it would be easiest to setup a ui using a monobehaviour)

[rustic rain]

that's hardest way to setup a ui using mono

😅

[late mural]

ah, what would you recommend then?

[rustic rain]

the most simple way - use Model View Presentation pattern
And just for each presentation (view) create a system

access your UI objects from here

and manipulate from within system

[late mural]

ok but you cant access ui from components right, unless there is an ecs version of the canvas?

[rustic rain]

this is easiest for small application, but it won't really scale

[rustic rain]

Object.FindObjectOfType<> is static

just don't use it in OnCreate

because Scene is not loaded

yet

[late mural]

ok thanks a ton!

[rustic rain]

How do I specify that system should run in runtime and editor
[WorldSystemFilter(WorldSystemFilterFlags.Editor)]?

[rotund token]

| localsimulation

[frigid crypt]

Can anyone help me understand what is going on here?

This issue only appears when I launch standalone build of my game

Scene loading works fine in editor

[frigid crypt]

No one has any idea what should I do with it?

[rustic rain]

you could try finding the object that breaks subscene

[frigid crypt]

The issue is, that there is literally nothing to break

Even a scene like that causes problems

With or without a subscene

And only on a built executable

In editor in play mode everything seems to be working fine

[rustic rain]

subscene is the one that breaks

not scene

[tribal pollen]

@rustic rain what changes do you need in your animators to make them animate as a companion ?

[rustic rain]

at least from the error

[rustic rain]

you need to update them

Animator.Update

[tribal pollen]

Oh, and you put that in a mono on your go prefabs

?

[rustic rain]

for now I literally just use companion link hack

and then query each animator as component

which is extremely slow

0.2ms to update 10 super simple animators or smth

[frigid crypt]

It might not be too obvious on the screenshot but the subscene is literally empty

[rustic rain]

well, try empty project. If it doesn't work too - smth wrong on your end

[frigid crypt]

I'm still not sure what exactly is wrong here but I've found a bypass for my issue

Instead of loading the entire scene I'm just loading the SubScene itself

[rustic rain]

subscene is just a monob that points to serialized entities

you can't load it same way as normal scene

[frigid crypt]

Well, it somehow works for me

[rustic rain]

bruh, I hate that hybrid workflow with double prefab

I'll stick to companions

even though functionality is same, keeping twice as much prefabs for same price is meh

[calm edge]

what is the parallel version of GetComponentLookup?

[rustic rain]

it is can be used as parallel

if you want write access and you ensured it's safe

there is attribute

[DisableParallelWhatever]

[calm edge]

my use case isn't safe thought 😆

I guess there's not really anything I can do to get around that

[rustic rain]

then you are asking for crashes and corrupted data

[calm edge]

I guess I'll just have to do that bit serially

do I need to do something special to destroy an entity with children?

[rustic rain]

well, you need to destroy all children

[calm edge]

is there a proper way of doing that or do I just have to do it manually?

[rustic rain]

nah, people just come up with their own ways

Here's one way

        public static NativeArray<Entity> GetAllEntitiesInHierarchy(this BufferLookup<Child> lookup, in Entity parent,
            Allocator allocator = Allocator.Temp)
        {
            var list = new NativeList<Entity>(1, allocator);
            list.Add(parent);
            if (!lookup.HasBuffer(parent))
            {
                return list.AsArray();
            }

            var buffer = lookup[parent];
            foreach (var child in buffer)
            {
                var children = GetAllEntitiesInHierarchy(lookup, child.Value);
                list.AddRange(children);
                children.Dispose();
            }

            return list.AsArray();
        }

works with EntityManager too

[calm edge]

if I do CommandBuffer.DestroyEntity(entityIndexInQuery, entity); can I only call that with one entity, or as many as I need?

one entity per entityIndexInQuery I mean

[rustic rain]

just look at all available public methods I guess

[tribal pollen]

I'm feeling pretty dumb, can't even get this 'easy' hack to work >_>
Systems finding animator components and calling update on them (with delta time), but still nothing happens.
If i drag a prefab into the normal scene it does work though.

[rustic rain]

your animator game objects must be saved as prefabs

or else Animator Controller will not be serialized

it's some kind of glitch I found out yesterday

[tribal pollen]

I think they are prefabs? or do they need to be like an extra one

[rustic rain]

they need to be stored as prefab file

I mean

[tribal pollen]

the animators are a component on a prefab which gets baked

[tribal pollen]

@rustic rain both the animator and companion components point to the same item, and if i click it, it can find it....

[rustic rain]

try to make some static collection ticker

which adds your animator to tick in OnAwake

or OnEnable

[rustic rain]

ok, I'm done with Hybrid

I just hate it

I want to make sprite renderer within entities graphics

[misty wedge]

tell unity to add 2D to entities graphics please

[rustic rain]

I'm trying to learn how to make one

[misty wedge]

Can you use material property blocks in entities graphics?

[rustic rain]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities.graphics@1.0/manual/material-overrides-code.html

there is material property ovverides

but it's funky

MaterialPropertyFormat this type does not exist

[rotund token]

I'm pretty sure mpb are superseded in batch renderer

[misty wedge]

Superseded by what?

[rotund token]

Sorry srp batcher not batch renderer *

[misty wedge]

How does the batcher replace the need to override material settings

(I'm asking since that's all that SpriteRenderer really does)

[rotund token]

Yeah - The rendered object must not use MaterialPropertyBlocks.

For srp batcher

[misty wedge]

I know, sprites don't use it either

They are already dynamically batched anyways

[rotund token]

You just use different materials with the same Shader

[misty wedge]

Seems kind of weird to have to create an in memory material for each sprite, especially if you aren't using atlasing, but I guess it works

I wonder if that will still dynamically batch

I'm guessing no, but I've never tried it

[rotund token]

If it has the same compatible Shader and mesh, it should batch

[misty wedge]

The mesh isn't the same though, since it needs to write the sprite atlas UV coordinates into the vertex

And it won't be the same anyways if you do something like tight packing

(I'm talking about dynamic batching, not the SRP batcher)

I've also thought about trying to write something for 2D sprites for graphics, but there's too much I don't know about how unity handles sprites

I still have no idea how the sorting groups work for example

I hope unity releases something in that direction some time soon, although I doubt it

[rotund token]

but you were asking about entities graphics package

so now i'm confused

[misty wedge]

Yep, I'm an idiot 😅 my bad

Then you'll need to create a material per sprite / atlas

[misty wedge]

Do you know if Unity has said anything regarding 2D support for graphics? I don't follow updates that closely

[rotund token]

nope

though i don't pay much attention to graphics

[misty wedge]

I wish the companion linked object at least had support for more 2D stuff

There's no reason for e.g. SortingGroup to be missing from it

[safe lintel]

can I iterate only on all of a chunk's enabled entities or is it strictly a per entity basis?

wait maybe need to use entityquery for this

[misty wedge]

You always iterate chunks, and then decide if you want to iterate an entity (e.g. based on enabled status)

If you want the "disabled" entities to not be in that chunk, use a tag component so they are moved

How do you even access the companion linked component? It just says SpriteRenderer in the inspector but that of course doesn't implement IComponentData...

Or do you need to get the CompanionLink and then call GetComponent on the game object?

[tired mulch]

Does anyone have any tips regarding how one could think when wanting to implement things in a "generic" way in a chunk job for example.

My case in particular is about abilities, and I would like to add different behavior for my different abilities, but process the abilities in the same way. But I'm having a hard time figuring out how I can do that without adding a big switch to check the abilityType in all my systems that do work in the ability 😛

My OOP brain is having a hard time haha

[misty wedge]

I implemented a prototype for an ability system recently. It is node based though, but does use a switch statement to call the correct code for each node

[tired mulch]

And you can access these nodes in your jobs?

[misty wedge]

Yes

The graph is stored in a scriptable object during authoring time, and is then converted to a blob-based representation of the graph for use in bursted jobs

A single job then executes all running abilities in parallel

[tired mulch]

Yeah that's the behavior I'm working on. I'll see if I can use the blob asset too

[misty wedge]

The switch statement is kind of annoying, but I'm not sure if there's a good way around it

[misty wedge]

You don't need to use blobs if you don't want to, I just like using them since it's easy to serialize them

[tired mulch]

Yeah, I guess the challenge is being able to describe an ability "pattern" with unmanaged types

Might end up breaking up my ability system to multiple too to make it a bit easier (buffs vs offensive etc)

[misty wedge]

If all nodes store their type it's trivial with a switch statement. How that "pattern" looks (e.g. an array, or a graph stored in an array) is up to you

I went with a graph this time since I hadn't done it before and it makes it possible to design more complicated abilities

e.g. something like an If-else node is much easier to parse in a graph than in an array

(during authoring)

[tired mulch]

Yeah graphs do sounds like a good thing to use, as it could be used for various things (life-time, acceleration, etc)

[misty wedge]

Yep I plan to (hopefully) reuse the entire authoring part for other graph stuff (e.g. AI)

[robust scaffold]

Actually, unity has said a lot about 2D support in graphics. It aint coming any time soon.

[misty wedge]

Then at least give me the 2D components as companion objects

[tired mulch]

The graphs you're using. Is it some type of package? Or is it built-in already

[misty wedge]

It's the experimental graph view UI elements stuff from Unity

it's what shadergraph uses

[tired mulch]

I see

[robust scaffold]

scroll up and you'll find my hybrid folder. Works with any monobehavior on any game object. Only downside is that it requires 2 gameobjects per entity. One converted and one prefab. And no picking of course.

Works with sprites both in runtime/play mode and in editor/scene view. With the subscene open and closed. Works with tilemaps and more. Only restriction is that it's entity authoritative. There's no GO -> Entity transform communication.

[misty wedge]

I followed this tutorial, and adapted the parts I needed. I thought it was pretty well explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKpM98I7PeM

[misty wedge]

That's fine, I'm currently just writing all my client side rendering updates from inside systems, saving the GO references on a managed component

[tired mulch]

Yeah that's the one I'm watching. I was thinking of trying a method of using curves to define the behavior of my abilities too (slightly more mathematical), but should be able to be represented well in 2d arrays

like animation curves but for other types of behavior of an ability as well

[misty wedge]

I scrolled really far but I can't find it 😬

[robust scaffold]

Pulled straight from my current project. It has some netcode attributes so just delete them if you're not using netcode.

[misty wedge]

I am 👍

Haha I love this

[robust scaffold]

heh. Thats what I call all my bakers.

[misty wedge]

Now I'm tempted to rename mine to Oven too. Mine are just called Baker

[robust scaffold]

I started with baker but the autocomplete always mis-selected the proper class name.

[misty wedge]

I only scanned it quickly, is there a reason why the MonoLink isn't the ICleanupComponent?

You'd need to check for destruction against something like Simulate though

[robust scaffold]

Simulate only matters inside the predicted loop of netcode (assuming one does not do something with simulated themselves).

Ideally you wont be destroying something inside prediction as there's no rolling pack of destruction anyways

[misty wedge]

I mean checking for destroyed by doing WithAll<MonoLink>().WithNone<Simulate>()

And having MonoLink be the ICleanupComponent and get rid of TransLink

[robust scaffold]

MonoLink only contains the reference to the game object. The cleanup component is TransLink which contains the array index for the UpdateLinks system to clean up with.

I mean, yes you can merge translink with monolink...

And then track destruction off simulate.

[misty wedge]

Just wondering if there was a reason you split them, I guess your version is cleaner than checking a component that may not exist on the entity

(although Simulate should usually be on the entity)

Very cool though, thanks for sharing. If 2D support is really that far out I'll experiment with this 👍

[misty wedge]

Did they say this on the forums somewhere? Just wondering

[robust scaffold]

The last dev blitz. Asked a lot about the 2D support. They near universally said it aint on the roadmap for the next year and more. One said to make a custom hybrid format as companion GOs are getting axed / deprecated. So I threw together that folder above.

[misty wedge]

Good to know I won't need to keep up my hopes 😅

Nobody plays 2D games nowadays anyways...

Something I was also wondering when looking at the code @robust scaffold , is it better to use WorldUpdateAllocator instead of Temp when working on the main thread? I've not used WorldUpdateAllocator a lot

I guess it will better "preserve" the temp memory pool for use inside jobs? 🤷‍♀️

[robust scaffold]

If you're re-using the same buffer a lot, I prefer WUA because it allows for the re-use of the same buffer space without reallocation.

[robust scaffold]

Here's the revise version using your suggestions. Seems to work. Nothing exploded.

[misty wedge]

For the record I thought it was fine before, was just wondering 😅 Thanks for checking it out though!

[robust scaffold]

I thought it was a great idea as well, removes 4 bytes off each entity using this component.

[misty wedge]

Looking forward to trying this out, since I have a few client side rendering stuff that is "part" of the sprite, but since I currently don't have entities on the client for sprites, it makes reading and writing that data a lot slower than it needs to be

[rotund token]

omg netcode there has to be a way i can tell you to handle this better

x512

[rustic rain]

Codegen?

[misty wedge]

That is code-gened I believe

[rotund token]

this is the codegen result

[robust scaffold]

Composite = true?

[rotund token]

lines of this

[misty wedge]

Epic programmer moment when you crack the 10k lines

[robust scaffold]

isn't there an unsafe utility for change checking?

mem compare or something?

[rotund token]

yeah

[rotund token]

this might be my solution

hmm didn't change anything

[robust scaffold]

what are you trying to network? FixedList?

[rotund token]

i just want to serialize a 512 KB packet nicely

so i'm going to remove all substructs and at a minimum use longs

[robust scaffold]

[GhostField(Composite=true)] did nothing?

[rotund token]

i have it on the serializer template

[robust scaffold]

Try putting it onto the field as well.

[rotund token]

let me restart and force a recodegen

[robust scaffold]

Wait no, this is for specific overrides.

[rotund token]

hmm now it wont even generate into the temp folder

[robust scaffold]

You have to change something inside the component for it to show

[rotund token]

runs fine

[robust scaffold]

a whitespace change is enough

noooope

[rotund token]

still the same 11k file

[robust scaffold]

I think you might need to write your own serializer.

[rotund token]

i did

[robust scaffold]

the source gen? Then why would it produce this?

[rotund token]

yes

[robust scaffold]

It should produce whatever you put here and nothing else.

[rotund token]

the actual serializer is just this

this whole other part is the has changed

load from backup

etc

part

[robust scaffold]

and still the 11k file? huh

try specifying the subtype explicitly?

[rotund token]

i'm not sure what you're expecting? it has no subtypes

this is a custom ghost template

not a variant / subtype

[robust scaffold]

Is it still generating the 11k lines of change filter? Or have we moved beyond that?

[rotund token]

it is

[robust scaffold]

would you mind sharing the serializer, I want to try something

[rotund token]

sure

[robust scaffold]

Thanks, give me a min

[rotund token]

i basically just need to custom implement these methods

since all i did was the serializer/deserializer

mimicking the fixedstring implementations

oh yeah definitely i see, fixedstring uses 32 as a base and then has overrides on a few methods

[robust scaffold]

Yea, i'm trying to override the change mask calculator

using fixedbyte510 because I dont want to make a fixedbyte512

[rotund token]

oh i just did it

        public unsafe bool Equals(FixedBytes512 other)
        {
            fixed (void* ptr = &this)
            {
                return UnsafeUtility.MemCmp(ptr, &other, UnsafeUtility.SizeOf<FixedBytes512>()) == 0;
            }
        }```

via IEquatable<FixedBytes512>

[robust scaffold]

oh

[rotund token]

        public void CalculateChangeMask(ref Snapshot snapshot, ref Snapshot baseline, uint changeMask)
        {
            #region __GHOST_CALCULATE_CHANGE_MASK_ZERO__
            changeMask = snapshot.__GHOST_FIELD_NAME__.Equals(baseline.__GHOST_FIELD_NAME__) ? 0 : 1u;
            #endregion
            #region __GHOST_CALCULATE_CHANGE_MASK__
            changeMask |= snapshot.__GHOST_FIELD_NAME__.Equals(baseline.__GHOST_FIELD_NAME__) ? 0 : (1u<<__GHOST_MASK_INDEX__);
            #endregion
        }```

[robust scaffold]

huh

well, you wouldnt need sizeof fixedbytes512...

but I guess that's for future refactoring.

[rotund token]

it's true but i am considering changing the size of this

to 256

i dont know what packet size i want

[robust scaffold]

Why not sizeof(FixedBytes512)?

[rotund token]

habit

though in this case i already chagned it

        {
            fixed (void* ptr = &this)
            {
                return UnsafeUtility.MemCmp(ptr, &other, sizeof(FixedBytes512)) == 0;
            }
        }```

write after i pasted it

^_^'

[robust scaffold]

I've been using sizeof() rather than unsafe utility... ah. Okay. Thought I was doing something wrong

[rotund token]

but i always just use utility

as it avoids need of unsafe

but i already have unsafe here

[robust scaffold]

I just tack unsafe onto the parent class / struct so I have access to all the pointer goodies.

[rotund token]

all SizeOf is doing is wrapping sizeof()

i'm slowly removing pointers from my libraries

[robust scaffold]

I thought SizeOf<> also resolves generic types?

[rotund token]

public static int SizeOf<T>() where T : struct => sizeof (T);

[robust scaffold]

oh wait, regular sizeof can also do so

what was that catch with sizeof() instead of marshal.sizeof<>()?

[rotund token]

no idea, what's an efficient way to make a hashcode of this struct

i feel like burst has a tool for this

oh wait no that was just for hashing a struct

[robust scaffold]

hashwide for the 4x structs.

I dont think mathematics has built in md5 generators

[rotund token]

        this.offset0000.GetHashCode(),
        this.offset0016.GetHashCode(),
        this.offset0032.GetHashCode(),
        this.offset0048.GetHashCode()));

hashCode = (hashCode * 397) ^ math.hashwide(new int4(
        this.offset0064.GetHashCode(),
        this.offset0080.GetHashCode(),
        this.offset0096.GetHashCode(),
        this.offset0112.GetHashCode()));

// .. etc

return (int)math.hash(hashCode);```

[robust scaffold]

that is disgusting

I guess it works. I would get a pointer to the header byte then cast to a uint4x4 then hashwide a for loop of 512/4/16 (=8).

[rotund token]

C:\dots2\Packages\com.unity.netcode\Runtime\SourceGenerators\Source~\NetCodeSourceGenerator\Generators\NetCodeSourceGenerator.cs(95,1): error NetCode: GHOST_IMPORTS is not a valid fragment for the given template at Unity.NetCode.Generators.GhostCodeGen.GetFragmentTemplate(String fragment)

i don't even have GHOST_IMPORTS in my template

oh

i guess i need it

hey file is down to 32KB

a nice 559 lines

[robust scaffold]

share for the class?

[rotund token]

the template?

sec

[robust scaffold]

the code gen

a screenshot of what it looks like

[rotund token]

oh

code gen

[robust scaffold]

well, both is good

[robust scaffold]

very nice

[rotund token]

let's see if it actually worrks

my originally implementation just used a byte dynamic buffer but obviously that's not great

hence it was just a quick first pass and i'm trying to properly implement it now

hmmmm

does not work

Failed to decode ghost 473 of type NetworkPacket(4), got 4185 bits, expected 4231 bits

what'd i do

[robust scaffold]

What line did that error come from?

[rotund token]

cant tell

only getting the sink

either going to be 1173 or 1178 ghostreceivesystem

wait no thats fine

it seems to serialize and deserialize fine

[robust scaffold]

What's the max size of packets again? 4kb might be pushing it. Or there could be plenty of room

[rotund token]

1636 or something like that for unfragmented

16kb for fragmented

i had no issue pushing this via a 512 length buffer

and on my testing i could push up to about 9kb entities

before it broke down

(it breaks down in transport not in netcode)

512 was meant to be way below the limit

it is failing though on the writing part though