archived-dots

[gusty comet]

and also BufferFromEntity

whats the diff?

[ocean tundra]

on what object?

[gusty comet]

I guess its a member of SystemBase

[ocean tundra]

honestly im not sure

i think GetBuffer can get rewritten by the code gen

so safer to use

Oooo docs have updated

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.17/api/Unity.Entities.SystemBase.GetBuffer.html

yea use GetBuffer

[gusty comet]

alright cool thanks

[zenith wyvern]

Keep in mind with GetBuffer you can't specify your access as readonly

You need to manually pass in a BufferFromEntity for that

[gusty comet]

What would you need a readonly buffer for?

will the job system complain even if you don't write to it?

[zenith wyvern]

Like any component how you access it in a job determines the scheduler's ability to parallelize your jobs

Plus if you wanted to access a buffer that isn't in your query inside a parallel job in the first place, the safety system will complain if it's not read-only

[ocean tundra]

Oooo theres a Timeline dots package

0 docs 😛

[safe lintel]

theres samples tho 🙂

[ocean tundra]

Ooo fun

unfortuantully all their curve stuff is blobs which are read only 😦

so im wanting to stream out data (replay info) as it gets old
I have a dynamic buffer per type im recording which is the keyframe info that builds up as the game goes on
So far i havnt seen anything in DOTS that would help with this

My current thoughts are to write it into a native stream as it gets old and use a long lived Thread to handle writing it to files
Any ideas on this?
Can I use native collections in old Threads?

[gusty comet]

Ah I see that now, so how do you use BufferFromEntity?

[zenith wyvern]

var bfe = GetBufferFromEntity<ABuffer>(true); // <-- Bool specifies read-only

Pass that into the job

And use WithReadOnly(bfe)

[honest plinth]

The most common reason is you want to run some rendering code at a specific point in the rendering pipeline. A place your code is not executed. So you record a (rendering) command buffer and attach it to that point of execution. That was the way to extend the built in pipeline, and scriptable render pipelines are built the same way, making it possible to interweave C# driven rendering code with C++ work without jumping back and forth between and doing callbacks

Not very DOTS related though 😉

[warped fog]

So... voodoo. That's all you had to say. Voodoo.

[gusty comet]

@zenith wyvern worked thanks.

[safe lintel]

whats the difference between math.select and just using a ternary operator?

[warped coral]

am i doing this right? how come i cant use the allocatestring with using (BlobBuilder)? it makes me manually dispose [Serializable] public struct RoomInfo { public string Name; public string Description; public BlobAssetReference<RoomInfoBlob> ToBlob() { BlobBuilder blobBuilder = new BlobBuilder(Allocator.Temp); ref RoomInfoBlob roomInfo = ref blobBuilder.ConstructRoot<RoomInfoBlob>(); blobBuilder.AllocateString(ref roomInfo.Name, Name); blobBuilder.AllocateString(ref roomInfo.Description, Description); BlobAssetReference<RoomInfoBlob> blob = blobBuilder.CreateBlobAssetReference<RoomInfoBlob>(Allocator.Persistent); blobBuilder.Dispose(); return blob; } }

[half jay]

In this system can be something potential wrong ?

im not sure but i have random crashes on android and in systems which Run on main thread with EntityManager so potential there are no errors should be

is it legal to use async in systems?

[ocean tundra]

probs the async method

[half jay]

yes im not sure about this too but can't find info to confirm of usage async methods

[ocean tundra]

i would expect async to not be supported

[half jay]

problem that this methods working and crash happens randomly on systems not directly depends on this

[ocean tundra]

yea but that could easyly be a async issue

cause it works 'sometimes'

[acoustic spire]

Probably silly question. If data components are pure data then where am I supposed to store methods for that data? Extension methods?

[ocean tundra]

as sometimes its faster, or slower

wait the crashes are in other systems?

@acoustic spire what sort of methods?? your mainly writing your methods in systems as ForEach's

[acoustic spire]

Yeah but I mean some common operations on same data component that is going to be used in multiple systems

[ocean tundra]

weirdly i dont really have many of those

the few i did i made into a normal static method

but im not sure thats correct

@half jay If you remove that system do you still get the random crashes?
Maybe do more testing and see if you can narrow down exacly what system is causing issues

[acoustic spire]

yea, static method is the most obvious way. however, it's not so good for code organizing

[half jay]

Yes crashes on other systems. This systems print logs and working. I'm trying test case without this system and got crash too.

[ocean tundra]

then its probably not that code 😛

i would replace the async at some point, as it seems risky to me

[half jay]

also we are using this event system and i hope this is not reason why its crash
https://gitlab.com/tertle/com.bovinelabs.event

Crash log

one of the crashes

and how there can be an error if query exists

[karmic basin]

there's a ternary behind, but it's Burst powered 🙂

[karmic basin]

yes data only but "helper" methods for that data is okay

[ocean tundra]

@half jay I didnt think you could WithBurst entity manager stuff?

I would change that whole system to use a command buffer

then you can definitly burst

and use schedule

[half jay]

ye im testing this without Burst. But log with crash that im show above one of the cases.

[ocean tundra]

singleton?? only 1?

[half jay]

yes im sure its only one entity with ArVoxelGridComponentSingleton

[ocean tundra]

will there only ever be one?

[half jay]

yes

[ocean tundra]

then delete all the system stuff

no point really for 1 entity create step

sorry not delete sysem, delete the foreach

and use the singleton entity manager methods to get to the data

[half jay]

but i need combination of existing this component

[ocean tundra]

a manual entityquery.tonattivearray.first??

[half jay]

and singleton entity really shoudn't break there anything or im mistaken?

[half jay]

ill try this

same crash

crash log

[ocean tundra]

weird...

[half jay]

yes

[ocean tundra]

definitly that system?

[half jay]

yes

[zenith wyvern]

Please use code tags for posting code

I don't see anything wrong with it, I can only assume it's from some interaction between that system and something else in your game

[ocean tundra]

it has a bunch of removecomponent log messages...

[pliant pike]

I'm confused for some reason before I destroy an entity after a job I have to create a sync point is that normal 😕

[ocean tundra]

maybe post of components as well?

@pliant pike use a command buffer

[pliant pike]

this.CompleteDependency();

        if (HasSingleton<FindNeighborCellEvent>())
        {
            
            var tempevent = GetSingletonEntity<FindNeighborCellEvent>();
            EntityManager.DestroyEntity(tempevent);
            //Debug.Log("It's not destroying the entity for some reason");
        }```

[ocean tundra]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.17/manual/entity_command_buffer.html

[zenith wyvern]

You're destroying an entity after you've scheduled a job. So the job hasn't happened yet

[pliant pike]

its outside the job so I dont think that applies

yeah if I don't use this.CompleteDependency(); then I either get a compiler error or it doesn't destroy the entity at all

[zenith wyvern]

What compiler error?

Although even if there was no error, by destroying an entity on the main thread you're forcing a structural change so it's going to cause a sync point anyways

[pliant pike]

The previously scheduled job FindNeighbourSystem:FindNeigbourCell writes to the BufferTypeHandle<FlowfieldNeigborEntities> FindNeigbourCell.JobData._lambdaParameterValueProviders.forParameter_flowbuff._typeHandle. You must call JobHandle.Complete() on the job FindNeighbourSystem:FindNeigbourCell, before you can deallocate the BufferTypeHandle<FlowfieldNeigborEntities> safely.

[zenith wyvern]

Meaning effectively it would force your job to complete immediately anyways

[ocean tundra]

use a command buffer from the job

[pliant pike]

yeah I know destroy an entity creates it's own sync point but its just weird that it requires the job to complete before allowing it to destroy a completely unrelated entity

[ocean tundra]

everything will be happy then

[rancid geode]

@pliant pike doesn't seems to have anything to do with the destroy 🤔

mind sharing more code?

[zenith wyvern]

I'm not sure but to me it feels like you might be accessing that NeighbourEntities component/buffer on the main thread somewhere else

By forcing a sync point immediately after scheduling a job that accesses it you're just by coincidence triggering some dependency issue with how it's trying to schedule your jobs

[pliant pike]

Entities.WithName("FindNeigbourCell").ForEach((DynamicBuffer<FlowfieldNeigborEntities> flowbuff, in FlowFieldData fluffydata, in CellData tempcelldata) =>
        {
            //NativeList<int2> tempint2list = new NativeList<int2>(Allocator.Temp);
            FixedList64<int2> tempint2list = new FixedList64<int2>();
            //NativeArray<int2> tempint2list = new NativeArray<int2>(4, Allocator.Temp);
           tempNeigbourindices.Execute(tempcelldata.gridIndex, fluffydata.gridSize, ref tempint2list);

            for (int i = 0; i < tempint2list.Length; i++)
            {
                flowbuff.Add(tempint2list[i]);
            }
            //tempint2list.Dispose();
        }).ScheduleParallel();```

that's the job just above the code I already posted

[safe lintel]

@karmic basin wouldnt slapping burstcompile on a job that contains a ternary do the same thing?

[rancid geode]

I mean, the entire OnUpdate functions would be better

[zenith wyvern]

Are you accessing FlowFieldNeighbour on the main thread anywhere in your game?

Not just in that system, anywhere

[pliant pike]

I don't think so 😕

[ocean tundra]

@safe lintel I belive the math.*** functions have some extra magic when it comes to burst

[pliant pike]

I haven't forced the order of the systems though

[zenith wyvern]

Well it sounds to me like what I was hitting when I was getitng buffers on the main thread to pass into other jobs. It created very annoying and hard to track dependency errors

I fixed it by never accessing a buffer on the main thread

Outside of a ForEach at least

[pliant pike]

the only other place its mentioned is where I create it

[safe lintel]

@ocean tundra hmm, it didnt have a math.select for quaternions/float4x4 🤷‍♂️

[rancid geode]

does your singleton entity with FindNeighborCellEvent happens to be the same one that have the DynamicBuffer<FlowfieldNeigborEntities> on it?

[ocean tundra]

the magic of the math class... maybe not everything exists

[pliant pike]

nope its a single entity with just that componentdata

maybe its just because systems at the beginning are running in the wrong order

although it should just run when that singleton entity exists

[karmic basin]

@safe lintel @ocean tundra yeah it has a directive to optimize the SIMD instructions. I guess the compiler does a not so great job on its own with a ternary

[pliant pike]

it does it in another job as well, it seems like it doesn't like structural changes after the jobs

[zenith wyvern]

I will say if forcing your job to immediately complete fixes the error - that's fine. Like I said it's going to happen anyways since you're causing a structural change

[pliant pike]

I've tried destroying the entity before the job and that seems to have fixed it

that's probably the better place

[zenith wyvern]

I mean the real best solution is what Roycon suggested, use a command buffer. Unless you have a good reason not to

Putting a structural change in the middle of your update loop should be avoided if possible

[pliant pike]

you can use commandbuffers outside a job

[zenith wyvern]

Yeah

[pliant pike]

is there some trick to finding jobs in the profiler?

according to the profiler the above job is only run once before all the entities are created and yet somehow it still fills in all the correct values

also Bursted jobs appear and disappear seemingly at random from the profiler

[ocean tundra]

not sure

you can give a job a name

.WithName

that might help

[pliant pike]

yeah it might help if I didn't forget I'd already made a similar named system

[ocean tundra]

whats the way of using prefabs now?

especially with subscenes?

[safe lintel]

i dont think its changed

[ocean tundra]

😛

so whats the old way?

cause subscenes is all about the actual entities right? not prefabs?

oh the updated docs have a bit on prefabs

[safe lintel]

well subscenes mostly preconverting stuff so no need to do it on the start of the game/scene etc

[ocean tundra]

Looks like i should have a IConvet that has a list of all my prefabs, and that will call DeclareReferencedPrefab

that way they will all end up in the subscene

[safe lintel]

though doesnt have to be in a subscene(if you slap a convertotentity on it)

[ocean tundra]

i read somewhere that convertotentity is on the way out

will be removed in a future version

[safe lintel]

yeah but that future could be a long way away 🥲

[ocean tundra]

so def dont want to rely on it

i know 😛

i heard about it being removed like last year

[safe lintel]

i dunno, all you gotta do to update something with convert to entity(assuming one day it vanishes) is move it to a subscene, boom done 😉

[ocean tundra]

it seems this whole subscenes and conversion flow is where unity is investing their time in, so eventually it should be good to go 😛

true

[safe lintel]

anyway there are issues with subscenes and uitoolkit and some other people have other probs so just saying it can be temporarily avoided if you also have issues with em

[ocean tundra]

convert to entity is runtime tho?

[safe lintel]

yes, like start, should happen just once at the beginning

[ocean tundra]

ill probably just try to make it work with subscenes

untill i run into issues

😛

it would be good to be able to assign unique Ids to the prefabs all in the editor

[zenith wyvern]

I mean they still use ConvertToEntity with the new dots editor that is being actively worked on

I don't think it's going away any time soon

[ocean tundra]

yea probably not

[light mason]

Wondering if someone could help me with a project tiny question

Seems like my webGL build fails when using IConverGameObjectToEntity ?

Can I not sure that interface ?

[acoustic spire]

Why do I get this error in my component on startup but in official Unity example it's valid code that uses mesh in component?

ArgumentException: Client.Dots.ChunkComponent contains a field of UnityEngine.Mesh, which is neither primitive nor blittable.
Example:
https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/EntityComponentSystemSamples/blob/master/ECSSamples/Assets/Advanced/ManagedComponents/SimpleMeshRenderingAuthoring.cs

[zenith wyvern]

It worked for me last time I was messing with Tiny. Make sure you have all your authoring scripts in a separate assembly that isn't in your root assembly, as per the getting started guide

[light mason]

Ah

Let me try that

@zenith wyvern

Do you have your root assembly in script and then move authoring above it ?

[zenith wyvern]

Sorry I don't understand the question. Your root assemblies exist alongside your scripts. You need your authoring scripts in their own folder with their own assembly that isn't included in the root assembly that gets referenced by your build configuration

[light mason]

Ok let me try thank you

[gusty comet]

What could be causing Entity Doesn't exist exception in this code? It doesn't tell me where its happening at unfortunately :(.

private void SpawnPeds()
    {
        if (pedCount >= 40)
            return;
        var archeType = pedArchetype;
        BufferFromEntity<Node> buffer = GetBufferFromEntity<Node>(true);
        var commandBuffer = barrier.CreateCommandBuffer().AsParallelWriter();

        var peds = pedCount;
        Entities.WithReadOnly(buffer).ForEach((Entity entity, int entityInQueryIndex, ref Path path) =>
        {
            
            var rand = Unity.Mathematics.Random.CreateFromIndex((uint)entityInQueryIndex);
            foreach (var node in buffer[entity])
            {
                if (peds >= 40)
                    break;

                int next = (node.index >= buffer[entity].Length - 1) ? 0 : node.index + 1;
                int prev = (node.index >= 1) ? node.index - 1 : 0;
                var pos = math.lerp(node.position, buffer[entity][next].position, rand.NextFloat(0, 1));

                var e = commandBuffer.CreateEntity(entityInQueryIndex);
                commandBuffer.AddComponent(entityInQueryIndex, e, new Coord() { position = pos });
                commandBuffer.AddComponent(entityInQueryIndex, e, new Ped() { nodeIndex = node.index, needsNewDestination = 1 });
                commandBuffer.AddComponent(entityInQueryIndex, e, new NeedsCompanion());

            }
        }).ScheduleParallel();

    }


    private void SpawnCompanions()
    {

        Entities.WithStructuralChanges().WithAll<NeedsCompanion, Ped>().ForEach((Entity entity, int entityInQueryIndex, ref Coord coord) =>
         {
             var agent = GetPedModel();
             agent.transform.position = coord.position;
             
             EntityManager.RemoveComponent<NeedsCompanion>(entity);
             EntityManager.AddComponentObject(entity,agent);
             pedCount++;
         }).WithoutBurst().Run();
    }

protected override void OnUpdate()
    {
        SpawnPeds();
        barrier.AddJobHandleForProducer(Dependency);
        SpawnCompanions();
}

[coarse turtle]

In your lambda, you are only querying for entities that have the Path component

So when you write foreach (var node in buffer[entity]) <- Are you sure that all entities with Path component have a Node buffer?

Also you can't use foreach statements in jobs because they rely on try catch. I don't think Unity has support for try catch statements in Jobs.

[gusty comet]

Yes they do

and

i ll try with for loop now

but all path entities have a node buffer

[coarse turtle]

You can access DynamicBuffers like so to: Entities.ForEach((DynamicBuffer<Node> nodes, ref Path path) => {})

[ocean tundra]

change the foreach to a for loop

[coarse turtle]

then the query will be all entities with <Path> & <Node>

[ocean tundra]

yea i was about to say that 😛

much easier when its part of the foreach

[gusty comet]

awesome thanks guys!

[ocean tundra]

also i dont see you adding a dependancy for that command buffer

is it a built in one?

oh its in that last bit of code 😛

[gusty comet]

Well that got rid of the error but i am having the weirdest issue, I think might be a race condition

var pos = math.lerp(node.position, buffer[entity][next].position, rand.NextFloat(0, 1));

the entity is set to this position

then I create a gameobject to mirror its position

and its not going to the same spot

private void SpawnCompanions()
    {

        Entities.WithStructuralChanges().WithAll<NeedsCompanion, Ped>().ForEach((Entity entity, int entityInQueryIndex, ref Coord coord) =>
         {
             var agent = GetPedModel();
             agent.transform.position = coord.position;
             
             EntityManager.RemoveComponent<NeedsCompanion>(entity);
             EntityManager.AddComponentObject(entity,agent);
             pedCount++;
         }).WithoutBurst().Run();
    }

[ocean tundra]

that would randomly position it between those 2 pos?

[gusty comet]

Thats what its supposed to do

but

there aree four nodes

and it only spawns at 1 of them

and

the value of the companion gameobject

is being set to something random its not setting it t o the value that ped is being set to in the parralel job

[ocean tundra]

check the entity inspector

is it creating all the enitities it should?

do they have the right position in the entity inspoector?

cause that SpawnCompanions bit is the part that looks odd to me

first bit looks right but may keep spawning forever as i dont see you removing Path

the SpawnCompanions part tho, looks like it will loop over all peds that have needsCompanion and attach them all to the same entity/agent

[gusty comet]

@ocean tundra

    private NavMeshAgent GetPedModel()
    {
        return GameObject.CreatePrimitive(PrimitiveType.Cube).AddComponent<NavMeshAgent>();
    }

its not the same agent

[ocean tundra]

so you should have a cube at every path point??

[gusty comet]

That is what I am attempting

but its just putting them all at every point in index 0 of the buffer

[ocean tundra]

so its actually spawning them all?

and youve confirmed the entitys in the entity inspector are correct?

[gusty comet]

They have the right ocmponents and stuff

but you can't see the values

or im just dumb

how do I see the values of entities components in entity debugger

[ocean tundra]

change the foreach to a for and use the for index not node.index

ummm they just show...

show your node component code

[gusty comet]

public struct Node : IBufferElementData
{
    public int index;
    public float3 position;
}

[ocean tundra]

yea thats fine

you see this?
https://forum.unity.com/attachments/insp1-png.781201/

your node should look like child in that pic

after you have selected your entity

[gusty comet]

ah I had the inspector hidden

ok one sec gotta restart unity

the values are correct

the cubes are spawning at this position though

Vector3(58.3333359,0.691762924,31.5)

Vector3(58.3333359,0.691762924,28.3)

current code

 private void SpawnPeds()
    {
        if (pedCount >= 40)
            return;
        var archeType = pedArchetype;
        
        var commandBuffer = barrier.CreateCommandBuffer().AsParallelWriter();

        var peds = pedCount;
        Entities.ForEach((Entity entity, int entityInQueryIndex, DynamicBuffer < Node > buffer, ref Path path) =>
        {
            
            var rand = Unity.Mathematics.Random.CreateFromIndex((uint)entityInQueryIndex);

            for (int i = 0; i < buffer.Length; i++)
            {
                var node = buffer[i];
                int next = (i >= buffer.Length - 1) ? 0 : node.index + 1;
                int prev = (i >= 1) ? node.index - 1 : 0;
                var pos = math.lerp(node.position, buffer[next].position, rand.NextFloat(0, 1));
                Debug.Log(pos.ToString());
                var e = commandBuffer.CreateEntity(entityInQueryIndex);
                commandBuffer.AddComponent(entityInQueryIndex, e, new Coord() { position = pos });
                commandBuffer.AddComponent(entityInQueryIndex, e, new Ped() { nodeIndex = i, needsNewDestination = 1 });
                commandBuffer.AddComponent(entityInQueryIndex, e, new NeedsCompanion());

            }
        }).ScheduleParallel();

    }


    private void SpawnCompanions()
    {

        Entities.WithStructuralChanges().WithAll<NeedsCompanion, Ped>().ForEach((Entity entity, int entityInQueryIndex, ref Coord coord) =>
         {
             var agent = GetPedModel();
             agent.transform.position = coord.position;
           
             EntityManager.RemoveComponent<NeedsCompanion>(entity);
             EntityManager.AddComponentObject(entity,agent);
             pedCount++;
         }).WithoutBurst().Run();
    }

[ocean tundra]

change node.index to i

you can probs delete it

also you dont use prev

[gusty comet]

im going to

[zenith wyvern]

Maybe I'm blind but it doesn't actually look like you're using that rand

[gusty comet]

just not yet

@zenith wyvern ```
var pos = math.lerp(node.position, buffer[next].position, rand.NextFloat(0, 1));

[ocean tundra]

ok what about the enitities the command buffer is spawning

in the enitiy inspector

as that code looks ok

[gusty comet]

They are good

the cubes are spawning at this position though
Vector3(58.3333359,0.691762924,31.5)
Vector3(58.3333359,0.691762924,28.3)

and

i removed node.index

replaced it with i

[ocean tundra]

in SpawnCompanions print out coord position

and do you have any other systems messing with coord?

[gusty comet]

no

[opaque escarp]

anyone know if DOTS Animation is supposed to allow for retargeting animations in any capacity?

I tried manually constructing a rig using the rig authoring, but it doesn't seem to like the different bone positions

[gusty comet]

@ocean tundra The position its printing in SpawnCompanions is fine.

[ocean tundra]

@gusty comet wtf

what about another system that runs AFTER SpawnCompanions that messes with the component object

[gusty comet]

nope

this has to be a race condition no?

[ocean tundra]

how?? nothings racing

[gusty comet]

idk

hows it putting the cube at a random position

nothing moving it

The place its spawning isn't even anywhere near any of the nodes on the path either

[ocean tundra]

step 1 frame 1 you schedule spawn peds... frame 1 then ends frame 2 your scehding spawn peds again, and then SpawnCompanions would run

whats stopping spawnPeds from running again and again?

that should be spawning millions of entities

[gusty comet]

        if (pedCount >= 40)
            return;

its only spawning 40

That check is in spawnpeds job

then i increase ped count each time it spawns a cube in spawncompanion

[ocean tundra]

even if it spawns crazy numbers it should be ok

[gusty comet]

hmm

if i pause the editor

and then press play

and go through frame by frame

they spawn at the correct position

then teleport randomly later

[ocean tundra]

😛

you must have anouther system

[gusty comet]

i don't 😦

I had one

but i deleted it

i wonder if

its still accessing it somehow

let me

delete solution

let unity recreate it

[ocean tundra]

check the systems window

[gusty comet]

ok

unity thinks the system is still there

but its not doing anything

[ocean tundra]

😛

find that code and delete it

must still be there somewhere

[gusty comet]

I deleted that code like 2 hours ago xd

let me delete solution and relaunch unity

[ocean tundra]

check the files too

[gusty comet]

Ah yup

it was there in windows explorer

but not in the project window

[ocean tundra]

😛

yay hopfully that solves it

@ me if it dosnt

i have to leave shortly

[gusty comet]

Yeah its still doing the same thing @ocean tundra

that didn't fix it

[gusty comet]

Ok i fixed it

Not sure how I fixed it

I changed like 4 things and now its working xd

[zenith wyvern]

Are you using subscenes by chance?

[gusty comet]

I am not

can each entity only have one buffer?

or can you create multiple buffers?

of different types

[zenith wyvern]

One per type, you can have multiple types

[warped coral]

how do i declare referenced assets? it says i can't do it in uh.. IConvertGameObjectToEntity and the IDeclareReferencedPrefabs is for gameobjects only. I wanna declare scriptable objects as referenced assets if possible

nvm i think i have to make a system for it

[zenith wyvern]

conversionSystem.DeclareAssetDependency

[gusty comet]

Its actually a joke how hard it is to get reliable "random" numbers using dots.

I've never had an issue with rng producing the same numbers before using it.

If you only have one entity of a certain type CreateFromIndex isn't usable, and

idk how you'd go about getting a seed for Unity.Mathematics.Random in a job

i would use time but its going to be so close every loop that it wont make a diff

[zenith wyvern]

This is basically the solution I use when I need reliable RNG in jobs https://reeseschultz.com/random-number-generation-with-unity-dots/

Using extensions methods can make it pretty clean

Gives you a single seed point and you always have good distribution since you're reusing the same RNG

[gusty comet]

haha thats crazy

that you have to do it that way

[zenith wyvern]

I mean RNG is just a struct. So you could just attach it to a singleton entity in a component if you wanted to

I guess you would still have to get it on the main thread and pass it in though so I guess that wouldn't make it any more convenient than what he's already doing in that article

[gusty comet]

@zenith wyvern I think I am just going to pass the applications mem usage as the seed for unity.mathematics.random

[zenith wyvern]

You mean inside the foreach?

No matter what you do if you're not re-using the same rng you're just not going to see good distribution, afaik

But I'm no expert on the subject

[ocean tundra]

Whats a OrderVersionFilter ? it exists on Entity Query SetOrderVersionFilter ?

Filters out entities in chunks for which no structural changes have occurred.

[zenith wyvern]

Sounds like ChangeFilter but explicitly for structural changes

[ocean tundra]

so change filter will fire when a component is added or the id has changed??

[zenith wyvern]

Whenever a component is accessed as read/write. Including when it's created

[ocean tundra]

sweet

[zenith wyvern]

On a per-chunk level, mind you

[gusty comet]

Hmm whats an example use case of that lol

[ocean tundra]

how come Dependancy still isnt public on System?

am i making a mistake by making it public and using it?

[zenith wyvern]

It's used by the framework to handle dependencies between systems. The physics systems expose it to be able to force other systems to run before or after them

I think it should be fine as long as you don't try to write over it between updates

[ocean tundra]

Yea i have a system that builds up a nice unique list of ids that i need to access, to make that safe i need the write job dependancy

no ill never write to it

only use it to combine dependancies in another system

[zenith wyvern]

My roguelike is turn based, so if the game is waiting for player input there's no reason for any systems to be running. I use change filters for that purpose, so my render system doesn't update until something in the game changes

In my case rendering a new game state involves rebuilding a mesh so there's a good reason to minimize it as much as possible

[gusty comet]

@zenith wyvern even the article you linkeds way is still always producing 0

Entities.WithNativeDisableParallelForRestriction(randomArray).ForEach((Entity entity, int entityInQueryIndex, int nativeThreadIndex,DynamicBuffer < Node > buffer, ref Path path) =>
        {
            
           



                int val = randomArray[nativeThreadIndex].NextInt(0,1);
                Debug.Log(val.ToString());
}

I feel like the probleem is

I only have 1 path entity spawned

so nativethreadindex

is the same always

[zenith wyvern]

It's not inclusive

If you want 0-1 you need to put 0-2 in the range

And don't forget to assign back to the array

[gusty comet]

Still just produces 0

[zenith wyvern]

Remember it's a struct so you need to manually write it back to the array after you use it

[ocean tundra]

var rnd = randomArray[nativeThreadIndex]
//use rnd
randomArray[nativeThreadIndex] = rnd

[gusty comet]

ah

i see

sec

That worked

awesome!

thank you!

@zenith wyvern is NextFloat inclusive?

[zenith wyvern]

Not sure, I think so. It would be weird if it wasn't given how floats work

[gusty comet]

Lmao its odd to me that NextInt isn't inclusive but nextfloat is

yep

it is inclusive

[zenith wyvern]

UnityEngine.Random.Range is the same way

The way I always think of it is that if you pass in the length of an array as the second number you won't get an out of range exception

[gusty comet]

lmao I been passing length of array - 1

rip me

time to fix a ton of bugs

in a ton of diff projects

[zenith wyvern]

Hahah

[gusty comet]

I never noticed that the second value is exclusive in unityengine.random.range

[zenith wyvern]

Yeah I was confused by it a lot too for a while. The array thing always helps me remember

And for floats, it just doesn't make sense for it to be exclusive. What's "-1" for a float? Could be anything

[gusty comet]

So do I need to regenerate randomArray every now and then or will it be fine?

[zenith wyvern]

You should be fine to use it for the whole game

[gusty comet]

Alright also

do I need to do randomArray[nativeThreadIndex] = rnd

every time i use it

or just once after I use it 3 times

[zenith wyvern]

You need to do it before it leaves scope

[gusty comet]

ok

so

Use
Use
Use
Set

thats fine?

assuming all of that is in same scope

[zenith wyvern]

As long as you're not using it directly from the array yeah. Assign it to a local variable first like Roy showed, then assign that back to the array at the end

[gusty comet]

alright awesome

You guys are both legends

Also that blogged you linked

is a goldmine

I was looking at it earlier for how to spawn entities

[zenith wyvern]

Yeah he knows what he's doing for sure

[gusty comet]

so

are operations like buffer.toNativeArray slow?

[zenith wyvern]

ToNativeArray is a copy, so slower than the alternative AsNativeArray, which just gives "less safe" access to the underlying data

[gusty comet]

Would it be a bad idea to take do something like

var arr = Array.Sort(buffer.AsNativeArray());
then read the data from the array?

or even

arr = Array.sor....
buffer = buffer.FromArray(arr);

[zenith wyvern]

Well Array.Sort is for managed arrays. There are native array extension functions for sorting that should work

Not sure though

[gusty comet]

Array.Sort works fine on native arrays

[zenith wyvern]

You would be sorting the actual buffer though so as long as that doesn't mess you up anywhere else I tihnk it's fine

[gusty comet]

just wondering if it would break something internally

[zenith wyvern]

I don't think so. You can write to the arrays you get from AsNativeArray without any issues, so I can't imagine a sort would do anything harmful

[gusty comet]

Thats fucking awesome.

[ocean tundra]

yea i used to sort dynamic buffers by using as native array

you can even limit the sort to only run on X items

[gusty comet]

how?

this is how i am sorting now

public struct DistanceComparer : IComparer<Node>
{
    float3 value;
    public DistanceComparer(float3 distanceToTarget)
    {
        value = distanceToTarget;
    }
    public int Compare(Node a, Node b)
    {
        var targetPosition = value;
        return math.distance(a.position,targetPosition).CompareTo(math.distance(b.position, targetPosition));
    }
}


var pos = Camera.main.transform.position;
        Entities.WithAll<Path>().ForEach((Entity entity, int entityInQueryIndex, int nativeThreadIndex, DynamicBuffer<Node> buffer) =>
        {
            buffer.AsNativeArray().Sort(new DistanceComparer(pos));
        }).ScheduleParallel();

[zenith wyvern]

Looks fine to me. Assuming you're passing that buffer as Ref

[ocean tundra]

acutally im not sure how to only sort X items

was pretty sure it existed

[zenith wyvern]

NativeSlice maybe?

[ocean tundra]

yea thats what i was just thinking

[zenith wyvern]

I don't think you can use that in jobs though

[ocean tundra]

i think i must have sliced the bit i wanted and sorted that

[zenith wyvern]

Unless I'm remembering wrong

[ocean tundra]

yea i have no idea either

was sure there was a easy way

[ocean tundra]

When you use Job.WithCode..... and Schedule it wont parallel it right?

like only 1 job with that code runs?

[zenith wyvern]

Yeah it runs on one job on a single thread

[gusty comet]

Why is this job causing InvalidOperationException: The BufferTypeHandle<Node> has been declared as [WriteOnly] in the job, but you are reading from it.

    private void SortPeds()
    {
        var pos = Camera.main.transform.position;
        Entities.WithAll<Path>().ForEach((Entity entity, int entityInQueryIndex, int nativeThreadIndex, ref DynamicBuffer<Node> buffer) =>
        {
            var arr = buffer.AsNativeArray();
            arr.Sort(new DistanceComparer(pos));
            buffer.CopyFrom(arr);
        }).ScheduleParallel();
    }

[zenith wyvern]

I'm not sure but buffer.CopyFrom(arr); Doesn't make sense. arr is the buffer

They both point to the same data

[gusty comet]

it copies arr into buffer

[zenith wyvern]

it copies buffer into buffer

That's essentially what you just said

[gusty comet]

yes but don't I have to since buffer is a struct?

[zenith wyvern]

No, if you were reading an element out of the array at some index, and changing that element, then you would have to write it back to that same index. But you're changing the array itself

[gusty comet]

Ok fixed

lets see if it stops the exception

it did

thanks!

AsNativeArray doesn't take count into consideration and my loop was reading default(Node)

just something to note in case you ever run into some weird bug with it

[ocean tundra]

Native Stream, Does every AsWriter... BeginForEachIndex also need a AsReader BeginForEachIndex?
I'm getting : BeginForEachIndex can only be called once for the same index (0). errors

[zenith wyvern]

Yeah, I think essentially it's saying that when you read with BeginForEach then the contents for that index are annihilated as soon as you end reading

That's my guess anyways

[gusty comet]

Any good ideas on how to even disperse entities in an area around a vector?

right now I am just sorting an array of points then looping through it until I spawn the max amount

this is causing the entities to have less than desired spawn points

[ocean tundra]

ok cool

i think

i dont have a read yet

still wip

[zenith wyvern]

When that happened to me I ran a second "UnstickFromWalls" system that runs after spawning. It had better awareness of the map so could make better decisions on how to place entities

[ocean tundra]

so that would explain the error, im not reading so never resetting that index

[gusty comet]

Well its not that they are sticking to walls, but since its random sometimes the area to my left will have tons and it will be a ghost town where the cameras looking

[zenith wyvern]

If you're using random correctly it should be evenly distributed across an entire area

At least from what I've seen

[gusty comet]

well its random

sometimes that is true

sometiems rng doesn't work out

and more 3's than 2's generate

and then you have more entities in one area

[half jay]

Can i write system like this With burst and structural changes ?

  Entities
  .WithStructuralChanges()
  .WithBurst()
  .ForEach((Entity e, in RayHitComponent hit,in CalculateHitComponentSingleton comp, in SelectBlockInputComponent selectedBlock) =>
   {
       var requestEntity = EntityManager.CreateEntity();
       EntityManager.AddComponentData(requestEntity, new BlockPipelineTag());
       EntityManager.AddComponentData(requestEntity, new GhostTag{IsGhost = true});
       EntityManager.AddComponentData(requestEntity,new AddObjectPlanComponent{Id = selectedBlock.BlockId,Matrix = comp.CurrentLocalMatrixInGrid});//TODO should set from SelectBlock component
       EntityManager.AddComponentData(e, new SelectedObjectComponent{Id =  selectedBlock.BlockId});                    
       EntityManager.RemoveComponent<SelectBlockInputComponent>(e);

       Debug.Log("SelectBlockUserActionSystem");
   })
   .Run();

Im getting no error or something but want make sure that this is legal

[gusty comet]

I was under the impression you can't use burst on the main thread

but i could be wrong

[zenith wyvern]

You can use burst on the main thread, but WithBurst and WithStructuralChanges are mutually exclusive

[half jay]

i modify example. to be clear how my system look like

[half jay]

it was clear if unity throw some exception or warning if using WithBurst and WithStructuralChanges

[zenith wyvern]

If it works then it means that it's just silently disabling burst. You can't use the entity manager in bursted or non-main-thread jobs

You should be able to see for yourself in the menu ->Dots->Dots Compiler->Open Inspector

[ocean tundra]

dam i wish we could attach native containers to entities

[zenith wyvern]

What's wrong with dynamic buffers

[ocean tundra]

I neeed native streams

[zenith wyvern]

Oh like non array containers

Yeah it would be awesome

[ocean tundra]

yea basicly just want to produce/consume messages

[half jay]

so bursted will be marked with attribute [BurstCompile] ?

[zenith wyvern]

Yes

[gusty comet]

would this be too much work for a component system?

-Update
--Calculate viewport on main thread;
--list of used spawnpoint indexes
--Entities.Foreach through all possible spawn points (there are a lot of these) parralel
--- if spawn point is on screen spawn entity
--- add index of spawnpoint to spawnpoint indexes list
-- if number of spawned entities is less than max entities
---Entities.Foreach through all possible spawn points (there are a lot of these) parralel
---- loop through entiteis that have already been sorted by distance and spawn them if the spawn point has not already been used

[zenith wyvern]

I'm not sure about the exact setup but you should minimize job scheduling as much as possible

It sounds like a lot of job scheduling in one frame

Unless I'm misreading

[gusty comet]

Two jobs

in one frame

[zenith wyvern]

Oh okay, I thought you were scheduling in a loop

Then yeah, it seems fine to me. Profile it though, don't make any assumptions

Sometimes the dumbest things you could never think of turn out to be bottlenecks

[gusty comet]

just didnt' want to waste time writing code if it was absolutely too much work for a single system

[zenith wyvern]

Burst can generally tear through thousands of entities in a fraction of a millisecond, especially in parallel jobs

Depending on the work being done of course

[gusty comet]

woah

navmesh obstacles are really expensive

putting a navmeshobstacle on each agent dropped my framerate by half xd

i might stop trying to combine ecs and built in navmesh and just make it work with navmeshquery

[gusty comet]

How do you get a query in a parralel job?

[pulsar jay]

Is there a HasSingleton equivalent for queries? There is GetSingleton like with SystemBase but no HasSingleton

[rancid geode]

CalculateEntityCount != 0 I think

[amber flicker]

I haven't looked at the source but I think !IsEmpty might be be better?

[rancid geode]

yeah, need to check out, probably it is

[pulsar jay]

I guess thats IsEmptyIgnoreFilter now

[amber flicker]

either with 0.17 at least

[pulsar jay]

good to know. should probably update. I am still on 0.14

[stiff skiff]

Good time to upgrade 😄

[warped coral]

im converting two rooms from scriptable objects to entities, and when i look in the entity debugger, the entity field references seems off. Idk why. the entities are created fine but their Entity field references are wrong

am i somehow using createadditionalentity wrong

weird i keep doublechecking and it seems right... i also stopped it from creating entities for rooms at coordinates it's already converted... so idk

hmm yeah something weird is going on

when i reference the assets everything is fine.. only when i use createadditionalentity do things get weird

createadditionalentity is returning the primary entity... weird

[gusty comet]

Is it not possible to create a new entity query in Entity.Foreach().ScheduleParralel()

I need to get some other entities in a system already querying different ones

[safe lintel]

create your queries in OnCreate, afaik its something you dont want to be doing constantly due to the performance of it

[gusty comet]

Then it tells me I can't access unsafe pointers in entities.foreach

InvalidOperationException: SpawnPeds_LambdaJob0.JobData.q.__impl uses unsafe Pointers which is not allowed. Unsafe Pointers can lead to crashes and no safety against race conditions can be provided.

[ocean tundra]

@gusty comet are you saving the query into a local var in OnUpdate?

[gusty comet]

yes I am capturing

[safe lintel]

i dont think you can use a query directly in a job outside of when you are scheduling it

not really sure what youre trying to do though

[gusty comet]

I am looping through some entities

with entities.foreach

and I need to loop through a group of different ones

well not even loop through

[safe lintel]

prior to the job you can get a copy of the entities or component data with something like query.ToComponentDataArray(Allocator.whatever) || query.ToEntityArray

[gusty comet]

I need to figure out how many of the other entities exist

[safe lintel]

and then use the resulting nativearrays inside your jobs

[gusty comet]

alright thanks

[celest wraith]

relating to that: in Systembase you need to do the queries and put them in NativeArrays before Entities.ForEach correct? What if some query results may need to be had only in certain situations and others in other situation in the same ForEach? Is it possible to have some queries get results only if those certain conditions meet or do the yneed to be queried regardless if they are used or not?

[gusty comet]

Thats what I was trying to figure out

Don't think you can do it i n entities.foreach

The issue I am having now is

[celest wraith]

Ahhhh didn't get that from your writing sorry 😄

[gusty comet]

The query doesn't update till the next update cycle

if its changed at all

[celest wraith]

Woke up from a nap just right now and thought I'd chime in

[gusty comet]

So if you're querying to see how many things are spawned then spawn x amount if its less than a desired value

you wind up with extras

[ocean tundra]

you need to plan in 'frame' delays

[celest wraith]

Is the difference neglible of having 6 (or more) queries and nativearrays compared to like only 2 that are needed?

[gusty comet]

I thinnk as long as you create the queries at init and not runtime it would be fine

idk tho

[ocean tundra]

as the update cycle works like this:
OnUpdate, - all code runs, but any Jobs or ForEachs DONT run then (unless they are .run)
Then any Jobs/Foreachs run

[celest wraith]

For example I have a query for my characters hand position, but I only need it if I am going to spawn an item there. So if the system doesn't need to spawn there it still queries it but doesn't need it.

[gusty comet]

I think you're fine just creating the query at startup and not using it till its needed

could be wrong

[celest wraith]

I think so too so it shall stay that way. If it works, don't touch it 😄

Anyone has any experience from spawning entities from xml or json?

[ocean tundra]

@celest wraith kinda, I was loading up data json files

not really spawning entities tho, i would create a prefab of the data type (eg unit, building) then load in all the simple values

dynamic stuff was much harder, as you have to add components with its actual type, cant really use refelection or anything fancy to create the components

[celest wraith]

Can you even create a new component from a name (string) and give it value? For example in pseudocode:
String compName = *string from json*
Var xComponent = *new Component from name*

[ocean tundra]

Honestly no

was a pain

the trick was to reverse that adding of compoents

like this...

Type typeToAdd = FIND TYPE FROM JSON
typeToAdd.FIND STATIC METHOD
STATIC METHOD = (JSONDATA data, ENTITYMANAGER em, ENTITY e)
inside the static method you do entity manager add your type and set values

its not pure dynamic but its closeish

so you never dynamicly create Components

[gusty comet]

Can't you just use reflection?

[ocean tundra]

yea but not to directly create a IComponent

[gusty comet]

Activator.CreateInstance ?

[ocean tundra]

you can but the issue is with entity manager

what do you store the result from CreateInstance as?

[gusty comet]

it has a generic type argument

so if you have a Spawn component

[ocean tundra]

a object would make it a reference type and the entitymanager add component wont accept that

generics are a compile time thing, not runtime/refelction

[gusty comet]

CreateInstace<Spawn>

[ocean tundra]

but spawn is dynamic

The issue here is when you are trying to add components completly dynamicly, eg from a user list of string type names

[gusty comet]

oh

[ocean tundra]

if you have a list of X types that you allow you can just make a switch

[gusty comet]

you could make a class

string key
IComponentData value

but

[ocean tundra]

yup, but thats again just a nicer switch

[gusty comet]

then it wouldn't be dynamic to the user

[ocean tundra]

well way better then a switch

but same core issue, not pure dynamic

my goal was to allow the users to add new IComponents, eg via dynamic c# code compiling

[gusty comet]

That should be possible though no?

[ocean tundra]

yea the way i said earlier

you need a static method on the componet, that takes a entity manager, and the user has to code em.AddComponent<TheirType>()

[gusty comet]

this is where lua would come in handy

[ocean tundra]

maybe

but i think the lua bridge would be way too expensive

performance wise

[gusty comet]

Yeah definately, I tried to use a bridge to the pawn language in c# and it was unusable

I had to create the abstract machine in a c++ app then use a memory map file to perform ipc to make it at all usable

[ocean tundra]

😛

that sounds crazy

[gusty comet]

I wound up abandoning that and just having the host app in c++ host a netcore dll

so would something like a behaviortree work good with ecs?

I've made thhem before but they rely so heavy on things we can't use in ecs like delegates and inheritance i don't see how it would work

[ocean tundra]

OOo thats tough

pure ecs i would say no

but you should probably hybrid it somehow

have your tree object graph

that you construct and cache

then run like X number per frame that needs updating

not every one

[gusty comet]

Might just make it so

[ocean tundra]

my initail attempt at ai was rough

soooo many components

to indicate state

[gusty comet]

yep

[ocean tundra]

however you should look at the new AI planner

again its very alpha

but its all DOTs under the hood

[gusty comet]

awesome

this will make life much easier

[ocean tundra]

😛

one day

i think its current state will be a pain to use

looks awesome tho

[gusty comet]

Have you tried out the animation package yet btw?

[ocean tundra]

not recently

i tryed it liek 6 months ago

couldnt get it going then

[gusty comet]

I might give it a try

it seems super early still though

[ocean tundra]

yea

it looks better now

and theres a specific sub fourm for it

but i usualy just leave my units in a T pose

😛

[gusty comet]

is it a bad idea to have methods in your components?

[slim nebula]

I wouldn't put too much logic into functions on your components, but if it's just like converting the data a bit for use, I think it belongs on the component.

anyone want to venture a guess to why my breakpoint isn't being hit?

(top screenshot is in "CharacterControllerInitAndCleanupSystem")

if I make a breakpoint on the "Entities" line it hits it. just the query never returns anything. any ideas?

(bottom screenshot is the entire entity, there's nothing else on it)

@zenith wyvern sorry to bug you again but ur so smart and helpful 😄

[north bay]

I assume you have burst disabled when trying to debug.
Entities.ForEach is known to not trigger breakpoints. In my experience it seems rather random if breakpoints inside them actually trigger

[slim nebula]

so I've assumed it's okay to have multiple entity queries in the same system. is that okay? let me check burst....

ok turned off burst... it runs once but doesn't actually remove the component....

the entity is still there... what the heccc

is there like a special way to remove system components?

or does remove component not work if the entity is in the destruction process or something?

[north bay]

Ehhh

It should work

Your ForEach looks correct to me

[slim nebula]

yeah I dunno. it just leaves the entities like this wtf

            Entities
                .WithNone<CharacterControllerComponentData>()
                .ForEach((Entity e, ref CharacterControllerCollider collider) =>
                {
                    collider.Collider.Dispose();
                    for (int i = 0; i < 10000; ++i)
                    {
                        ecb.RemoveComponent<CharacterControllerCollider>(e);
                    }
                }).Run();``` i got nuthin

it wont work

[deft stump]

@slim nebula are you sure the system is able to find your entity?

[slim nebula]

it does run once. I guess I should check the entity index/version...

wait no these are different entities wtf

[light mason]

Anyone have examples in tiny how to click and spawn game object. I have no idea where to start

[slim nebula]

I think I have some direction now. thanks guys

@light mason right click in project folder, create > input actions. Add things and generate. Create a variable of the generated type on a system. reference said variable in OnUpdate: if (InputSystem.inputMaster.Player.Use.ReadValue<float>() > 0) for example, then create an entity with EntityManager

I dunno if you need any special packages for it tho

[warped coral]

how to check if entity has buffer from entitymanager?

[light mason]

@slim nebula ok thanks you let me try it out

[slim nebula]

@warped coral I'm pretty sure you just use HasComponent, but you can test it to be 100% sure

[warped coral]

oh ok. i tried using hascomponentdata and didnt realize that only accepted icomponentdata

[light mason]

Do I need the new input system ?

[slim nebula]

uhh yeah I think what I"m using is the new input system. I dunno how to use the old one

I think in the options you need to have both enabled

I think there's still some backend unity junk that doesn't support the new stuff just yet

i forget what tho

[light mason]

Ok I will shoot from the hip and see what happens

[karmic basin]

cant have both input system enabled. Have to chose one

[warped coral]

will unity be the best engine cuz of dots

[karmic basin]

there's no absolute best engine. More like one or two that better suits your needs, and that can change with each new project.

[zenith wyvern]

I don't think you can dispose inside burst

[deft stump]

not really

[slim nebula]

ohhh

so maybe it's throwing some exception?

[zenith wyvern]

Unity will absorb all other engines and become the Ur Engine

[slim nebula]

err well I disabled burst in the menu too

[zenith wyvern]

Hail the giga engine, well all say

[deft stump]

so unity's plan was world domination all along

[zenith wyvern]

Yeah it will probably break of you enable burst I would think

[slim nebula]

ok

thanks for the tip

[light mason]

Ok so tiny has Tiny.Input?

Whats the catch here

Is seem to just work

Wait ... does ECS have a pure dots input too?

[zenith wyvern]

No

Also Tiny input is kind of terrible compared to the new input system. I love tiny - or did before i hit a bug that killed my project. But the input system is just the bare minimum they could do. Which is fine, it's still early

[light mason]

All I need is click to create distort and connect

[zenith wyvern]

Also I don't think it's really ECS at all is it? You're just calling into a system

[light mason]

I’m not sure for some reason to can’t find the system file

Never mind was in the wrong ide

Ok looks like it has all I need does all the basics

If I author entity in the editor how do I respawed that entity archetype. I want to build the library of different antitu and have a way to create many of a certain type in a system

I’m not really clear on the workflow here

[slim nebula]

you create a prefab, then you drag it onto the field in the editor for your authoring component

then you can reference that prefab in code and instantiate it with entitymanager

[light mason]

Do you know where I can see an example

[slim nebula]

i learned it from here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pk-C_h0WJZs

[light mason]

Ah thank you , man you guys deserve a beer or something

[slim nebula]

[deft stump]

I don't drink sooooo... apple juice is fine for me

[light mason]

In that code monkey video he used static field, I’m to so keen on that. Do I need library entity ?

[zenith wyvern]

I don't know about that video, but the samples give a very simple example of how to go from a prefab gameobject to a prefab entity https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/EntityComponentSystemSamples/tree/c13d4eb831d9794ac00d4f11f8209b50db7ef25b/ECSSamples/Assets/HelloCube/5. SpawnFromEntity

That example is basically how I do all my authoring

[light mason]

I guess what I’m struggling with is what’s the best way to store them for later using in a system

Like a library of trees to spawn

[zenith wyvern]

In my game I just store the entity prefabs on a component and attach it to my map

[light mason]

I see

Are u don’t that in a conversionSystem

[zenith wyvern]

https://github.com/sarkahn/dots-roguelike/blob/master/Assets/DotsRogue/Authoring/Map/MapAuthoring.cs#

[light mason]

Ah awesome thank you going to read through this

[rugged lark]

Obligatory "I'm new here", but you typically only have one EntityManager per World, right? Can you access/render from multiple worlds at the same time? The reason I ask is that I want to make my tiles entities, because I want to play with dynamic terrain systems. It seems very foreign to have my tile "entities" lumped in with my entity "entities". I assume that is the standard solution, and then just handling it with components. I just don't expect there to be many or any overlapping systems between what will be run against the entity entities and the tile entities. Would it be beneficial or detrimental to create a second World, and a second EntityManager, to handle my tiles? Or am I an insane person.

[zenith wyvern]

I'm not sure what the benefit of having a separate world is, it seems like it would make it hard to read your terrain data from your normal world

[rugged lark]

I assumed I was overthinking it.

[zenith wyvern]

AFAIK worlds are generally meant to be completely self contained, typically the only interaction between them is to copy entities over from one to another

So they're good for staging entities and stuff. And netcode uses them to separate client and server logic

[rugged lark]

Thanks. The only reason I asked was because I had read something alluding to the benefit of multiple worlds in cases of rendering and netcode

But I'm inventing problems I don't need to solve so I'll just go do the obvious thing.

[zenith wyvern]

Using a separate world for rendering is interesting, I wouldn't know how to do it personally

[rugged lark]

A World owns both an EntityManager and a set of Systems. You can create as many World objects as you like. Commonly you can create a simulation World and a rendering or presentation World. - https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.16/manual/world.html

[zenith wyvern]

Yeah but in order to render in the rendering world wouldn't you just have to copy over all your data from the sim world and re-interpret it for rendering?

[rugged lark]

You can see why I'm asking questions in here.

[zenith wyvern]

I can think of ways to do it but it's complicated (from what I know of communcating between worlds which isn't much) and I'm not sure what the gain is

[rugged lark]

Well right now it was a shiny engineering question to distract me from actually writing substantial code. And I need to start tinkering or I'm never going to learn anything.

[hollow sorrel]

@rugged lark yea you can
one benefit of using seperate world is that it has its own sync points so they don't have to wait on eachother
and if you're doing things like deterministic simulation for rollback you pretty much need seperate worlds
but other than that, most things you can do with seperate you can also do in a single world e.g. you can still use seperate 'logic' and 'render' entities in 1 world and things are a lot simpler

[zenith wyvern]

I'm just starting to mess with physics. As I understand it if I want to do an overlap test I get the CollisionWorld on the main thread, pass it in, and the overlap gives me indices in to the array of all dynamic bodies. Can I affect that list of bodies - like restrict it to a certain query of entities?

Using HasComponent/GetComponent/SetComponent for every entity in my overlap seems like it would be horribly slow

[ocean tundra]

so from memory physics didnt really interact right with ECS

it still has Layers

and your meant to use layers (and layer masks) to define possible collisions and pass in target layers to the physics querys

it dosnt use any of your component types for any querys

kinda sucky i think, they could remove layers and use the compoent type index instead

[zenith wyvern]

Yeah my idea would be to grab an array of my components and pass it into the overlap job. But I'm not sure how to match up the indices from the overlap into my components array

Even using filters I would need to use HasComponent/SetComponent which I want to avoid

[ocean tundra]

umm again all from old memory, you get back indexs to the bodys array, bodies array has a entity field somewhere

that will get you to the main entity

where you can do your own extra collision stuff

for me i found a collision job callback thing, that would take all collisions and turn it into a dynamic buffer

and i could query that buffer (with change filter) instead to handle collisions

[zenith wyvern]

This isn't for collision handling, but rather to just grab a group of entities in an area around eachother and affect velocity. It's for flow fields. And yeah I know I can get the entities from the bodies array but again I'm trying to avoid the random access if possible

[ocean tundra]

hmm i see

i fell like no matter what with physics your gona have random access

goal would be to minimise it

maybe get a native array of entitys (overlaps) and batch add component to them?

that way your next system can quickly loop over them

depends on if you need to work with them all together or not

[zenith wyvern]

I need to affect every single entity based on the data of N entities in an area around it. I guess I could use some kind of spatial partition container and push into that from the overlap tests to be used in the next job

Would still need to do radius tests per bucket but it should reduce the work

If I understand it correctly anyways

Ehh but then I still have no way to translate from the dynamic bodies array to my components array

Unless I just make sure there are no bodies in existence that don't relate to my overlap test so the component array would match up to the bodies array, since they would use the same query...

Surely all the physics lords on here have some kind of solution

[ocean tundra]

oh i really dont think the bodies array order would match your entities order

physics is this weird black box that kinda breaks ecs

i would fully expect it to do something really annoying like reorder the bodies array

[zenith wyvern]

This is the query that builds the bodies array:

            DynamicEntityGroup = GetEntityQuery(new EntityQueryDesc
            {
                All = new ComponentType[]
                {
                    typeof(PhysicsVelocity),
                    typeof(Translation),
                    typeof(Rotation)
                },
                None = new ComponentType[]
                {
                    typeof(PhysicsExclude)
                }
            });

From the source

Annoying to make my own entities match up to it but not impossible

[ocean tundra]

yea i remember messing with that

[zenith wyvern]

But yeah I guess I have no guarantee they don't shuffle it around, now that you mention it

[ocean tundra]

i hacked it to not destory parents and childen

it was ruining the transforms and driving me crazy

also excludes you from updates

not a big deal but still

so bring it back to its core

you have a grid?? of entities and you need to do a overlap?

[zenith wyvern]

The entities themselves aren't on any kind of grid really. That's why I was hoping to use physics for this, to avoid having to build some kind of fancy spatial partitioning system myself

[ocean tundra]

yea makes sense

[zenith wyvern]

Plus they are already physics entities so I figured why not use it if it's there already

[ocean tundra]

maybe triggers?

actuually i think thats just looping back to the same problem

:/

[zenith wyvern]

I think I'll just try it out with HasComponent/SetComponent and see how slow it is. Maybe it will surprise me

[ocean tundra]

good luck

sorry i couldnt help more, havnt used physics in ages

[zenith wyvern]

No worries, I appreciate the advice

[zenith wyvern]

Oh, hahah, the hit data you get back from the overlap already includes position data, so that solves the problem right there

[amber flicker]

https://forum.unity.com/threads/entities-0-17-changelog.1020202/page-2#post-6774380 - doesn't sound like "enabled bits" are coming this year 😒

[stiff skiff]

If only we could have some sort of roadmap

With them moving the Graphics packages into Core due to so many things relying on it. I wonder if they will be moving DOTS/Entities into core

Or something similar to Tiny, make it it's own "engine" entirely

[amber flicker]

pretty sure that's always been the plan - to move dots/ecs into core... I guess burst & jobs may be quite soon.. entities.. 202...5? 🤔

[deft stump]

if it moves into core then would classic be replaced by dots?

[amber flicker]

classic? If you mean monobehaviours, they won't be going anywhere

[deft stump]

shame...

[stiff skiff]

How so? It's not like ECS is a solution for all problems, far from it

[ruby frigate]

Anyone get a feeling for what the vibe is regarding DOTS within the Unity org? AFAIK it's always been the CTO's baby, is he still as bullish as ever now that he's seen what it looks like in practice?

[north bay]

This is a relatively recent answer from him regarding the direction of dots https://forum.unity.com/threads/state-of-ecs-dots.1044877/#post-6761749

[ruby frigate]

thanks!

definitely still seems very bullish about DOTS

And CTO gets what CTO wants, so that's where things are gonna keep moving

Did the .NET Core DOTS server runtime end up happening? I'd love to use DOTS more extensively in my project, but my gameplay code has to run in the cloud for multiplayer reasons so I can't depend on the full runtime. My main gameplay assembly doesn't even link Unity .dll's at the moment.

Joachim mentioned ".NET Core based DOTS runtime later this year" in 2019 >_>

That's exactly what our game needs, and I can't find anything more recent about it.

[north bay]

Is that what you are looking for https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.tiny@0.23/manual/index.html ?

Somehow the more recent versions are missing the manual idk what's up with that

[ruby frigate]

Not really. Project Tiny still includes a bunch of Unity stuff. What I'm looking for is the ability to deploy DOTS by itself in a barebones .NET Core environment.

Looks like it should be used by the NetCode project as soon as it's ready. https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.netcode@0.6/manual/client-server-worlds.html
References to the "server build" option haven't changed since mid 2019, though, so they're probably still deploying as a headless Unity server, not the full .NET Core experience that's planned.

[pulsar jay]

How do you handle VFX with DOTS atm? I have several approaches but nothing feels quite right. I think it should be systems separate from the game logic. But should those systems create and destroy converted VFX objects? And how would they know when to spawn/destroy them without such a thing as an event?

[north bay]

I'm currently using a EffectCommandBuffer that supports playing sound or creating particle systems. Those command buffers are processed by a effect system which handles pooling, etc.

When creating a sound or particle system the command buffer returns me a handle to the effect which I can later use to check if the effect is still playing or to modify other stuff related to it.

This has worked pretty good for me for the past year

[pulsar jay]

That sounds pretty solid. Is the EffectCommandBuffer an EntityBuffer or a custom thing you built yourself?

[north bay]

That's a custom thing

The logic and chaining of commands looks like the EntityCommandBuffer

Just with custom actions/commands

[pulsar jay]

Thats a good starting point I guess. And how do you spawn the effects from the Effect system? Is it just a system running on Main Thread spawning GameObjects or do you convert the effects to DOTS somehow?

[north bay]

The system runs on the main thread and uses standard game objects

I also have a really old effect system that supports VFX graphs from the FPS sample...

[pulsar jay]

sounds reasonable

I just took a look at the EntityCommandBuffer. Sadly its a lot more complicated that I anticipated 😬

[karmic basin]

@zenith wyvern Out of curiosity, why not a collision query or overlap query ?

[zenith wyvern]

What do you mean? I am doing an overlap query

[karmic basin]

Oh ok, I misread then

yeah you literally wrote it, my bad

[zenith wyvern]

No worries

[karmic basin]

My brain stopped at the part where you were looking for a spatial query

[north bay]

@pulsar jay https://pastie.io/doksqh.cs this might be useful as a reference

[pulsar jay]

@north bay wow thats great. Thx 🙂

[zenith wyvern]

Can someone explain how the category names filters work? I assumed this would map to (Actor == 1 << 0) (Wall == 1 << 1)

But if I print out the filter for this collider I get Wall: BelongsTo: 3, CollidesWith 4294967295

Basically if I'm writing a filter in code for an overlap test I need to know how to match against the filter I set in the editor

I figured it out. I had normal monobehaviour collider components attached to my gameobjects alongside my physics shape/physics body scripts. Apparently the conversion system accounts for both of these and creates a compound collider

So I was getting the weird filter from conversion combining the built in gameobject layers and my own custom layers

Very annoying to figure out

[north bay]

I remember reading something on the physics forum about exactly that issue

[zenith wyvern]

Yeah I just posted in a forum thread I found about it, hopefully they will add a warning message or something in the inspector

[karmic basin]

If I remember well they specify it in the docs that it's a really bad idea to have both legacy & new physics stuff

but yeah a warning in editor would be nice

[light mason]

I’m a little stuck, I have a dynamic buffer on an entry, the buffer contains prefab entities

How do I Instanciate in entities for each

Should this not work

[pliant pike]

you can't use the EntityManager in a job, you have to use an EntityCommandBuffer

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.8/manual/entity_command_buffer.html

[light mason]

Sorry I had run()

But still no luck

Is says I have to use ECB in forEach ?

[pliant pike]

well if you want burst(which you do) then yeah

[light mason]

Ok let me do that , thank you

[pliant pike]

one thing you might want to check though is if instantiate inside a job is actually faster though

there's a slight possibility using a simple for loop may be faster(though maybe in later version now its not)

[light mason]

Really , ok thanks for the tip

O yea it’s faster 💪

[warped coral]

how to use multidimensional arrays with jobs? is there an alternative to flattening them?

[light mason]

I’m testing GetWorldInputPosition in tiny.input but it always returns 0

[deft stump]

from my exp, no. you have to flat them.

[light mason]

That method is a TranslateScreenToWorls(GetInputPosition())

[warped coral]

oh ok, thanks

[light mason]

The getInputPosition is returning my screen pod

Pod

Pos

[light mason]

Wait it just returns 0 in translateToWS .. what am I missing here

[robust scaffold]

You technically can. NativeArray<UnsafeList<UnsafeHashMap<int, UnsafeMultiHashMap<int, UnsafeArray<int>>>> works as unsafe arrays are implemented as a integer pointer. However, accessing this will wreck your cache access and murder performance. If you really need to and dont care about performance, you can use this. Well, not this deep of a hierarchy. I've used NativeArrays<UnsafeHashSet<int>> before in loading to get a true Multiple HashMap with unique keys (index) and values.

[celest wraith]

I was wondering referring to earlier to earlier discussion about spawning entities from xml, is it feasible to create a new world for creating entities from xml there and then instantiate them from there to the defaultworld? or is it better to have them straight in the default world?

[hollow sorrel]

@celest wraith yeah that's basically also what subscenes/conversion workflow does
that way you prevent sync points in one world affecting the other

[ionic sierra]

Any up to date guides on how to use DOTS?

[gusty comet]

Hello friendo's! This library might be able to help you out in your DOTS adventures.
https://github.com/DennisCorvers/UnsafeCollections

[karmic basin]

old docs + overrides by changelog 😛

and Unity samples

[ionic sierra]

I see. Is it relatively simple to make 1000 blocks with triggers, and they interact with the player etc. I know DOTS is preview, how does it work with materials and shaders?

[hollow sorrel]

@gusty comet what are the main differences with fholm's?

[gusty comet]

Extended API, fixes, performance, more collections

[hollow sorrel]

o nice

[gusty comet]

And the entire Native namespace models the collections after the .Net API

[hollow sorrel]

as in extensions for unity's native collections? or your own version of native collections

nvm just looked into it, they're wrappers for the unsafe versions right?

[gusty comet]

Yes, they are. Passable by value and strong typed

[hollow sorrel]

i'd try to avoid the naming conflict if you're targeting unity devs but other than that seems nice 👍

[gusty comet]

Cheers!

[ivory wagon]

Any advice in rendering sprites with DOTS?

[karmic basin]

Yes relatively simple if you're familiar with the oriented data pattern. You can access materials through ECS Components, and use ShaderGraph for URP and HDRP

You gonna lack other basic Unity API stuff though, do your homework and check every DOTS package you need before committing for a real project. If it's for trying or learning, then go ahead right now, it's already fun (though a lot of frustrations with each update)

[ionic sierra]

Cool. What about the 2d...project tiny...is that ready to go

I heard that was all ecs

[amber flicker]

has anyone had any luck using GetOrCreateUnmanagedSystem within a SystemBase ?

[coarse turtle]

Yeah

because SystemRef is a ref struct it can only exist on the stack

so you just keep fetching it in OnUpdate()

[amber flicker]

ooooh... cool.. lemme give that a go - that rings a bell you already mentioned that actually

[coarse turtle]

You can do like a ref getter but I haven't really looked into that haha 🤔

[amber flicker]

hmm.. what I actually want to do is get a reference to some NHMs. I want to reference those NHMs from both SystemBases and ISystemBases. I was thinking I could put the NHMs in an ISB then have an SB that OnCreate set it's NHMs to the ISB ones - then GetSystem<SB> or GetSystem<ISB> depending on whether I'm in managed or unmanged land. I have no idea if any of that makes sense

[coarse turtle]

I get what you mean, I had a similar situation in wanting to a store a spatial map. So what I had was a pointer to an UnsafeHashMap in the ISB and I just grab the pointer in other ISBs.

struct SomeSystemA : ISystemBase {
  public UnsafeHashMap<T, U>* Container;
  ...
}

struct SomeSystemB : ISystemBase {
  public void OnUpdate(ref SystemState state) {
    var refState = state.worldUnamanaged.GetorCreateUnmanagedSystem<V>();
    unsafe {
      UNsafeHashMap<T, U>* ptr = refState.Struct.Container; <- I just reference like so
    }
  }
}

dunno of any other ways, I just iterate 🤔

[amber flicker]

Awesome but any idea how I'd then be able to get e.g. Container from a SystemBase too?

[coarse turtle]

pretty sure you can do it the same way

i think it's World.Unmanaged.GetOrCreateUnmanagedSystem<T>()

[deft stump]

question:
is it possible to use Unity ECS for architectural reasons rather than what it's intended for?

[amber flicker]

yea I realise now I think the error I was getting may have been throwing me off .. going to experiment a little more, much appreciate the help

[deft stump]

i.e. keep using monobehaviour stuff and classic physics

but also have the ability to use SystemBase to loop through monobehaviour components.

I could use entitas tbh, but I'm too damn lazy

[coarse turtle]

i dont think there's a really easy way, I guess you can try to grab all the components in a IConvertGameObjectToEntity script and just do EntityManager.AddComponentObject(component)

[deft stump]

I mean you can use Hybrid

but would those entities be affected by classic physics?

[coarse turtle]

I think only with ConvertAndInject

defintely not Hybrid Companion Objects

[deft stump]

what's the downside of ConvertAndInject?

[coarse turtle]

you pay for the conversion cost on runtime generally, so it gets more expensive the more objects you need to convert during runtime iirc 🤔

[deft stump]

but after that? would it equal to having 2 of the same object though?

so meaning more stuff to process
(jesus i'm drunk more processing power to process, wtf was that?)

[coarse turtle]

I'm not sure what you mean by

would it equal to having 2 of the same object though?

[deft stump]

well afaik, convert and inject basically has 2 version of the same object. 1 as an entity and 1 as go

[coarse turtle]

Oh, does it? I haven't used convert and inject in a long time. I'm not too sure tbh

[north bay]

Huh as far as I know convert and inject only creates an entity that references the objects not create additional ones

[deft stump]

well I'll try it now

maybe it changed

[safe lintel]

imo you can use it just fine for looping through gameobjects, but you will always have that kind of duality that could make things a bit confusing if you need to dip into entities and back to gameobjects

[fluid kiln]

How is one meant to handle NPC movement in NetCode? When the movement is simulated on the server only it's not smooth on the client, and it can't really be ghost simulated because the client doesn't own it.

[north bay]

Are you talking about the interpolation not being smooth?

[fluid kiln]

Ish. LEt me get you a clip. I use destination type movement

[deft stump]

I don't think we'll use entity specific components.

So in theory using SysBase for running the Updates of normal go's should work just fine along with classic physics

[safe lintel]

the confusing bit will be you will obviously need to rely on monobehaviours for their event stuff like OnTriggerEnter OnCollision, possibly fixedupdate etc so you sorta cant make a clean break and just use systems for logic

[fluid kiln]

I don't know if it's visible on video

[north bay]

How are you handling the NPC movement? Are you just moving them on the server and the client only interpolates?

[deft stump]

Hrmmm so I guess I need to understand how Entitas works huh

[safe lintel]

no idea how entitas works, i found it confusing 😄

[deft stump]

yeah I find it confusing too

[fluid kiln]

Well so far the NPC uses the same System as the player to acutally move, in the GhostSimulationSystemGroup. So I assume the client only interpolates yeah

[north bay]

The current interpolation time calculation is known to be pretty broken see this thread https://forum.unity.com/threads/netcode-prediction-jitter.985701/#post-6762562

Are you seeing small jitters in the movement or is more extreme?

[fluid kiln]

Quite small. It's not much of a problem but I'd like it to be as smooth as client predicted movement

[north bay]

I made this for 0.5 which is a lot smoother https://pastie.io/uhnbtz.cs

[fluid kiln]

Is there an alternative atm? Like maybe I can simulate its movement both on the server and client

[north bay]

I sadly do not have a version for 0.6 yet since I'm not using it

[north bay]

That's not something I would do

[fluid kiln]

NPC movement in most games is just interpolation right?

You're saying it's NetCode's implementation that causes the jitter?

[north bay]

Yes I do

[fluid kiln]

Okay then we can probably expect that to be fixed in the future? So I won't bother with it too much for now. THanks!

[north bay]

We are fighting since October to get attention on that problem...

[fluid kiln]

Can I offer support somewhere? ^^

[north bay]

Probably not, they are aware of it but they are not giving it priority.

[fluid kiln]

Ha okay

[north bay]

The snippet I've sent works pretty good for us tho

[fluid kiln]

I don't know if I'm comfortable enough to use my own implementation of network time :/

[north bay]

Understandable

That's why I waited till December before touching it myself

[fluid kiln]

I'll wait a bit and if I become desperate I'll look into it 😉

[deft stump]

so I was right

Convert and Inject doesn't destroy the GO when the entity was made

fuck

[coarse turtle]

It looks like you're using hybrid renderer too?

So it's going to convert that injected gameobject to be subjected to a hybrid renderer

[light mason]

Is there a way in tiny to get a world position with mouse click. Is this something I need to do with tiny physics ?

[fluid kiln]

Is using non burst systems the best way to handle UI in DOTS?

[ocean tundra]

@light mason if its a pure 2d game you can do some maths ( i dont know it) to get world pos

same maths as in normal 2d unity i would guess

but if its 3d then you would likely need to use physics to do a ray cast

@fluid kiln yea thats what i would do, often i wouldnt even have a entities foreach
eg for my selected units (rts) i would have a entityquery and use toEntityArray and component array to extract all the data and then send it to UI

it wasnt very optmized tho, i could probably have used change filters and run that system at a lower update frequency

[fluid kiln]

Thanks I'll look into it!

[ocean tundra]

i wasnt sure what to do about world UI tho

[fluid kiln]

World UI? Wouldn't it remain GOs?

[ocean tundra]

the 'selected' outline was a entity i would spawn and attach to each selected entity

but things like heath

yea it would likely need to be a GO, but if you selected like 1000 units,,, it would probably die from all that GO creating/linking/updating

[deft stump]

this is gonna sound crazy

but would using hybrid component on the entity make it be affected by the classic physics?

[light mason]

Tiny camera question, so I don’t see a camera entity in the tiny3D example or a conversion, tryin got query it also doesn’t exists,

How is this working ?

[coarse turtle]

Idk much about Unity's DOTS Physics system. But if they have a ConversionSystem which reads BoxCollider and adds a component, or if they read RigidBody and adds whatever physics body components to the entity, then yes it would be subjected

if they solely rely on IConvertGameObjectToEntity and you don't attach those authoring components to the GameObject - then no.

[deft stump]

I don't plan on using DOTS physics though

[coarse turtle]

yeah if you dont have the package installed, then it wouldn't be subjected

[deft stump]

aaaaaaaaah.
hrmmmmmm...
so at best, I can probably make an authoring and hybrid the rigidbody...

weeeelp

so Hybrid RigidBody doesn't work out of the box

[coarse turtle]

yeah - Hybrid Companion Objects are entity driven

[deft stump]

other than Entitas

what other ECS architecture for Unity out there?

Unity ECS is literally in it's own world

and trying to mesh them is gonna give me lots of headaches

[coarse turtle]

https://github.com/Doraku/DefaultEcs
https://github.com/sebas77/Svelto.ECS

[deft stump]

nice which one do you recommend me first diving into?

[coarse turtle]

sebas is pretty active on the Svelto C# Framework Discord - so you can ask there for help.

I've honestly only found DefaultEcs today from a post by sebas in his discord server so I haven't looked at it. I've messed a bit with svelto, but haven't dived into it too deeply

so my bias is towards Svelto.ECS, but again can't say too much about it - he has some examples you can comb through via github