#archived-dots

1 messages · Page 229 of 1

devout prairie
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there's a discussion for another day hehe

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just doing a quick readup there i think with lambda expressions i've really got the impression that they are 'slow' from Linq stuff

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so i don't think was a fair statement

coarse turtle
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Yea it's all contextual. Functional influences show up in rust and are nicely compiled into efficient code

devout prairie
#

Yeah, there's def different benefits to the different paradigms.. even oop hehe

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for example the little framework someone posted here yesterday for getting 'events' from added and removed components

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dod purists would probably have a fit.. but it's essentially taking some of the benefits of oop and overlaying it onto a dod framework, which i think is quite cool

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Referring to this one, just noticed there's another post that may get confused

unknown.png
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if i include a component in a ForEach, i can't then use GetComponent with that component type to grab from another entity

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another annoying little anecdote

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or pass in i think any array with that same component type

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so if i do:

Entities.ForEach((in MyTag myTag, in LocalToWorld) =>
{
    var otherLTW = GetComponent<LocalToWorld>(someOtherEntity);
}```
it doesn't like it
coarse turtle
#

could also build a hashmap instead of using ComponentDataFromEntity<T>

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technically you can take it a step further as long as you don't do structural changes to your entities, grab the pointer and set it directly

devout prairie
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how do you get a pointer with this?

stiff skiff
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The lambdas are code generated out tho

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Oh.. I was scrolled way up somehow

karmic basin
#

@gusty coyote you can consider Collections, Jobs, and Burst safely to enhance your gameobjects/OOP game as they're getting quite stable now. Forget everything else DOTS related for the time being

safe lintel
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so what are the big benefits of source generators for dots? I keep hearing about this but am really out of the loop on what exactly it means vs what the current setup is

coarse turtle
#

They're inspectable and debuggable so you can just rely on native toolsets supported by the compiler versus hooking something in

coarse turtle
twin raven
#

What is the recommended way for to get prefab functionality? Are subscenes the way to go? For starters I load them from files, but eventually I will deliver the objects over internet.

twin raven
devout prairie
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my matrix/vector math is terrible anybody know how to convert a local matrix to world?

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i think this will convert objectMatrix to relative/local matrix right:
math.mul(math.inverse(parentMatrix), objectMatrix);

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wondering how to do the opposite, convert from a local/relative matrix to global

brisk trail
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Hey, I'm using Jobs System, and my job uses container which I supposed to dispose after the job is done.
But in order to do that, I have to wait for it to complete in main thread, which is blocked, which is bad for UX.

So, is there a way to dispose a container after job, but don't block main thread?

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Thanks in advance

shell berry
shell berry
# twin raven What is the recommended way for to get prefab functionality? Are subscenes the w...

We did it this way: https://coffeebraingames.wordpress.com/2020/07/19/entity-prefab-management/. It's not necessarily the recommended way. Just one of the ways.

COFFEE BRAIN GAMES
marnel.estrada
“Entity Prefab” Management

I’m currently making a 2D builder game prototype as a side project. This time, though, it’s made with pure ECS, or at least the majority of it. I want to make the same prototype we did …

shell berry
shell berry
gusty coyote
brisk trail
shell berry
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One way is collect that data that you need for your calculations in a NativeArray or NativeList of structs then use that in a job for the calculation.

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For example, NativeArray<ColliderData>

brisk trail
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Yes, it doesn't work, because collider doesn't provide me with such data.

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Like, array of points, for example.

shell berry
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You can copy those points into a native container.

brisk trail
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I can't extract them 🙂

shell berry
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What you mean you can't extract them? You're using them for calculations.

brisk trail
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Yes, collider is a class, it doesn't expose those points, for example.

shell berry
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Show the calculation code

brisk trail
# 
private bool CheckIsOccupied(IEnumerable<Collider> colliders, OctreeNode node) {
            return colliders.Any(c => IsPointWithinCollider(c, node));
        }
        
        private static bool IsPointWithinCollider(Collider collider, OctreeNode node) {
            var closestPoint = collider.ClosestPoint(node.Position);
            return node.Bounds.Contains(closestPoint);
        }
#

That's how I use collider

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Maybe I could somehow pass native array of ClosestPoint delegates?

shell berry
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Right. So first is why would you need DOTS here? Like are you expecting too many colliders? How many?

brisk trail
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I expect a lot of nodes, it's octree, depending on it's size it may be 100000 iterations

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Amount of colliders can vary too, scene dependent

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It's the bottleneck of everything right now 🙂

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And I don't want to do that in main thread.

shell berry
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Honestly, you wouldn't gain much here if you just translate CheckIsOccupied() into burstable code. The real gain then is the iteration of nodes.

#

Can you show code where CheckIsOccupied() is used.

brisk trail
# 
private void Subdivide(OctreeNode node, int depth) {
    float offset = node.Size * 0.25f;

    for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++) {
        var newPosition = node.Position;
        
        // Adjust position
        newPosition.y += (i & 4) == 4 ? offset : -offset;
        newPosition.x += (i & 2) == 2 ? offset : -offset;
        newPosition.z += (i & 1) == 1 ? offset : -offset;

        var childNode = new OctreeNode {
            Position = newPosition,
            Size = offset * 2,
            ParentIndex = node.Index,
            Index = nodes.Length,
            Bounds = new Bounds(newPosition, Vector3.one * (offset * 2)),
        };

        bool nodeIsOccupied = CheckIsOccupied(_colliders, childNode);
        
        childNode.IsOccupied = nodeIsOccupied && depth <= 0;
        childNode.IsLeaf = !nodeIsOccupied || depth <= 0 ;

        if (childNode.IsOccupied) {
            childNode.renderColor = new Color(1, 0, 0, 0.3f);
        }
        
        nodes.Add(childNode);
        Children.Add(node.Index, childNode.Index);
        
        if (depth > 0 && nodeIsOccupied) {
            Subdivide(childNode, depth - 1);
        }
    }
}

Yep

shell berry
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_colliders is a list of Colliders I assume?

brisk trail
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It's not only colliders, but they prevent me from jobifying that

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Sure, yep

shell berry
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Yeah, OOP is generally hard to translate to pure value types.

brisk trail
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Yes, kinda different paradigm, have to think it a different way.

shell berry
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I think the bottleneck is really in frequent calls to collider.ClosestPoint() and it's a black box.

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Even if you cache that into structs and jobify the rest, the cost to executing that is already paid.

brisk trail
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Well, yes, but I don’t want to block UI for a few seconds, if I can’t gain performance, at least fullfill that

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By job i mean

shell berry
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I would suggest using .NET threads but I think Collider methods will only run in main thread.

brisk trail
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I thought about it

shell berry
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See if you can execute ClosesPoint() in a different thread. If you can, then you can move that calculation in a separate thread.

brisk trail
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But after that I have jobified tasks, they depend on this Subdivide. I can’t run jobs from different thread

shell berry
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You can wait for the thread to finish before scheduling those tasks.

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If the problem is just responsive UI, you could also distribute the execution in multiple frames instead

brisk trail
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How’s that?..

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I mean, distribution

shell berry
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One way is to use coroutine

# 
            float offset = node.Size * 0.25f;

            for (int i = 0; i < 8; i++) {
                var newPosition = node.Position;
        
                // Adjust position
                newPosition.y += (i & 4) == 4 ? offset : -offset;
                newPosition.x += (i & 2) == 2 ? offset : -offset;
                newPosition.z += (i & 1) == 1 ? offset : -offset;

                var childNode = new OctreeNode {
                    Position = newPosition,
                    Size = offset * 2,
                    ParentIndex = node.Index,
                    Index = nodes.Length,
                    Bounds = new Bounds(newPosition, Vector3.one * (offset * 2)),
                };

                bool nodeIsOccupied = CheckIsOccupied(_colliders, childNode);
                yield return null;
        
                childNode.IsOccupied = nodeIsOccupied && depth <= 0;
                childNode.IsLeaf = !nodeIsOccupied || depth <= 0 ;

                if (childNode.IsOccupied) {
                    childNode.renderColor = new Color(1, 0, 0, 0.3f);
                }
        
                nodes.Add(childNode);
                Children.Add(node.Index, childNode.Index);
        
                if (depth > 0 && nodeIsOccupied) {
                    Subdivide(childNode, depth - 1);
                    yield return null;
                }
            }
        }```
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This way you only call CheckIsOccupied() and Subdivide() once per frame

brisk trail
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I got the idea, thanks!

devout prairie
lethal canyon
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should this be working for WASM builds ?
var JSON_interface = new TinyJsonInterface("[0,1]", Allocator.Temp);
[libil2cpp] A managed exception was thrown. The Tiny runtime does not support managed exceptions.

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[libil2cpp] The exception message is: ToString is not implemented on System.Object for the Tiny profile. Please override ToString in the derived class if it is required.

wary anchor
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Any ideas for how to go about debugging this kind of exception? Everything works fine for most of the levels I load up, but if it's a large level that takes a few seconds to load, there's a chance that at some point following that, everything falls over.

unknown-2.png
shell berry
stone osprey
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Quick question

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Im using an IJobChunk

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How the heck do i get the entity array instead of the component array ?

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Ok i found a solution

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Next question... how do i use an entity command buffer threadsafe ?

zenith wyvern
stone osprey
zenith wyvern
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It explains it on that page

stone osprey
zenith wyvern
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To ensure that the sequence of the commands in the ECB does not depend on how the work is distributed across jobs, you must also pass the index of the entity in the current query to each operation.

pass the entityInQueryIndex to the operation so the ECB can play back the commands in the right order

stone osprey
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Another little question... is there any way to acess an object in burst code ? I mean we can use ptrs in there... but what happens if the ptr points to an pinned object ? Can we acess that object or will it throw an error ?

wary anchor
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any ideas to help me diagnose this? #archived-dots message
I'm thinking it's potentially a timing or a total memory usage issue but haven't been able to work out what's going on. If I load a smaller structure as the level, it works so I've resorted to that as a temporary workaround but this could potentially happen on a weaker system with the current data and that would be baaaad.

stone osprey
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When i move some of my system into the init-system group they will stop being updated.

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Any idea why this might happen ?

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In the simulation group they always get updated

stone osprey
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Alright updatealways solved that problem

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When i create entities with the entity manager and add components to it, when does the entity appear ? At start of the initialize group ? At the next buffer system ?

karmic basin
karmic basin
stone osprey
zenith wyvern
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There's nothing "random" about what they just described

stone osprey
zenith wyvern
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It forces all running jobs to finish, blocking the main thread until then as soon as you call the function causing the sync point. If you don't want that you use an ECB so you have a predictable spot in your game loop when this happens

stone osprey
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Is there a way to buffer a add/set/remove of an component object ?
For entityManager there is that "AddComponentObject" but its not available for the ecb

zenith wyvern
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I don't think so, ecbs are meant to work inside jobs and that would require passing around managed references

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You can create your own system that runs just before or after an existing entitycommandbuffersystem though

karmic basin
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Looking for this ?

unknown.png
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I never tried

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but we talked about it with someone here some days ago ^^

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don't expect multi-threading or burst there 😛

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like Sark hinted

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got to go eat, see ya

stone osprey
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Alright thanks to both of you ! Im gonna look at that 😄 I actually think its not in my current version yet... so ill probably should update

robust scaffold
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I make one minor change to a system and suddenly the entire data cache (my own code) is invalidated and needs to be regenerated. Fuck me. Now im sitting here hitting a button over and over again with a single line change and wondering why my code isnt working after 10 minutes of file parsing. God Unity, I wish I had coroutines in DOTS systems...

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I have a problem. At startup of my program (im not calling it a game any time soon), I need to load about 5,000 to 6,000 JSON files from the hard drive. They're split up to make it much easier to edit and view in case something messed up on the file parsing side or in case I need to custom edit something. This of course takes quite a while, especially on hard drives. Right now, I have all this loading process occur in one "OnStartRunning()" event all in one frame, so startup after the Unity Splash Screen is black for quite a while and may even stop responding.

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So a loading screen is pretty much mandatory, to prevent the user from panicking and alt-f4 from my program and complaining in a Git Issue that their program crashed on startup.

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But how can I do that? In Mono-Land, this would be trivial to solve. Use Coroutines to split up the files into 10 file size chunks to read, deserialize, and create the relevant number of GameObjects. Then wait for end of frame by a yield return null and let the loading screen animation progress by 1 frame or something.

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DOTS however doesnt have Coroutines and I would like to avoid chaining a system to a monobehavior script just for access to Coroutines.

sleek chasm
robust scaffold
robust scaffold
sleek chasm
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@robust scaffold the tutorials or is it just kinda broken?

robust scaffold
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Use that tutorial, it's up to date with 0.6 (despite being a year old). Pretty much everything outside the main core Entities is either undocumented or broken. Usually both.

sleek chasm
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nice. thanks!

robust scaffold
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The next DOTS release (estimated around a year or two from now, if ever) will probably invalidate everything we know about DOTS so starting now is not a great idea.

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Because either everything is going to change, or it's dead.

haughty rampart
robust scaffold
haughty rampart
robust scaffold
haughty rampart
robust scaffold
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What was the old Roadmap, full DOTS by late 2020?

haughty rampart
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there was never a real release date, only estimates

brisk trail
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They recently applied for patent for their implementation of ECS, so probably it's related.

haughty rampart
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they did? interesting. i'm all for it though

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but i think it's more than that since it is not usable in 2021 unity

brisk trail
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Why isn't usable?..

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I mean, literally, or it's not worth it?

haughty rampart
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you will only get errors

brisk trail
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It's broken? I use only job systems and burst, they work

haughty rampart
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no, job and burst is fine but the ecs component Entities 0.17 is broken. and there's a thread about it in the unity forum

brisk trail
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Even with 2021.1? Which is released?

haughty rampart
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but they officially said that it will be broken while jobs and burst will continue to work

haughty rampart
brisk trail
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Oh, wow. It's terrible.

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I haven't heard about it.

haughty rampart
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but they stated that it's not dead and they are definitely working on it but it will be compatible again with 2021 at the end of the year at the earliest

brisk trail
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Okay, got it... We'll see, the idea itself is quite promising.

forest quest
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my read into it is that going public has made unity more risk adverse in terms of committing to timelines and openly sharing “experimental” packages. I would be extremely surprised if entities doesn’t get another release though

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The reason they haven’t been more transparent is because the point is that they believe they need to be less transparent

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Or rather, that they’ve been too transparent

vital sandal
#

I have a IJobParallelFor running trying to run this code: ```public void Execute(int index) {
distance = Vector3.Distance(positionData[index], currentCamPos); // Compute distance to main cam

for (int i = 0; i < LODDistances.Length; i++) {                     // Iterate over LOD distances
    if (distance < LODDistances[i]) {                                   // Find applicable LOD Level
        lodDataOutput[index] = i;                                           // Set LOD Level

        return;
    }
}

lodDataOutput[index] = -1;                                              // Out of range, set -1 to disable rendering

}and of course i'm getting this error:System.IndexOutOfRangeException: Index {0} is out of range of '{1}' Length.``` I need the LOD distances to be available to test against, but I'm not sure how to get around this index problem. Could use some pointers.

dense oriole
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any idea what this might be caused by?

Exception: NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at Reese.Nav.NavSurfaceAuthoring.get_surfaceSystem () [0x00000] in C:\repos\fremwerk\Library\PackageCache\com.reese.nav@0.22.2\Surface\NavSurfaceAuthoring.cs:33 
  at Reese.Nav.NavSurfaceAuthoring.Convert (Unity.Entities.Entity entity, Unity.Entities.EntityManager dstManager, GameObjectConversionSystem conversionSystem) [0x0004e] in C:\repos\fremwerk\Library\PackageCache\com.reese.nav@0.22.2\Surface\NavSurfaceAuthoring.cs:43 
  at Unity.Entities.Conversion.ConvertGameObjectToEntitySystem.Convert (UnityEngine.Transform transform, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] convertibles) [0x0004b] in C:\repos\fremwerk\Library\PackageCache\com.unity.entities@0.17.0-preview.42\Unity.Entities.Hybrid\GameObjectConversion\ConvertGameObjectToEntitySystem.cs:44  from Ground000

the referenced line is
NavSurfaceSystem surfaceSystem => World.DefaultGameObjectInjectionWorld.GetOrCreateSystem<NavSurfaceSystem>();

vital sandal
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@dense oriole What is Reese.Nav.NavSurfaceAuthoring? And it would help to see some code on how your using it

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Oh, a DOTS nav package

robust scaffold
vital sandal
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working on it

robust scaffold
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Otherwise, it depends on the ParallelFor index assigment, my guess is that positionData and lodDataOutput lengths are not equal and near the end you're trying to [index] out of bounds of one of them.

robust scaffold
vital sandal
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Oh thats very good to know!

robust scaffold
#

Vector3 isnt supported by Burst. Float3 is and allows, if you're really coding hard for it, vectorization and extreme speed boosts. But conversion to Mathematics is a real pain in the ass when all the tutorials are using Vector3.

vital sandal
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I originally thought the error was caused by me accessing the array containing the lod distances

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that only the value of INDEX could be used to access any array in the job

robust scaffold
vital sandal
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Yes well I was wrong haha

robust scaffold
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You can use the index in Execute(int index) for anything. It's just an int. Just make sure all the array lengths line up properly with the initial job scheduling length.

vital sandal
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I mean, In the job I need to iterate over each value in LODDistances and test it agasint the distance of each entity. I thought it was complaining about me trying to access another index in LODDistances than the one specified by INDEX.

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Gotta remember to remove the burst attribute...

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BTW what do you mean by coding for it in "Float3 is and allows, if you're really coding hard for it" ?

robust scaffold
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I feel as there's a better way somewhere to determine LOD distances between entities that involve spacial partitioning and NativeMultiHashMap....

vital sandal
#

mmm

robust scaffold
vital sandal
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wow

robust scaffold
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It's fucking magic and you need to spend hours looking at compiled machine code to figure out if it's actually working.

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It's like shader optimization except even less documented.

vital sandal
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Would definitly like to have a link to that document if you find it

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if you have something to read on " determine LOD distances between entities that involve spacial partitioning and NativeMultiHashMap" that would be nice to

robust scaffold
vital sandal
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I have been playing around with an octree but keeping 100k entity position updated in it is a challenge

robust scaffold
vital sandal
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Bothered to talk to us... i know the feeling 🙂

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So like in a UNITY/GDC conference about DOTS when it came out?

robust scaffold
vital sandal
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Oh... sure what a good reason to get rid of it, anything replaces it?

robust scaffold
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They were using an example for Boids separation and attraction calculation. I think they're still in the old DOTS example github. I've actually implemented it once manually since Unity did expose the unsafe variables buried inside UnsafeHashMap required to make it work so it's possible if you copy paste the code and swap around some of the parameters to functions.

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But nothing replaced it. You need to code it manually to use it.

vital sandal
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look at that i was feeding the wrong length to my job 😆 at least thats fixed

robust scaffold
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Heh, yea.

vital sandal
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OK im gonna save this whole conversation haha

#

Discord needs an Export to PDF feature

robust scaffold
#

You can also just roll back the Entities package to before they removed it and then copy paste the Job code for NMHM extensions. You'll need to fix it up for the most recent version of Entities when you go back to 0.17.

vital sandal
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Thats a good idea

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BTW you mentioned the math library earlier, does it have a replacement for Matrix4x4.TRS() ?

robust scaffold
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Dont known what TRS is off the top of my head but 99% probably not. Unless there's an equivalent in HLSL since the Mathematics library intentionally mirrors HLSL and lacks a lot of the nice to have functions.

vital sandal
#

It creates a Translation Rotation and Scaling matrix4x4

robust scaffold
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So you'll need to find the Matrix4x4 function implementation and so the same manually with Mathematics Float4x4.

vital sandal
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Should I be using Float4x4 instead of Matrix4x4?

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OHHHHH yeahh! thats smart!

robust scaffold
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Definitely. Float4x4 is well supported with Burst Loop Vectorization.

zenith wyvern
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float4x4.TRS already exists

vital sandal
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Oh man you have given me a lot to work with, can't try to try all that

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!

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Amazing! thanks Sark!

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And thank you VERY much KornFlaks for all that valuable info

robust scaffold
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NP, we're all that's left of this mess of DOTS so we've gotta prop each other up.

vital sandal
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mmm yeah.... DOTS...

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I'm just using the job system for now

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Didnt feel like converting my whole project

robust scaffold
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That's good. You're smart.

vital sandal
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Non Im lazy hahahahha

robust scaffold
#

You can actually use functional unity version. We're stuck in the dark ages of LTS with Entities / Hybrid

vital sandal
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Oh yeah I read about that. That sucks!

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But "functional" is a big word for unity lol

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I have stumbled into so may undocumented issues and new bugs in the past years it's unbelievable.

robust scaffold
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Parallel meta file creation (well more parallel than LTS right now) in 2021.1 (or was it .2) is so nice. I got over 5,000 json files that I occasionally need to reimport and sitting at my desk staring at the progress bar slowly grind through all the files are pain.

vital sandal
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Stuff that should just work but doesn't...

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Ohhhhh

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What version are stuck at?

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Im actually on 2019.4 cause... lazy haha

robust scaffold
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oh, ha. 2020.3

vital sandal
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I usually upgrade only once a year if there are no issues... I guess im falling behind

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Anything broken in 2020 from 2019?

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Dot/Job wise?

robust scaffold
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No clue. Havent tried to make that large of a jump. Burst / Job are exactly the same (maybe minus some of the Apple chip intrinsics that IIRC only work with 2020+).

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If you havent heard of Loop Vectorization, dont even think about chip specific intrinsics. It doesnt matter.

vital sandal
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Yea its above my pay grade for now haha

devout prairie
# robust scaffold oh, ha. 2020.3

same 2020.3.8f1 and it seems to all work pretty well so far seems to be a sweet spot.. i don't think using latest versions is ever a good idea in any software in any case

robust scaffold
devout prairie
#

I don't know the exact details as i haven't looked much into it but i think HDRP is pretty much high end only right.

robust scaffold
#

Everything else I've turned off. Reflections, refractions, raytracing, etc etc are all off.

devout prairie
robust scaffold
#
  1. normals. 2. terrain. 3. water. 4. city night lighting. 5. atmosphere
devout prairie
#

I've always kinda thought Unreal Engine was a no brainer for high end realtime stuff but i think Unity def has a lot of potential and is moving in that direction

robust scaffold
#

Unreal had virtual texturing years before Unity but I'm in too deep with DOTS to make the switch over

devout prairie
#

Well i genuinely think that DOTS could really transform Unity in terms of performance and what it's capable of.. it's always been seen as the kinda indy platform whereas Unreal does all the high end triple-A stuff.. but the potential is there with Unity

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I think with Unreal it just has all the tools in place and ready to go, you can essentially jump right in and create a triple-A looking mockup in a matter of hours/days

fallow mason
#

ArgumentException: A component with type:CellStatus has not been added to the entity. What? Just adding an IComponentData to a prototype entity in a bootstrap monobehaviour...

devout prairie
#

maybe your system code is running before your mono adds the component or something

robust scaffold
#

I've made an extension method off EntityManager called AddOrSetComponentData() for both cases but only used in creation as SetComponent will pretty much be the only thing you need in runtime.

robust scaffold
fallow mason
#

@robust scaffold Ah the component is new. I didn't even see addcomponentdata in intellisense. Oops.

devout prairie
#

Some youtuber did a really cool environment haze shader thing tutorial recently, can't remember which one

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i think it did all the diffraction stuff to simulate the colors in the atmosphere around a planet etc

vital sandal
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Oh Seb has amazing tutorials

robust scaffold
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Oh I saw that. Might be a bit much since the camera doesnt actually enter the atmosphere

devout prairie
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indeed, there are a bunch of ways i think the glow around the planet could be simulated or cheated

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looks like in your gif you've applied some kind of fresnel effect to achieve something similar right

robust scaffold
#

Yea, it's a shortcut way based off directional light direction

devout prairie
#

i think your normals are a touch too strong but i'd guess you've exaggerated the strength to actually see the effect of it

robust scaffold
#

On the planet? Yea. It's maxed out from the BW -> Normal map conversion or else why waste memory on a 16k texture if you're barely gonna see it.

devout prairie
#

Hehe true..

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So you adding clouds etc?

robust scaffold
#

It was an idea... give me a sec to dig it back up

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It was going to be two cloud textures with UV moving at different speeds (that gif had 1, easy enough to implement 2) but I couldnt find a second cloud texture

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now the mobile compressed / embedded version looks really sparkly though

devout prairie
#

that's pretty nice, looks good with the cloud layer

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i don't think they need to move at all tbh

robust scaffold
#

I sacrificed the night map due to some issues with compression I think...

vital sandal
#

Thats some very nice work Korn!

devout prairie
#

is there normals on the cloud layer?

robust scaffold
#

Nope, not on the clouds

#

It's a blend between the terrain texture and cloud texture by lerp of the BW color value of the cloud texture

devout prairie
#

nice, looks great

robust scaffold
#

I didnt exactly want to make a nice looking globe so I scrapped the clouds and went instead to coding a "game"

devout prairie
#

that looks very interesting 🙂

#

the normals looks good in the context of the map view ( in the removed image )

robust scaffold
#

And here's roughly where Im at. The borders remain pixelated and I still need to figure out a way to antialias it with decent performance.

devout prairie
#

are you using any kind of lod on the textures

robust scaffold
#

LOD is handled by Unity virtual texturing. I sure as hell cant code it

devout prairie
#

yeah it's not something i've looked at in unity, lod textures

#

would make sense for a globe sized map though if there's any kind of zooming involved

robust scaffold
#

Yep, unity and their magic box does all that for me. I cant quite find the screenshot of when I plastered eight 16k textures onto a single globe (maximum resolution available from NASA where I'm getting these textures from). There were seam issues due to how badly I did the UV mapping in blender but Unity's virtual texturing took it like a champ

devout prairie
#

8 16k textures would consume a bit of vram i'd guess hehe

#

i guess unity resamples them down when they're imported?

robust scaffold
#

In the settings, you can set the maximum vram used by all virtual textures (256 MB is default and they dont recommend increasing it regardless). Zooming far in, it was clearly one of the 16k textures (I had a comparison somewhere... dont know where I posted it).

#

eight 16k definitely maxed out the allocated virtual texture count but from a zoomed out view, it was largely indistinguishable from the gif above, just with 8x the file size for terrain coloring.

devout prairie
#

Not sure how with my terrible matrix maths but i've managed to get my dots ragdoll to follow my dots skinned/animated mesh

sleek chasm
robust scaffold
#

I can see Unity working right now to convert the underlying base engine code to job-ified Bursted systems but the GO exterior into DOTS? Probably not.

sleek chasm
#

but isn't jobs built on top of entity components aka dots?

robust scaffold
#

Nope. Other way around

robust scaffold
sleek chasm
#

i mean the gains

#

aren't jobs getting massive perf boosts from the data being arranged in entity chunks?

robust scaffold
#

In fact, doing so gives better performance (right now) than going Hybrid Renderer.

sleek chasm
#

I mean I get that but the OOP architecture with game objects doesn't exactly make that the default approach

robust scaffold
#

Yeaaaa, but thats why you implement Data Oriented Design yourself rather than use Unity DOTS.

sleek chasm
#

sounds like reinventing the wheel =[

robust scaffold
#

Thing is, Unity is reinventing the wheel with Hybrid Renderer, and failing badly at it. HDRP was built with GOs in mind and work with GOs. So use GOs instead.

sleek chasm
#

Sorry, GOs?

robust scaffold
#

Game objects

sleek chasm
#

oh

devout prairie
robust scaffold
#

DOD is as simple as maintaining a static class with static arrays containing NativeArrays of game object data. Then GOs can pull from if requesting data.

#

Then you can code out bursted Job structs that operate on those NAs in Monobehavior.

robust scaffold
# devout prairie surely not?

Test it yourself. Anything less than about 1,000 cloned (same texture, same mesh) entities actually render faster using the equivalent number of GOs because HR has such high overhead.

#

If you start breaking up those entities into different meshes and textures, it gets even worse from there

devout prairie
#

Ah really.. i hadn't tested anything like that, have only really been using it so far as a replacement for skinned mesh AI and projectiles

robust scaffold
#

HR relies on having the full 16KB entity chunk fully filled with the same identical entity. Anything less is a waste of memory space. And how often are you filling a full 16KB chunk?

#

Maybe in a video game where every single bullet has a physics mesh and everyone is equipped with machine guns it might make sense. But right now without dynamic chunk sizes, it falls short

devout prairie
#

something i've not looked at yet is chunk utilization is that something that can be inspected in the Profiler?

robust scaffold
#

Entity Debugger, a separate tool window. And quite esoteric to understand in the first place

devout prairie
#

Thanks for the info i'll look into that

robust scaffold
sleek chasm
devout prairie
#

So it quite probably makes sense if you have a scenario where it needs to be scalable from few to very many objects to consider implementing a two-tier approach ie using IJobTransform for few and Hybrid for many

robust scaffold
robust scaffold
sleek chasm
robust scaffold
devout prairie
robust scaffold
#

The improvement with performance is from the lack of overhead. Using Entities and not Hybrid Renderer is fine. I'm doing so myself. Base Entities is quite performant and optimized but the rendering is garbage.

robust scaffold
#

And yea, even published an arguably better basic physics implementation then Microsoft (aka Havoc) themselves. He's going places even if DOTS itself is six feet under.

devout prairie
robust scaffold
devout prairie
robust scaffold
devout prairie
#

I'm optimistic for dots animation though, i've dug into the source quite a bit and i think it has a ton of potential to just transform the animation pipeline in unity to something insanely performant

#

i do wonder when/if they'll start offloading stuff to the gpu though, that seems a bit of a no brainer

#

i guess the cost of streaming data to the gpu is high, but i'm sure there's scope to do stuff there

robust scaffold
# devout prairie i guess the cost of streaming data to the gpu is high, but i'm sure there's scop...

DOTS was definitely created with the intent for easy integration with compute shaders. The mirroring of vector types in Mathematics makes that clear enough. But yea, that's also a major bottleneck with Hybrid Renderer as well as, IIRC, sends the mesh to the GPU at any positional change for some reason. The devs made it clear there was some serious improvements coming down the pipeline until... it didnt.

#

Hybrid Render prebaked the texture on the mesh or something insane that required high informational transfer between memory and GPU that was a source of a lot of headaches

devout prairie
#

hmm

robust scaffold
#

There was a lot of discussion on the topic before Unity practically decapitated any conversations by shifting it into a separate sub-forum

devout prairie
#

Hehe damn.. yeah i can understand the frustration as it's been on-off i think for so long

robust scaffold
#

They're still hinting at improvements. All these months and years (practically) later

devout prairie
#

i can only guess they're constrained by the fact that the structural changes are enormous in terms of the overall life-cycle of the entire game engine and the implications of how dots impacts and changes that

#

all i can say is.. at least it's not f***** adobe that's running things

robust scaffold
#

Who knows, maybe. Unity has a simply fantastic magical box known as Burst. Now they're trying to build a game engine around it.

robust scaffold
devout prairie
#

hehe or autodesk

robust scaffold
#

Although patenting DOTS in its current state does give me pause on that Oracle comparison

devout prairie
#

hehe ouch

robust scaffold
#

Anyways, I've gotta go. Hungry as fuck and my usual haunt closes at 8 on the weekends. Nice chatting with ya

devout prairie
#

You too laters 🙂

velvet panther
#

Is there a way to endlessly index a NativeArray<> such that an index call into it that's higher than the length "loops" back around into the array?

#

eg: NativeArray length = 100, an indexed call into it of [120] returns the 20th index, [130] returns the 30th index etc.

coarse turtle
#

(index + n) % NativeArray<T>.Length

velvet panther
#

@coarse turtle without doing anything like that

#

no maths, just having a looping index. No conditionals.

coarse turtle
#

okay, that's an odd requirement

#

not sure how'd you do that without using some math or conditions 🤔

velvet panther
#

I know, but I saw it somewhere, and I can't remember where I saw it, and how it's named or done.

devout prairie
#

maybe a custom iterator or some thing

velvet panther
#

It was yesterday, and I thought "oh, that's interesting... I'll never need that..." and today, I need it.

#

It was something about the way the array was defined, such that it was told to be a looping index array. But I can't remember what I was reading, or where, or even which language it was in.

devout prairie
#

maybe a custom wrapper for an array

coarse turtle
#

well that's just a ring buffer ¯_(ツ)_/¯

velvet panther
#

How is a ring buffer done on an array's indexing without any maths/conditionals?

coarse turtle
#

don't know, usually increment and decrement in a ring buffer uses the modulo operator

#

I'm still not sure why you wouldn't want to use a conditional or math. Having a hard time on figuring out the use case and why it could possibly be a bottleneck 🤔

robust scaffold
#

It requires math, just Unity is doing it for you

velvet panther
#

@robust scaffold can I be reasonably sure that since Unity is doing it for me, their Burst/Jobs will love it , and be optimally quick through indexing this array?

#

I'm doing DSP, making waves, and want to loop over them, within loops that are far longer, in the most optimal way. More faster = more sounds with more effects and less glitches and audio spikes.

robust scaffold
#

Waves? Have you tried trigonometry and sine-cosine stacking? The most optimal is just pure mathematics, no buffers.

molten flame
#

Has anyone had an issue where a system seems to be updating in the wrong order despite showing in the correct order in the editor?

robust scaffold
molten flame
robust scaffold
velvet panther
#

@robust scaffold Audio requires the creation of at least 512 samples in an array, to be pushed/given to the audiosystem, each "tick" of the audio system. So if you want to blend 4 waves, 4 noises and mod each with volumes/gain/distortion and add ADSR control over them over time, buffers are the only way to realistically achieve this in the small bits of time available. Waves need to be pre-baked into buffers, so the final signal is just a matter of summing and multiplying them by their gains and ADSR envelopers

molten flame
#

This is how my systems are configured

SPOILER_unknown.png
velvet panther
#

Good noise, for example, can't possibly be calculated in realtime. It's quite heavy random functions with filtering to make a well "pitched" spectrum of noise.

robust scaffold
# velvet panther <@!262065945936134144> Audio requires the creation of at least 512 samples in an...

Oh audio, no clue then. Uh, I've done some noise stacking (noise on noise in a for loop to get interesting patterns) and just iterating through a for loop multiple times using itsjustblank's (index + n) % NativeArray<T>.Length is good. You wont find much more optimization than this. The greatest performance hog will be the actual addition and setting of the index value in the native array. That's where you look towards loop vectorization methods.

robust scaffold
velvet panther
#

That's what I'm doiing... heavy use of float4 to fill the registers and do the most possible with each clock. But there's an issue with feeding the contents in, which requires me do lots of conditionals, or rely on infinitely looping indexing (ideally) that's fast.

robust scaffold
#

And then use remainder (%) to determine which index you're at from the current for loop index.

molten flame
velvet panther
coarse turtle
#

since you're dealing with curves - it reminded me of this talk where they spent time optimizing trig functions with a margin of error: https://youtu.be/uK87jZmeT7Y?list=PLX2vGYjWbI0RtjGyAFd6MdhG5kRokv4uI&t=1690

YouTube
Unity
ECS Track: Spline Based AI Agents - Unite LA

This session looks at the traffic simulation in the demo examining the compute kernels and the code that Burst produces for them. We will also cover the spline-based AI agents and how they were developed with the ECS.
Speakers: Andreas Fredriksson (Unity Technologies), Lee Hammerton (Unity Technologies)

▶ Play video
robust scaffold
#

The second system wont run until the first system reaches the end of its logic and creates the singleton entity. If it's ordered in front of the first system, then it'll run in the next frame. Still after the first system though.

velvet panther
#

@robust scaffold here's an attempt to partially visually describe the problem, at two different audio buffer sizes.

TIMEDESINGS_copy.png
robust scaffold
#

I personally use RequireSingletonForUpdate<>() a lot for multi-frame systems like my initial loading / authoring systems. I cant use [UpdateAfter()] since these systems run for multiple frames before finishing so I instead chain singleton enablers together.

robust scaffold
velvet panther
#

The downside of audio done procedurally is that the slower the target device, the more audio data needs to be generated per frame. So the problem of generating audio is... a problem. The audio buffer wants what the audio buffer wants.

velvet panther
# robust scaffold And you want to add these two buffers together?

No, these two buffers represent two different devices, and how they have slightly different problems. The top one is a device running at 240fps with a 256 samples buffer, the bottom one is a more normal device, at 60fps with a 1024 samples buffer. In between you can imagine a 120fps device with a 512 samples bufffer.

#

at 44100 samples per second (pretty much the standard), the smallest audio tick on a 240fps game machine is 256/44100 - about 1/172nd of a second.

#

@robust scaffold Can I just index into an UnsafeRingQueue in the same way I might into a NativeSlice, but also with the ability to call higher values than the index range, and rely on it to loop through, like a ring buffer?

molten flame
robust scaffold
velvet panther
#

Sorry, @robust scaffold I have no idea what you mean by Queue and iterating though, nor why it's not possible to index into it.

robust scaffold
velvet panther
#

@robust scaffold this seems somewhat different to anything I know. What are these used for, and how would they be applicable to the issue of regurgitating looped waves without worrying about "out of bounds" of an array's length?

robust scaffold
#

Oh, and unity's ring queue has no way to "peek" or readonly access to the buffer. You apparently must dequeue and requeue to make an infinite buffer... what the fuck is this thing even used for? This isnt a ring queue.

robust scaffold
velvet panther
#

@robust scaffold THANK YOU!!! These are the rules I need, so that i don't go on wild goose chases seeking ways and means that are only in my imagination. THANK YOU!!!

vital sandal
#

@robust scaffold About replacing my Vector3 by Float3, I was reading the link you sent me on vectorization and found this mentioned about Unity.Mathematics: Note that currently, for an optimal usage of this library, it is recommended to use SIMD 4 wide types (float4, int4, bool4...)

vital sandal
#

does this mean I should use an array of int4 instead of int? Leaving the other 3 internal int go to waste?

stone osprey
#

I have a very strange issue...
Yesterday my system worked fine... today it does not.

I have a system which runs a IJobChunk and this seems to create an infinite loop. Im stuck in the Application.EnterPlayMode

Any idea what might cause the infinite loop ? I dont get it...

#

This is actually the piece of code which creates the loop somehow

📎 message.txt
#

Ignore the first message.txt... the second one is somehow making my editor being stuck in the "EnterPlayMode" process

robust scaffold
stone osprey
#

Anyone having an idea regarding my code

#

So i do this in one job...

# 
        /// <summary>
        /// A job which runs asynchron and copies the <see cref="TComponent"/> into the <see cref="State"/> in an fast and efficient, generic way. 
        /// </summary>
        [BurstCompile]
        private struct AddedJob : IJobChunk {

            public EntityCommandBuffer.ParallelWriter ecb;
            
            [ReadOnly] public EntityTypeHandle entityHandle; 
            [ReadOnly] public ComponentTypeHandle<TComponent> componentHandle;

            [NativeDisableUnsafePtrRestriction] public IntPtr reactorsPtr;

            public void Execute(ArchetypeChunk chunk, int chunkIndex, int firstEntityIndex) {

                // Get original component and the state array
                var entityArray = chunk.GetNativeArray(entityHandle);
                var componentArray = chunk.GetNativeArray(componentHandle);
                var reactors = (ConcurrentQueue<IComponentReactor<TComponent>>)((GCHandle) reactorsPtr).Target;

                // Copy the component into the state
                for (var i = 0; i < chunk.Count; i++) {

                    var entity = entityArray[i];
                    var component = componentArray[i];

                    // Call the reactor and add the components 
                    foreach(var reactor in reactors)
                        Debug.Log("TEST");

                    ecb.AddComponent(chunkIndex, entity, new TAdded());
                    ecb.AddComponent(chunkIndex, entity, new State{component = component});
                }
            }
        }

I basically iterate over a managed concurrent queue... and once i do this, my job creates an endless loop ( The foreach )

#

Why does this happen ? Without that line it works fine... I need to iterate a list with interfaces in that damn job :/ Any ideas ?

#

Oh and is there a way to store a Action<..> in a burstable struct ? There was an alternative to "action" which could be stored in in components easily... how was it called again ?

stiff skiff
#

wont work in a burst job tho

devout prairie
#

I'm getting 'HashMap is Full` errors trying to run a NativeMultiHashMap.AsParallelWriter through a parallel ForEach.. any ideas what might cause this?

solar spire
#

one would presume you're over the capacity

#

can't call Add if you've used all the capacity you allocated

devout prairie
#

yeah i've tried increasing it by a multiple and still the same

stone osprey
devout prairie
#

hmm i just multiplied the capacity by 100 and it worked

#

odd

#

problem must be at my end, i'd read a thread on the forum about parallel multihashmaps being buggy

#

yep, problem was mine, doh!

stiff skiff
devout prairie
#

Okay another question. I'm creating a NativeHashMap, then wrapping it as .AsParallelWriter() so that i can push it through a parallel job and fill it with values.. I then push the underlying hashmap through a parallel job with AsReadOnly - however this underlying hashmap is showing as empty.. Is wrapping the hashmap in this way not possible?

var matrixMap = new NativeHashMap<Entity, float4x4>(count, Allocator.TempJob);
var matrixMap_WRITER = matrixMap.AsParallelWriter();

var Handle_GatherMatrices = Entities.ForEach((Entity e, ref LocalToWorld ltw) =>
{
    // add to the matrixMap_WRITER
}).ScheduleParallel(Dependency);

var Handle_UseMatrices = Entities.WithReadOnly(matrixMap).ForEach((Entity e, ref Translation t) =>
{
    // read from the underlying matrixMap
}).ScheduleParallel(Handle_GatherMatrices);
#

Ah wait, yet again, the problem is mine. Method above is fine. Don't code on a Sunday with a fuzzy head folks.

stiff skiff
#

Did you not actually write to the map 😉 ?

devout prairie
#

cough

#

uhmm

#

i basically had this..
if (nativeThreadIndex == 0) matrixMap_WRITER.TryAdd(entity, ltw);

#

apparently nativeThreadIndex was never 0

#

i'm basically iterating a bunch of children of multiple parents and only wanted to fill this matrixMap for each parent once

#

and this silly bit of code did not help with that

zenith wyvern
shell berry
stone osprey
#

Is there any way to use managed objects in burst code ? What happens when i mark an method inside the job as BurstDiscard ? It says its used to operate on objects, but what happens in detail ?

stone osprey
#

I have a very weird issue... when click on the play button in the editor... one system causes an infinite loop.
When i attach a debugger first and then run it the same way... it suddenly works.

Anyone ever experienced similar issues ?

#

What the fuck... sometimes it does work... sometimes it does not. What am im doing wrong ?

# 
        /// <summary>
        /// A job which runs asynchron and copies the <see cref="TComponent"/> into the <see cref="State"/> in an fast and efficient, generic way. 
        /// </summary>
        [BurstCompile]
        private struct AddedJob : IJobChunk {

            public EntityCommandBuffer.ParallelWriter ecb;

            [ReadOnly] public EntityTypeHandle entityHandle;
            [ReadOnly] public ComponentTypeHandle<TComponent> componentHandle;

            [NativeDisableUnsafePtrRestriction] public IntPtr reactorsPtr;

            public void Execute(ArchetypeChunk chunk, int chunkIndex, int firstEntityIndex) {

                // Get original component and the state array
                var entityArray = chunk.GetNativeArray(entityHandle);
                var componentArray = chunk.GetNativeArray(componentHandle);
  
                // Copy the component into the state
                for (var i = 0; i < chunk.Count; i++) {

                    var entity = entityArray[i];
                    var component = componentArray[i];

                    React(ref component);

                    ecb.AddComponent(chunkIndex, entity, new TAdded());
                    ecb.AddComponent(chunkIndex, entity, new State {component = component});
                }
            }

            [BurstDiscard]
            private void React(ref TComponent component) {

                // Call the reactor and add the components 
                var reactors = (List<IComponentReactor<TComponent>>) ((GCHandle) reactorsPtr).Target;
                for (var index = 0; index < reactors.Count; index++) {

                    var reactor = reactors[index];
                    reactor.Added(ref component);
                }
            }
        }

This is my job im running... when i loop over the list ( The managed one ), it leads to an unity endless loop.

#

Any ideas what i might be doing wrong ?

#

Could really need some help... im stuck with this since hours... no errors just that endless player enter mode loop thing

shell berry
#

The best thing you can do is make value type copies and work on that instead.

stone osprey
stone osprey
shell berry
#

Well, I'm not sure but I've used BurstDiscard and it's not what I expected. A good guiding principle is do not used managed objects inside a job at all.

#

I do know that you can run unmanaged code in a job. I have an article about that.

stone osprey
shell berry
#

You can't use BurstCompile on it, though

#

And it doesn't have safety checks. You're on your own.

stone osprey
#

Well this a bit different from the ecs jobs im using ^^ But i mean... actually its the same im doing right ? Pinning the object that will be used, passing it to the job and using it there.

shell berry
stone osprey
#

In a system ^^

#

In a jobsystem

shell berry
#

Well, what you can do is schedule the value type parts then call Complete(), then you can call the callbacks.

#

Based on the code that you shown, you only need a NativeArray of the components.

stone osprey
stone osprey
shell berry
#

I'll code it up. Just wait.

#

Because I closed Unity already

stone osprey
#

Alright thanks ^^

#

Another interesting thing i just saw... when i enable burst enable compilation... the BurstDiscard method is not being invoked ( or atleast i cant debug in there and no debug logs are called )... and when compilation is off, it does

shell berry
#

I'd do it this way:

#

It's not a compiling code but I hope you get the gist

#

If the reactors need to write to the component, then that code won't work. You'll need the entity so you can update the component via ComponentDataFromEntity.

stone osprey
#

Ahhhh i seee 😄 So you mean i should just add the components to an list and invoke the callbacks in the update method instead... damn thats much easier ^^ thanks !
What about the performance ? I mean .Complete should block, right ?

shell berry
#

Yeah but that job is still Burst compiled and runs in parallel. Still faster than non job version.

stone osprey
#

Thanks a lot ! Im gonna try this 😄

shell berry
#

If you want to work with managed types, you have to make a few sacrifices.

shell berry
stone osprey
#

Yeah i see :/ but thats a sacrifice im willing to make... because it eases listening for added components and i could add listeners from the ui which is great for updating entity informations ^^

#

And thanks for your time !

shell berry
#

👍

stone osprey
#

Not everyone would post such an detailed example ^^

stone osprey
shell berry
#

Oh, about the performance, that will depend on your reactors. If they're many and slow, well, it will be slow.

karmic basin
stone osprey
karmic basin
#

I can easily see how the name is confusing yeah

stone osprey
coarse turtle
remote crater
#

What UPDATEINGROUP(typeof( ??? Simulation ???))) & EntityCommandBufferSystem do I use when I want to destroy entities. Seems like my [UpdateInGroup(typeof(FixedStepSimulationSystem)] is complaining entities are deleted when looking through queries n stuff. Destroy file: https://pastebin.com/wNSKKHs8 Drone enemyAI file: https://pastebin.com/4cGejQ0a

Pastebin
using Unity.Entities;using Unity.Jobs;using Unity.Collections;//[Up...

Pastebin.com is the number one paste tool since 2002. Pastebin is a website where you can store text online for a set period of time.

#

if I just pick at random as I am doing now, it is 5* 5* 5* 5 or 625 permutations of system guesses, and there are probably many solutions, but if that isn't the problem... I will waste a day.

#

ALSO A GENERAL Q: How do I go over the limit of .foreach arguments? queries and native arrays?

shell berry
shell berry
full epoch
stone osprey
#

Marshal.GetFunctionPointerForDelegate(OnAddedConcurrent) makes unity crash... without an error message.
Anyone having an idea why that might happen ?

OnAddedConcurrent is initialized and basically looks like this public delegate void OnAdded<T>(ref Entity en, ref T cmp);
Anyone having an idea why this might happen ? I basically just wanna pass a delegate to an job for executing callbacks async but its crashing when i run that marshal 🙂

amber flicker
stone osprey
#

Is that marshal operation not implemented ? Or why this might happen ? Do i need to pin the object first ? I bet its an stupid mistake :/

# 

// in System
public delegate void OnAdded<T>(ref Entity en, ref T cmp);
public OnAdded<T> OnAdded = (...);

// In Update
var test = Marshal.GetFunctionPointerForDelegate(OnAdded); // Editor crashes, no logs, no exception
stone osprey
#

Ok i solved this one

#

Well ComponentTypeHandle<T> is for structs... is there a ComponentTypeHandle for component objects ? Managed ones ?

#

Is there any way to acess managed component objects in an job ?

#

So i found this var managedComponentArray = chunk.GetManagedComponentAccessor(componentHandle, ref e); but how do i get the componenthandle of a managed class type ? GetComponentHandle<MyClass> does not work

willow plaza
stone osprey
#

Is it possible to use them in jobs ?

willow plaza
stone osprey
#

Furthermore theres a method called "GetManagedComponentAccessor" in archetypechunk for working with them

robust scaffold
willow plaza
# stone osprey No... its possible... look up EntityManager.AddComponentObject();

Apparently it syncs with the main thread.

Important: This function creates a sync point, which means that the EntityManager waits for all currently running Jobs to complete before adding the object and no additional Jobs can start before the function is finished. A sync point can cause a drop in performance because the ECS framework may not be able to make use of the processing power of all available cores.
stone osprey
#

Alright thanks to both of you :/

karmic basin
#

with a managed ICD

#

public class EcsTestManagedComponent : IComponentData {}

#

But yeah you're not supposed to work with managed data in jobs

stone osprey
# karmic basin Looks like it works for Unity

Thanks a lot ! 🙂 Well thats kinda pitty... because i need to iterate over a bunch of managed components in an efficient way... is there one ? The only way that comes in my mind is to use a query and get all the entities from it... but thats very, very slow

karmic basin
#

Grab everytihing you need in Native containers, do your bulk work, then get the results and update your mono objects

stone osprey
#

Or is it possible to run a job without burst ?

stone osprey
coarse turtle
#

The apis to construct it are internal, so you'll need to do some looking up in the source

willow plaza
stone osprey
coarse turtle
pliant pike
#

I have a stupid basic question, do you have to use SetComponent all the time just to set variables even captured by the Entities.Foreach

wary anchor
#

as long as the component is passed in as ref

pliant pike
#

doh! leahHMM

# 
        Entities.WithReadOnly(FoodItemsbarcodes).ForEach((RobotCompState currRobstate, RobotsPhysicalmoney currphysmoney, CurrentRobotIntVal Timetowait, DynamicBuffer <ItemstoBuy> curritemms) =>           
        {```
#

I was passing them in like that

wary anchor
# 
Entities
  .ForEach((Entity entity, ref LastFrameTranslationComponent lastFrameTranslationComponent, in Translation translation) => {
})
#

here the lastFrameTranslationComponent can be accessed as read/write, translation is readonly

pliant pike
#

yeah I don't know how I forgot to use the ref, I'm surprised it even worked without the ref to be honest leahWTF

karmic basin
#

and use in also so the order can be optimized when things are readonly

wary anchor
#

I have a tricky problem that I suspect is something to do with timings/order of execution but I'm struggling to diagnose what I've done wrong.
I now have a fairly complex set of systems as this project has been going for a long time now. It's seen Entities from I think 0.5 or so, which probably doesn't help!
If I stress the systems with more entities, suddenly it'll enter a state where I get NREs spamming the console like the attached:

unknown.png
#

there are a variety of different errors, covering lots of different systems, and which I get seems to be random

#

at lower loads, it's completely stable, runs great, but obviously I have done something wrong and don't want people on lower end hardware to have crashes because I've done boo boos

#

I had a couple of fairly slow processes which I optimised today by switching from brute-force calculating some distance-related thing for all elements of an 2000-or so long array to using a spatial partitioning system I'd written to help with rendering. That improved frame-times significantly when more entities were present, and also raised the threshold where I get errors - but it didn't remove it , so that's why I suspect it's a timing issue (rather than eg memory)

#

I'm after some tips/ideas on how to go about diagnosing the problem, really! Once I understand what it is I have done wrong I'll be able to fix it, but the error messages haven't so far led me to anywhere useful 😦

#

FWIW it seems to be connected to events - eg linking between monobehaviour land UI/audio and a SystemBase GameStateSystem which curates ECS empty-component entity events that gate a whole bunch of systems via RequireForUpdate(entityQuery);

pliant pike
#

I don't know it looks like its an issue with something not existing that should exist, an issue with an EntityQuery or GetSingleton, it should tell you in which system that is

wary anchor
#

I tried putting a breakpoint in the ChunkDataUtility to see if I could work out what is returning null when this error state happens (which only happens under artificially long frame-times), but I didn't find anything different between a working state and the error state and nothing appeared to be null.

wary anchor
#

trying to catch the first frame when an issue is caught but it's tricky. Here's why it's not simply "something is null" - yes, there is a null ref but the cause of that is the issue, it's not traceable to a specific system trying to access something that's always null, because the game works fine under normal load. Here, for example, the first exception arises quoting the line in the TimeSystem shown on the right, it doesn't make sense to me how that could return a null reference, and I'm sure it's not a problem in the GetSingletonEntity code because as I said it works most of the time, I only see this when an event is fired under conditions of high load.

unknown.png
coarse turtle
wary anchor
#

Yes that sounds like it's the issue, there are a few systems that make structural changes. I'm not sure if it's possible to refactor all of these out to use ECBs, but if it's going to eliminate the potential for this kind of failure I could have a crack at it

wary anchor
#

any ideas for how I might go about confirming the hypothesis before attempting such a big refactor?

pliant pike
wary anchor
#

not sure how that would help diagnose it tbh

north bay
#

You have your jobs debugger enabled right? I don't see how such a big concurrency issue would not get caught by it..

pliant pike
#

yeah I mean if you can't find exactly where it is then you could first eliminate all the places it isn't

wary anchor
#

Yup

ashen parcel
#

can Unity Dots be used for VR?

remote crater
#

I can't believe it's been about a week more or less, and I still can't delete entities after a time.

safe lintel
#

@ashen parcel I dont think its recommended for now

ashen parcel
#

is Dots like Nanite but for Unity?

safe lintel
#

@ashen parcel well regarding rendering at least. youre fine to use burst, collections and jobs, and then ecs probably no major issues but i think hybrid renderer isnt well tested with vr

#

no its not

remote crater
#

I only have 7-30 hrs of dev left before release, and when I delete objects, another job is upset. Look at this monster error. All I know is one line: DOTS_DRONE_AI.cs which is my drone AI file. The rest makes no sense to me other than knowing system files. https://pastebin.com/FjG3C0eX I think it is order of operations, I Destroy Entities in another job.

Pastebin
ArgumentException: System.ArgumentException: All entities passed to...

Pastebin.com is the number one paste tool since 2002. Pastebin is a website where you can store text online for a set period of time.

#

It's been a week of only 7-30 hours til release because I can't get through this wall

#

I think I got it. It isn't order of operations at all, but entities store a reference to another entity as target

#

when target is deleted, it tries to use the old reference

#

Now I just need to test for destroyed and remove target. I think I'm good to go.

#

That's the weird ass thing of new techs... Sometimes you think you're doing something wrong with the new tech, when you're just doing an old wrong. It's like when you play buggy ass League of Legends and you're not sure if you messed up or the game did.

#

If I have a memory address pointer to an Entity. Say Entity e; And I want to know if e exists or is destroyed... Anyone know syntax? This is awesome.

#

entityManager.Exists(ed.targetEntity);

#

Bingo bango I think I'm good to go. Thanks to my yolo bros.

#

nope... still got error. lol. This is challenging to know what is even causing the problem.

#

Oh, since I'm not getting a line number, I could try massive amounts of print statements, the offending last line will be identified because the print before it will be issued before the error. K!

remote crater
#

Well this is strange! This happens AFTER the SystemBase that has the error is over!

#

It says DOTS_DRONE_AI has the error

#

But the Systembase was already done. Even the entityCommandBuffer was done

#

UnityEngine.Debug.Log("50");
}

}//The End
#

Its saying an error occurs in this file, when this file has concluded. Does EntityCommandBuffer take a while after the SystemBase is concluded to resolve?

remote crater
#

I was correct on assuming it was order of processing of something ECS with ECBs

remote crater
remote crater
#

Still stuck on this, day 8.

zenith wyvern
#

Posting random errors without code makes it pretty unlikely anyone will be able to help you. Best way to get help fast is to post a minimal repro of the code that's causing the error, and a short explanation of what you're trying to accomplish

wary anchor
#

Yeah that's my issue, too, it's a large, complex project and I only get the errors when I push the load.

#

I'll duplicate the project and try chopping stuff out until I don't get the error, see how minimal I can make it

remote crater
#

yah Sark, that is right. I just figured people saw this before... It shouldn't bust the system to destroy entities. Unity at least should give a clean way to destroy em... I thought that was the whole point of Entity Command Buffers, to do stuff at safe times. That's a good idea when I have enough rest in me.

#

good night

wary anchor
#

I cut out some code that deals with slowing down time and the error state changed to this, which sounds quite promising as a lead, but I'm not sure how to work out what structural change led to the invalidation it refers to:

unknown.png
#

I should say that I can also get the errors to occur without ever hitting this method, though, so perhaps it's not this that's the cause, I don't know any more 😦

#

so I have a few events that trigger from button presses to kick things off (eg confirm game start button, etc) - these do call the GameStateSystem publicly to make structural changes to control the other systems that run. I suppose those presses could happen at any point during the DOTS Update loop, which may account for some systems running where the previous expected systems haven't run within that update. I could try queuing those up to run via an ECB instead of instantly on demand?

remote crater
#

object disposed could mean you deleted a component and tried to access it elsewhere? I dunno, just geussing

#

oh yeah

#

it says you'r trying to get a componentdatafromentity

wary anchor
#

yeah, it happens I think only on an event being fired that changes which systems run, and only when some of the systems are given a lot of work to do, at all other times it's all tickety-boo

#

in the process of making sure now that the events queue up entity creation/deletion in an ECB to see if that fixes it. Basically flying blind because the error messages don't lead to any specific place - I can force the error 5 times and get 5 different sets of error messages

little moon
#

@remote crater I think you are looking in the wrong place. It has nothing to do with the code in the systems but rather with the ordering of systems and this entity command buffer you are sending command to. Try to add [UpdateBefore(typeof(EndInitializationEntityCommandBufferSystem)] (or something along those lines) to your SystemDestroyAfterTime system and change the command buffer your DOTS_DRONE_AI system is using to something that runs at the end of the frame

devout prairie
#

Seeing some really weird behaviour with NativeMultiHashMap AsParallelWriter that i'm struggling to get to the bottom of

tribal pollen
#

Hey guys, I've recently started with unity and I'm trying to use ECS but I'm a little stuck on something that seems simple...
I want to do something if Entities of ArchetypeA are within a range(distance) of Entities of ArchetypeB.
What approach would you recommend for this? I feel like it would involve something with ComponentDataFromEntity, or being able to make two seperate EntityQueries and iterate through both comparing...but I can't seem to figure it out. Hopefully this is ok to ask here. 😛

pulsar jay
#

If you need sth more complex you can create complete queries without foreach like this:

EntityQuery enemyQuery = GetEntityQuery(ComponentType.ReadOnly<TagEnemy>(), ComponentType.ReadOnly<LocalToWorld>());
var enemyArray = enemyQuery.ToEntityArray(Allocator.TempJob);
var enemyLTWArray = enemyQuery.ToComponentDataArray<LocalToWorld>(Allocator.TempJob);
tribal pollen
#

@pulsar jay Thanks! So in that first example, if positions are passed in as a dependancy, (if my foreach is over ArchetypeA for example) I could check to see if it's close to another entity, but how would I know if it's of ArchetypeB? or fetch other values from said ArchB?

pulsar jay
#

Oh btw you also need to use .WithDisposeOnCompletion(array) with your foreach query with each of the arrays to dispose them afterwards

remote crater
#

A weird question: Is there a limit to 9 components to a .foreach. This could help my design of my system architecture. I want to limit how many variables in each component due to the write cost of many when reassigning entire structs, yet at the same time if only 9 components allowed, I need to push extra data into related structs... This is a loss of organization and a puzzle challenge if cramped into 9 components. I could see myself commonly using 15+ if allowed.

wary anchor
#

I recently removed 1 component completely (to be fair it wasn't actually strictly needed) just to get in under 6 on one particularly heavy system. I try to keep each system to a minimum, I can't imagine many cases where you'd want anything like 15 components

remote crater
#

I'm asking this question now, because if I assume only 9 components are allowed in a .foreach, but many more are able, then my structs are ugly and crammed. For long term sanity, I want to be able to access 15, 30 or even more in a .foreach

#

I like to have my components small because when you change em, you need to rewrite the entire struct.

#

So if your structs are bigger, this is more costly.

wary anchor
#

yes, and you want only the bare minimum of them for a job so that you can make efficient use of the cache

remote crater
#

Also having all sorts of different structs allows for cool organizational technique

#

So you're saying proper design RooBubba is to make structs with hundreds of variables, not hundreds of structs?

wary anchor
#

of course I'm not

remote crater
#

2nd question: Can you access components from an entity found in a .foreach not requested in the ref or in parts of the arguments?

#

Cuz that'd fix everything for me.

#

I'm already crammed at 9 non stop

#

And I keep condensing em

#

1 for entity, 1 for translation, 1 for physics mass, 1 for physics velocity, 1 for collision data, 1 for my general entity data, only left with 3 for actual custom stuff.

wary anchor
#

for SIMD goodness if we're going to extremes here, you can pack them more efficiently with float4 stride, but this really sounds like premature/microooptimisation

remote crater
#

3 components isn't a lot to go with...

wary anchor
#

You can extend it to write more overloads than the 6 components + Entity + index + dynamic buffer if you want

remote crater
#

Roo, how would I go about doing that? I might have to.

karmic basin
#

@remote crater You can write custom delegates that take in more than 8 parameters, but it's not advised because now you want 15 but later if you want 14 or 16 you'll have to write one new delegate for each one.

#

Usually you would rather go through jobs at this point.

remote crater
#

You guys are very helpful. I'm gathering general info: Lets reel back to my secondary question: If I have entity in a .for each loop, can I just grab EntityComponentData, or is it dirty not slid in parallel memory if i do that?

karmic basin
#

And 15 is a lot, maybe your system is trying to do too much things at once ? Can't you really split the work on a bunch of more little dedicated systems ?

remote crater
#

I thought I heard jobs were being obfuscated and depreciated

#

I like to make classes and scripts that apply to many different types of entities.

karmic basin
#

JobComponentSystem were deprecated in favor of SystemBase, but you can use Jobs

#

if that's what you're referring

remote crater
#

So like above: CustomCollisionData & CustomEntityData might be applied to most of my entities processed in their own system. But I could have different stuff like,"Affinity towards objects", "Alignment", "Personality", it could go on and on.

#

Thank you VERY much

#

I am thankful

#

I don't want to bother you

#

You got me more than enough, don't want to bother.

karmic basin
#

That's okay, most important thing is not staying stuck for a long time

remote crater
#

I don't need to get too crazy into it.

#

I'm stuck for 8 days

#

Trying to delete an entity.

#

In gameobject, this takes me 30 seconds.

#

I think I have a couple angle of attacks to get unstuck today.

#

If I get unstuck, I'm 7-30 hours out from a Finished MOBA +Finished MMORPG engine at the same time!

#

You know sometimes crossing the finishline is as tough as half of the entire race.

tribal pollen
#

@pulsar jay So if i'm using that second example, I'd create those arrays with EntityQueries (with your example for enemies, presumbly add in more array's for a player), then create a job for them, then after scheduling the job call WithDisposeOnCompletion?

wary anchor
#

meanwhile I'm not able to track down this bug, but on the plus side I'm tidying up a few things as I go and getting some extra performance which is nice

remote crater
#

Roo, I hear ya bro. If we do get stuck, best thing is not to get frustrated and walk away, just work on other parts. I guess I'm getting stubborn.

#

Tech hurdles are my mortal enemy. I hire a guy from India to do em for me, lol.

wary anchor
#

This project has been quite some time in the making, I'm not going anywhere until I get it right

pulsar jay
#

and then dispose them after your foreach

tribal pollen
#

Oh I pass the entityquery into the foreach? I somehow missed that lol

#

the arrays from it.

pulsar jay
#

Foreach can generally acces every var you define in OnUpdate. You just have to be careful to dispose them afterwards as they are nativearrays

tribal pollen
#

Thanks a bunch. Really appreciate it. I'll try that out. 🙂

pulsar jay
wary anchor
#

is SystemBase OnUpdate() called at the same time as the MonoBehaviour updates?

#

sorry that's a bit of an XY... I'm calling public methods on a SystemBase which then calls Invoke() on a System.Action to which lots of the UI/audio stuff is subscribed, I'm suspicious that this could be the cause of at least some of my issues

tight blade
#

anyone know offhand the math (or where to look for the math) for transforming a float3 in local space into a worldspace position using a 4x4 local to world matrix?

#

I think the math literally might just be multiplication

pliant pike
tight blade
#

but I can't remember

#

okay will do. I'm like 95% sure you can just multiply the 3x1 by the 4x4 to get the worldspace 3x1

coarse turtle
tight blade
#

oh, yeah, its kind of like that except you cant multiply a 3x1 by a 4x4 because thats not how math works. You first need to put your 3x1 into a 4x4 so that its a space, then you multiply it.

so, like

L = [ 1 0 0 x ]
[ 0 1 0 y ]
[ 0 0 1 z ]
[ 0 0 0 1 ]

then the answer is L * ltw

#

so, @pliant pike in entities maths terms, thats:

math.mul(float4x4.Translate(myFloat3LocalPos), ltw.Value).c3.xyz

#

oh, I guess that gets you a 4x4 back, so then you have to...

#

fixed

pliant pike
#

that's awesome, thanks

wary anchor
#

might have fixed it 😮

tight blade
wary anchor
#

yeah I was asking question X whereas I should have been asking question Y, the XY problem 😄

#

BUT... I seem to have fixed it, and I think I understand why which is awesome. It was all to do with raising events from within a SystemBase for everything else to subscribe to (UI, audio etc) to sort the game loop out properly, trigger creation/deletion of entities as needed. I ended up using entity command buffers for this to make sure all the entities used to gate systems are only created or destroyed at a sync point rather than at random times during the frame. I just stress tested it and couldn't get it to crash, which is a great sign. Going to put burst back on now and see how it looks in a build!

tribal pollen
#

@pulsar jay worked like a charm 🙂

wary anchor
#

OMG my stress test without burst and with all the debugging in the editor was running at 170ms per frame (for 1000 enemies all running custom physics against a structure containing 2000 atoms). I figured it'd be slow in the build but it's easily running it > 60fps 😄

tight blade
#

woohoo! congrats!

wary anchor
#

Cheers! Yeah that's exceeded my expectations (and I've been using DOTS for a long time in this project now!)

tight blade
#

just started seeing this error when entering playmode.. any idea what the heck this means?

unknown.png
#

sorry, thats unrelated to your success haha

#

thats a general question

wary anchor
#

are you using a tuple somewhere in a burst compiled job?

tight blade
#

oh, damn, yeah I am. A function is returning a tuple

#

wow, right, obvious

#

thank you lol

wary anchor
#

heh NP glad to be of help instead of whining about my failures for a change! 😄

coarse turtle
wary anchor
# coarse turtle what was the problem? 👀

I was raising events in a SystemBase for monobehaviourland to subscribe to. But when I called invoke on those, I was immediately creating/destroying the required empty components that are used to gate various systems, instead of syncing those to the update loop via an ecb. I had to do this across a couple of systems and I needed to introduce a 1 frame delay on a UI button (bleh), but it's all looking great now, and I understand where I went wrong.

coarse turtle
#

Nice, congrats on nailing it down and getting it working too 🎉

wary anchor
#

Cheers! It's a pretty big project and I'm doing this solo (plus it's my first major project) so pretty relieved to have fixed it, even if it would probably not have been noticeable for 99% of users!

stone osprey
#

Is there a way to add an prefab-tagged entity to an ecb ?

#

Like telling the ecb it should copy an entity with all its values ?

karmic basin
#

yeah you can Instantiate from an entity

#

it will clone it, basically

stone osprey
karmic basin
#

ecb.Instantiate(Entity e);

stone osprey
#

Alright thanks ! 😄 What happens if one of the components contains a unsafelist for example ? I bet the whole list wont get copied and its just a shallow copy ?

karmic basin
#

I don't know

coarse turtle
stone osprey
#

Alright thanks !

#

Is there any way to check if an entity in the ecb has an component buffered ? So like an HasComponent<T> for the ecb ?

#

There need to be a way, right ?

pliant pike
stone osprey
#

But its buffered and the buffered data needs to be stored somewhere 😮 so its actually possible to make such an lookup... but it isnt implemented ?

pliant pike
#

Well I mean you either give the data and it is there or it isn't which would be an error surely

#

How would a buffered command deal with a hascomponent

coarse turtle
#

If the component doesn't exist, you know it hasn't been 'buffered'

#

therefore no ecb has been played back to add a component

stone osprey
#

Thats right ^^ but is there a way to get the archetype of an buffered entity somehow ?

coarse turtle
#

get the archetype before attempting to schedule a command buffer?

#

I'm not really sure what answer you're looking for

left oak
#

The only reason I can imagine why you're not already aware of what entity archetypes that you're buffering is because of generics, yeah?

tribal pollen
#

If you had 3 systems that are checking for something similar, such as proximity of entities, would you move them to the same system (still 3 seperate for each) or leave them as 3 seperate systems?

wary anchor
#

I'd separate them out, easier to find stuff that way imo

safe lintel
#

depends how similar, if the jobs arent I might personally lean on keeping in one, but then again you can disable systems so maybe separating into 3 systems might make more sense for testing

craggy steeple
#

questions about job system here?

safe lintel
#

@craggy steeple yep

craggy steeple
#

can I have structs in the main struct? idk what its called

#

it looks like I cant use arrays or other structs

safe lintel
#

you can use the collections package to add native types which replace managed arrays,lists etc

craggy steeple
#

how do I use a 2d bool array?

safe lintel
#

NativeArray, NativeList etc

craggy steeple
#

can I still have an array as a parameter of the struct?

safe lintel
#

can you post what you are trying to do? not sure if I understand

craggy steeple
# 
public struct Data
{
    NativeArray
    public Data(bool[] a)
    {
        // convert bool[] to nativearray
    }
}
safe lintel
#

is this the job?

#

or it is used inside the job?

vital sandal
#

I just upgraded my project from 2019.4 to 2020.3 and I lost about 100fps in my project with no changes beside the upgrade. I only use the job system. I Can't figure out where the perf went...

craggy steeple
# safe lintel is this the job?

this is what I pass to the job if I know what you mean
if i have arrays it doesnt work, but what if I only have array as parameter and dont save it when creating the instances?

safe lintel
#

anyway just something like

var array = new NativeArray<bool>(a.Length, Allocator.TempJob)
for(var i = 0; i < a.Length; i++){
array[i] = a[i];
}
craggy steeple
#

btw even though I'm not doing anything with it yet I lost 50fps using jobsystem
Im giving it around 400 "Data" with empty "Run" methods

..that it calls and gets results from

craggy steeple
safe lintel
#

but generally speaking, I think you should lean on the native arrays just being part of the job struct, they need to be disposed manually if you are using them as persistent

craggy steeple
safe lintel
craggy steeple
#

and what is causing the lag?

safe lintel
#

@vital sandal use the profiler if you have a backup of your project prior to upgrading and profile before and after upgrading

vital sandal
#

@safe lintel good idea

safe lintel
#

if you use .Run() it will run the job on the mainthread immediately, and potentially force any other jobs going on to also complete, you should be using schedule or scheduleparallel

craggy steeple
# safe lintel if you use .Run() it will run the job on the mainthread immediately, and potenti...

I have this

video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o12aic7kDY

unknown.png
YouTube
Infallible Code
Unity Job System — A Practical Code Example

🔥 Save 50% on ALL assets from Synty Studios with code SYNTY2021 (offer ends 9/11/21)
https://assetstore.unity.com/publisher-sale?aid=1100l3e8M

In this video, we'll use the Unity Job System to optimize some CPU-intensive code.

#Unity3D #GameDevelopment

Unity's Data-Oriented Technology Stack — Unity DOTS for short — is a package that consists o...

▶ Play video
#

7:57

#

shouldnt this run "Run" on all 400 instances in a fast way?

north bay
# vital sandal <@!94678770304155648> good idea

Are you using the stats view to read the fps out?
If I remember correctly there have been some changes to it to make it display a more accurate number in the editor
I couldn't find the forum thread where I read that, maybe someone else knows more..

safe lintel
#

@craggy steeple well he schedules and then completes, which is slightly different in that it uses job threads but then completes immediately.

vital sandal
#

@north bay Mmm.. strange, the latency just after hitting play with nothing in scene has gone from 0.2ms in 2019 to 0.8ms in 2020 but when my job code is running it went down from 0.4 to 3.7 and using another fps script I was at 590fps and now 778fps.... so which is which? hahah Maybe it would be better to compile it but it appears there is no perf loss after all.

#

thank you

craggy steeple
full epoch
#

also netcode current version devs are working on is 0.8 and last published is 0.6

#

(info is from netcode forum by the devs)

stone osprey
#

One of my entity command buffers somehow record an Entity.Null which throws errors... i already disabled burst and enabled the debugging, but it still cant tell me where the heck that entity is being recorded. The exception says the location is unknown...

How do i ever find the place where an entity.null gets inserted ? It could actually be everywhere in my code 😮

pliant pike
#

stupid question but what is the difference between dynamicbuffer.Isempty and dynamicbuffer.length = 0

tight blade
#

what the hell does it mean to get the cross product of a position and an angular momentum vector 😵‍💫

tight blade
pliant pike
#

I don't think there is a difference, I'm just making sure I haven't misunderstood or something

ruby frigate
#

Is this the right place for Animation Rigging questions?

#

Specifically, where do I inject bone transforms if I want Animation Rigging to modify them?

safe lintel
#

@craggy steeple use schedule when you can

#

@ruby frigate I think the animation rigging package falls outside of this channel though internally they may use jobs & burst for it

zenith wyvern
#

I'm not sure how an ecb would record an entity.null unless you were the one passing it

#

Which is a different problem from an ecb trying to access a destroyed entity

vital sandal
#

How do you guys use to check if a NativeList or NativeHashSet needs to be disposed on destroy?

#

I've been using if (array != default) array.Dispose() but that doesn't work for NativeHashSet and NativeLists. Are we supposed to use IsCreated? I read a lot of posts mentioning problems with it and suggesting to check if default instead.

shell berry
vital sandal
#

@shell berry and never had a problem when using IsCreated? meaning it works reliably?

shell berry
#

Yeah

vital sandal
#

Thank you

vital sandal
#

Wow, I do this in a job myNativeHashSet.Add(index); MyNativeList.AddNoResize(index); and when I print them out in the console I completely different list of numbers. It looks like the list may be out of order but the HashSet is ok.

#

I'm using ParallelWriter if that changes anything

vital sandal
#

hmmm.. after testing, the content is the same but the order of the list is all messed up. Is it normal to have to sort the list?

wary anchor
#

If it's created in parallel, you can't guarantee the order

vital sandal
#

Yet NativeHashSet has no issue preserving the order

wary anchor
#

I don't know enough about how the HativeHashSet<T>.Enumerator works to answer that - I'd query how it's being iterated first (I seem to recall NativeHashSets having a different layout than regular HashSets but I am hazy on the details)

# 
 at Unity.Entities.EntityComponentStore.ThrowIfEntitiesPerWorldIsTooHigh(Unity.Entities.EntityComponentStore* this, long newValue) ```
This is weird, it even says in the header comments in EntityComponentStore:
```cs
// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// EntityComponentStore
// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
// - Internal interface to Archetype, Entity, and Chunk data.
// - Throwing exceptions in this code not supported. (Can be called from burst delegate from main thread.)
// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

then on line 370 it's got the throw:```cs
void ThrowIfEntitiesPerWorldIsTooHigh(long newValue)
{
if (newValue > math.ceilpow2(k_MaximumEntitiesPerWorld))
{
m_IntentionallyInconsistent = 1;
throw new InvalidOperationException(
$"Maximum Entities in World is {k_MaximumEntitiesPerWorld}. Attempted to allocate {newValue}.");
}
}


does anyone else see this error when building in Entities 17 preview 42?
karmic basin
karmic basin
pliant pike
#

oh cool thanks @karmic basin

karmic basin
#

I'm curious, how many entities did you have that triggered this exception ?

#

internal const long k_MaximumEntitiesPerWorld = 128L * 1024L * 1024L; // roughly 128 million Entities per World, maximum

#

Did you have an infinite loop or something ? 😛

wary anchor
#

no I'm not spawning any entities for this, the error being thrown during the build is simply that there should be no throw in the code - but that code it's all Unity's, not mine!

karmic basin
#

Oh I thought you were having this specific error message

#

Then yeah whatever throw in build you have, you should fix it. I know, mindblowing 😛

vagrant lotus
#

its unity code?

karmic basin
#

Yeah the component store is Unity's

north bay
wary anchor
#

sorry yes that was nonspecific, it doesn't affect the build, I think it's a warning or a message, certainly not an exception

#

I'm not calling throw anywhere, Unity is!

karmic basin
#

Yeah but what does it blame you for ?

#

Why does it throw ? There's def a reason, and you need to find which one, and fix it

vagrant lotus
#

ye

#

or you help the dev discover a bug

karmic basin
#

True, could be that too :)

wary anchor
#

It's only referencing Entities classes all the way down in every warning, there's no reference to any of my code at any point

#

I'll hunt around for exception calls, just to make sure

stone osprey
#

Whats the most efficient way to query or search entities ?

#

Currently i do it like this...

var query = CreateQuery(...);
var entities = query.ToEntityArray(Allocator.TempJob);
var components = query.ToComponentArray<...>(...);

// Loop over them
// Dipose

I do this quite often to search for entities with certain values... Is there any gc free way of doing this ? Some sort of direct acess ?

wary anchor
#

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.burst@1.5/manual/docs/Warnings.html So yeah I'm getting these warnings but the only time I throw exceptions are within a monobehaviour dedicated to disk read/write, there's nothing from anything using burst or entities. I was just wondering if anyone else found this before I tell unity about it. At the very least, it should point to where it thinks this is coming from!

coarse turtle
zenith wyvern
north bay
#

It's only GC free if ToComponentDataArray doesn't target a managed type

tribal pollen
#

So right now I currently have basically no game objects, everything is an entity and I'd like to let the user click on and select certain entities.
Do I need to allow items I want clickable to also have a corresponding game object to fire click events?
Or should I try capturing the location of the click and check if a clickable entity is at that location?
What's the normal/ideal way to do this?

north bay
#

Do I need to allow items I want clickable to also have a corresponding game object to fire click events?
I would avoid this voodoo unless you already map entities to gameobjects

#

I project the bounding boxes of my entities into screen space and check whether the mouse is inside any of them that approach works pretty well for me

tribal pollen
#

Yeah that definitely is more preferable to me as well. Is there any chance I could trouble you for a small/partial code snippet of that?

north bay
#

Sure let me copy/paste something together

tribal pollen
#

Thanks

north bay
#

It's not very plug and play since I had to cut parts of it out of my code

It has the code to determine whether an entity is hovered but doesn't attempt to find the closest hovered entity since I don't need that for my use cases

tribal pollen
#

Yeah, So you basically have an authoring script attached to your entities that checks if they're being hovered. Presumably this is attached to the prefabs you expect to allow this hover?
Also dumb question, the MousePosition value, is that a global thing or is there a special way to fetch it?

north bay
#

Ye I attach that authoring to the prefabs that can be hovered over
You can also add the hovering bounds during runtime If you don't use prefabs 🤷‍♂️

I pass the MousePosition to the job, if you use the legacy input system you can use Input.mousePosition

#

It just has to be from 0, 0, to Screen.Width, Screen.Height

tribal pollen
#

Cool thanks a bunch 🙂
Just a random thought, is having an authoring script on each object or a system that runs the same code better?

#

I feel like the authoring would probably be better, but it was just a thought

north bay
#

Sorry, what do you mean?
The authoring doesn't exist during runtime

#

The could that checks whether the entity is hovered would be in a system

tribal pollen
#

Oh it implicitly creates a system to do it?

north bay
#

No my code is just badly copy/pasted

tribal pollen
#

Ah my bad.

#

I confused myself with my glance.

#

Thanks for the clarification

#

You clearly stated in the IJob and my mind did weird things lol

north bay
#

No worries 😄

stone osprey
#

Even if a bit late thanks to Sark and itsjustblank for the answer ! ^^

#

Is there any way to run a query in a scheduled job ? I need to query for some entities in there 😮 and if i try to use a entitymanager there it tells me its forbidden and i need to complete the job first.

#

So my question is basically if theres a way to query entities in an scheduled job

coarse turtle
stone osprey
coarse turtle
#

no

#

you would call it in OnUpdate, but it schedules a job which collects the ComponentData to a nativearray

#

you can then pass this native array to another scheduled job

# 
var data = query.ToComponentDataArrayAsync<T>(Allocator.TempJob, out var deps);

Job.WithCode(() => {
  // Do something with data
}.Schedule(deps);
stone osprey
vital sandal
wary anchor
#

Thank you, I'm not going mad!

vital sandal
#

no! 🙂

devout prairie
#

Is it possible to disable physics objects in unity.physics?

#

ie so they are not calculated at all no mass/velocity/dynamics/collisions etc

#

i'm guessing no simple way at this point to just 'switch them off'

tight blade
# karmic basin this would be the normal of a plane containing the position point and the vector...

yeah, its actually slightly more nuanced than that. Geometrically you're getting the normal of a plane, but semantically, when you take cross product of a position and an angular momentum vector, you're getting the instantaneous rotational impulse that you would apply to point 0,0 in order to achieve the angular velocity at that point.

And yeah, was a DOTS physics question ultimately. Ultimately what I needed to know was whether the input to ApplyImpulse was in local space or world space, since it isn't documented. (it's in local space)

#

so its getting angular acceleration (around a fulcrum) from linear point velocity attached to the fulcrum

safe lintel
devout prairie
#

I was looking for a way to effectively pool physics objects without the need to instantiate

#

so i could create a pool, apply PhysicsExclude to them, then remove when i need to wake one up

safe lintel
#

why not just instantiate?

devout prairie
#

i may have to use ecb in any case but if the entities technically 'exist' i can refer to them within the system but defer 'awakening' to later using the ecb

tribal pollen
#

If you have an enemy entity, (and say health component and velocity) does it make more sense to have an enemy tag and add those 3 components? Or add the hp/velocity to the enemy component, there in only adding one component to the entity?

gilded glacier
#

do you guys store archetypes and queries on a dedicated place, so you don't have to have the same component type array in every relevant system ?

#

I wanted to make it that way, but it appears more difficult than it seemed, because whether the queried components are rw or readonly depends on an individual system

forest quest
digital kestrel
#

can you have a physics raycast job run for multiple frames if you know the all the colliders are static?

#

i get an access nativemultihashmap error when I do because I think the physics system rebuilds the world every frame

wary anchor
half jay
#

Should i dispose entityArray in this case? Or DestroyEntity(entityArray ) will do for me? Unity doesn't throw exception on this case without manually Dispose()

unknown.png
north bay
#

No you shouldn't
Dispose on temp allocations doesn't do anything

gusty comet
#

UE5 just added a ton of ECS stuff to its main branch. Looks similar to dots ecs from a glance. 🤔

#

any follow ups on unity side for the dots state?

hollow sorrel
#

whaa

#

link?

gusty comet
#

not sure if I can link that here, but you can find the plug in on ue5-main branch, under MassEntity plugin folder

stiff skiff
#

It's far from similar to the Unity ECS, close to other C++ ECS's, like EnTT

hollow sorrel
#

oooo i see

#

nice

gusty comet
#

well, obviously it is in C++, I meant similar as in using similar concepts like archetypes

hollow sorrel
#

do they have any docs for that?

gusty comet
#

no, it dropped in hot, and the main branch is at 5.1 right now. So it won't even be available for the 5.0 release

stiff skiff
#

Ah right, I hadn't looking into the storage mechanics yet

#

This shows some examples of the API

gusty comet
#

they're probably using it on fortnite

hollow sorrel
#

ty

stiff skiff
#

You're right, it's archetype based, fancy

karmic basin
#

🙈 I don't wanna look, I don't have time to switch to UE5

#

looks def interesting, large-scale AI system 😋

north bay
#

Nice, that means more pressure on unity to deliver something 👀

dull copper
#

That didn't really work like that on terrain layering system though (they teased it for year+, then UE implemented their own system and it's been radio silence from Unity since on that topic)

safe lintel
#

fully expecting unity to get leap frogged in no time at this rate

shell berry
stiff skiff
shell berry
#

Oh shit, is this a legal battle about to happen?

stiff skiff
#

Neh, because Unity wasnt the first to use archetype based storage for an ECS

shell berry
#

It's up to Unity. They can sue for patent infringement, then Epic defends by showing prior use.

#

There's a court rule that it's your responsibility to defend your patents, or something like that.

#

I welcome the competition, though

#

C++ might have an edge here because they have no distinction of contiguous memory layout between objects and value types.

safe lintel
#

nah i dont think you have to defend patents to keep them

#

if it were trademarks i think you need to actively defend em

gilded glacier
#

another general ecs question: ecs, due to its nature to be more computer-friendly, and to have implemented solutions that are either abstract or not very apparent what those do, probably needs a lot of external project documentation

#

do you have one ?
do you rely heavily on it ?
how do you maintain it ?

#

skittles ?

real salmon
#

no no no yes?

#

if someone's reading through your ecs code, you should expect them to know ecs, right?

foggy drum
#

hi, im trying to convert a prefab to an entity using the ConvertGameObjectHierarchy method, however, the children of the prefab dont get tagged with the "Parent" component, do i have to do it manually?

gilded glacier
real salmon
#

@gilded glacier btw im in no way qualified to talk. i still dont think so. archetypes are handles by ecs so you dont touch that. systems update order? open up the entity debugger whilst running.

#

but i imagine some big projects in OOP sometimes write documents to describe a system if its too complex to explain in the comments

#

citation required

half jay
#

Any tips what can cause to this error when i build app

unknown.png
tribal pollen
#

So with DOTS what's the best way to implement varying type of something? enemies, weapons, skills, etc.
I see them and keep thinking with OOP mindset of wanting abstract classes with overwritten methods and getting instance of, etc.
So I see my enemy ComponentData and want to make it abstract or something, but it keeps complaining I can't do such things, so I feel i'm thinking about it wrong.
What do you guys tend to use for this kind of thing in DOTS?

coarse turtle
#

I typically use bitflags, filter entities with the correct bitflags, and run jobs to do w/e behavior.

tribal pollen
#

so the end goal is like having a bunch of different weapon prefabs with the same components and just different values

coarse turtle
#

Yea pretty much

tribal pollen
#

then in game if you give a couple choices to the user to pick, how do you choose to uniquely label them?

#

do you add a label data component?

#

It didn't seem to like me using string in them.

coarse turtle
#

Use FixedString if anything

full epoch
coarse turtle
#

FixedString512, etc are good alternative and come with size limits so don't go thinking you can load like 50k characters. You'll probably need to break up large pieces of text somehow. (Otherwise consider something like a bump allocator of characters if you need large pieces of text)

tribal pollen
#

ok thanks.

#

@full epoch that thread looks good too, Thanks I'll have a read.

full epoch
#

also plenty more similar threads u can find on unity-dots forum

real salmon
#

imo you should only ever use strings when dealing with GUI

tribal pollen
#

That's kinda what I wanted too, I just feel the desire to map them, like extend a general "Weapon Type" or something...

#

I really didn't want to put strings in my components, It's just the fallback. I wanted a nice component way to express the types.

real salmon
#

i would split your weapon type into different atomic weapon systems?

tribal pollen
#

Just like if you have a weapon, I think Id want to to only have 1 component for it, not 1 weapondata and 1 weapon type.

real salmon
#

i would use multiple weapon systems (and weapon data) for 1 weapon type

#

for example, a sword class could have "attack system", and "block system"

#

then a shield class could reuse the "block system"

tribal pollen
#

so then if it's like this type of lazer weapon is unblockable, how in your block system would you want to check that?
see if your attacking entity contains a component tag for lazer type? or would the weapondata have some mapped value to it's type

coarse turtle
#

Could check a mask value, if the mask passes, then you know that there's a "Block" flag and the other entity is blocked, otherwise it's not blocked. Cause in the end you can just have it as damage multiplier or some gradient damage scaling system.

real salmon
#

well i think a lazer weapon either would be "inherently" unblockable (in which case see if your attacking entity contains a component tag for unblockable type) or some lazer weapons are unblockable (in which case maybe your "shoot system" should have a unblockable bool)

#

i wouldnt use a mask because unless you have a whole bunch of booleans to check lots of times, its a pain in the butt

tribal pollen
#

Yeah I might've gone on a tangent, I think I have to reel my thoughts back from OOP to DOTS, and think whats the practical difference besides values, if a difference exists it probably deserves a component or tag, and possibly a system

real salmon
#

youre thinking correctly. fyi ive never implemented what im saying, i am talking shit.

coarse turtle
vagrant surge
#

you can have oop parts and classes on an ECS just fine

#

for specific things where you want your virtuals and similar

#

ofc pure DOTS bursted wont allow it

real salmon
foggy drum
stiff skiff
#

You might want to use an ECB for that

foggy drum
stiff skiff
#

Yeah

#

It's just a struct

#

You make one, use it to queue the component adds, and then call Playback on it, passing in the entityManager

#

If I remember correctly this combines the component adds, so the child entities wont change archetype twice

foggy drum
#

alright thank you

forest quest
# tribal pollen So with DOTS what's the best way to implement varying type of something? enemies...

The way I solve these relationships is with utility functions, something I feel is an under-appreciated in most ECS discussions I've read: Take whatever abstract class you want to make, move the state into a component and move the behavior into a static function inside a static utility class. You can then "implement" the component inside a system by calling the function, going so far as to even pass in functions through action or func parameters as a replacement for abstract or virtual method overrides in objects. Unity's hybrid renderer uses this approach, and uses "description" structs to craft more parameters for functions with too many or more complex parameters.

#

and if you like, you can enforce usage of the utility function by making the component fields internal and treating your namespaces as the domain of data hiding and encapsulation

#

so something like

    public float Area {get; protected set;}
    private double _growTimestamp;

    void Update()
        Area = CalcArea();
        if (Time.time - _growTimestamp > 10)
            _growTimestamp = Time.time;
            Grow();
        
    abstract float CalcArea();
    virtual void Grow()
    {
    }
#

becomes

struct ShapeData : IComponentData
    float Area { get; internal set; }
    internal double _growTimestamp;

static class ShapeUtil
    public static void UpdateShape(
        ref ShapeData shape, double time, 
        float area, Action grow)
    {
        shape.Area = area;
        if (time - shape._growTimestamp > 10)
            shape._growTimestamp = time;
            grow.Invoke();
    }
stone osprey
#

Quick question... How are scheduled and scheduledParallel iterations implemented ?

I mean... lets say we have two systems scheduling jobs... Do they really run parallel to each other ?

Or is it more like the first system spawns in its jobs, processes them... The second system waits for the jobs of the first system to complete and then creates its jobs ?

zenith wyvern
#

Jobb would only wait for Joba if joba is a dependency. Otherwise they might run in parallel, or they might not, depending on what else is going on in the scheduler

velvet panther
#

What is the absolutely lightest, fastest way to get a ParallelFor Job pushed off to OTHER cores that are not the main core of any given device?

#

I want to issue a Job and be (as best as possible) assured that issuing it and receiving its "we're done" status have the bare minimum impact on gameplay smoothness. None, preferably. Main concern Android devices, but all others a concern, too.

#

Don't care how many frames the Job takes (within reason) but do care if issuing it or receiving its "done" status cause any kind of hiccup.

willow plaza
#

You could check it in update or a coroutine and if it's complete, get the results.

#

As for specifying what core to execute the job on, I don't think you have control over that aside from JobHandle.Complete() that's gonna wait on the main thread until it's complete or IJob.Run() that's just gonna run it on the main thread. But I also don't think that scheduled jobs have any impact on the main thread performance.

stone osprey
#

So i basically search for a way to replicate unitys ecs jobs ( for my server which uses a different ecs and language ). Therefore i need to understand how unitys ecs jobs work in theory ^^ would be great if someone could provide some details

willow plaza
#

It probably "locks" the native arrays that it works with and does not allow other jobs that use them to run.🤔

mental bison
#

Does every System script that I write... just run all the time? Without attaching it to anything?

stiff skiff
#

Yes, but "It's complicated"

#

By default, every system is added to the Simulation systemgroup, which runs every frame

#

But while this "runs" your system, it will not always run your OnUpdate step

#

It will only do this if it "needs" to, and this depends on if you have the [AlwaysUpdateSystem] attribute, or if any matching archetypes used in your system have 1 or more entities that frame

velvet panther
#

Does everyone just do isolated testing as research to figure this out, and then keep this information to themselves? Do the makers of this tech suffer from some inability to explain their tech?

#

Most of the documentation on most of the features and functionality are near perfect restatements of the method signatures. Pure tautology rather than anything close to descriptive, let alone explanatory. How few people use Burst and Jobs that this isn't considered bad form?

#

Granted, ECS is shifting sands, but Burst and Jobs are basically completed. Yet the docs and demos are ... barebones, if I'm being generous.

#

And the youtube videos... froth for 15 out of any 20 minutes, then more "watch me write code" and "dada!"

#

Unite conference videos? 'Learn to use float4 to get the SIMD benefit, think down not across', all of them. Each nearly an hour.

stone osprey
coarse turtle
karmic basin
stone osprey
karmic basin
north bay
#

Read/Write component types have nothing to do with the way the job system works internally

#

You need to see unity's ecs and the job system as two separate things

No idea how the job system works internally but this is how entities handles scheduling on a high level:

Each EntityManager (or world) has a ComponentDependencyManager, this struct is responsible for tracking component read/write access

When a system needs to acquire any kind of access to a component (this can be a ComponentTypeHandle, ComponentDataFromEntity, BufferFromEntity) it adds the component type to either it's writing or reading component list
When you then later access the Dependency property it passes those lists to the ComponentDependencyManager which then builds a job handle from the passed component types and previously scheduled jobs
After your OnUpdate call has completed the internal AfterOnUpdate method will pass your systems job handle + the component lists to the ComponentDependencyManager which can then use it for the next system that asks for the components your job uses

velvet panther
#

It behooves a tool maker to empower their users. Unity's good at making claims and pushing out promo pieces, but not so good at explaining what they're claiming.

coarse turtle
velvet panther
#

It's not hard. Jobs and Burst have been finished for what... 2 years?

coarse turtle
#

Yea I get the frustration - dunno what else you want me to say 🤷

velvet panther
#

What have been your discoveries of the best way to use Jobs/Burst? (let's avoid ECS, for now, as it's way too speculative)

coarse turtle
#

I just experiment - everything relies on the jobhandle, so the most important thing for me is when to call JobHandle.Complete()

#

If you need a job to run multiple frames, then you may want to figure out a design that allows you to schedule only when needed and when there isn't a running job (if you only care about running 1 job at a time)

tight blade
#

anybody know how LocalToWorld interacts with the fixed step stuff in physics?

#

like, I just stopped to consider that maybe LocalToWorld isn't being updated until the next display frame, regardless of how many physics frames run

#

and in particular I wonder if other things like WorldToLocal dont get updated in physics frames

safe lintel
#

physics only uses translation for dynamic/kinematic, tbh I cant remember if it uses ltw for static or still translation there too

#

physics basically ignores the entire transform system for rigidbodies aside from translation and rotation

velvet panther
coarse turtle
#

Yeah another I saw (but still need to do more experiments w/) is - if you schedule on LateUpdate, based on the profiler, it looks like it'll just block the main thread

velvet panther
#

Further, that Burst/Jobs are capable of incredible performance and don't have a unique, more granular timing option than frame rate or physics rate is a huge failure of imagination in design.

#

I've seen that, too. And been a bit worried about it in terms of what they plan there. So just avoided it because I couldn't ascertain what they were thinking... which, again, would be nice to have insight into... "we've provided this, it operates this way, as we envisage it being used for this..>" etc.

coarse turtle
#

There was a forum post in how they were handling allocators - which would possibly change how jobs would handle leak detection - so something to look out for