archived-dots

[coarse turtle]

var handle = Job.WithCode(() => { }).Schedule();

[graceful mason]

@rustic rain

[UpdateInGroup(typeof(FixedStepSimulationSystemGroup))]
public class MapGridNeighbourManagementSystem : SystemBase {

but I think now, by default every system goes into that group anyways from my recent test

@coarse turtle I get, cannot assign void to inplictly typed variable

[rustic rain]

wait a second. What components will be in Instantiated entity from this prefab?

[graceful mason]

or we should use the non ecs job system?
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/JobSystemJobDependencies.html?_ga=2.92731934.2014815354.1641065380-1774713299.1640232477

[coarse turtle]

Not sure what you're seeing exactly, but this compiles in a SystemBase.

JobHandle handle = Job.WithCode(() => { 
  int a = 1 + 1;
}).Schedule(Dependency);

[rustic rain]

so, looks like DOTS creates a lot of components itself

[graceful mason]

ok nice one thanks, I needed to be using Unity.Jobs

so last q, how to make it so nothing is waiting on it (e.g I can pick it up a few frames later without fps hits)?

[rustic rain]

I guess converted objects will have those components no matter what?

I removed everything from object, but it still has all those components I don't really need

I'm assuming I can remove all components I don't need in Convert()?

[rustic rain]

        //This will add our dependency to be played back on the BeginSimulationEntityCommandBuffer
        m_BeginSimECB.AddJobHandleForProducer(Dependency);

Any tip for exactly this is doing?

[viral sonnet]

Now that Unity announced that Hybrid is the way forward. How are you guys handling ECS Physics? I don't want 2 running physics simulations that need to be synced. Any straight forward MB implementation that uses ECS Physics for collision?

[zenith wyvern]

It adds the calling system to the list of dependencies using the ecb system's buffer

[rustic rain]

Dependencies on what?

[zenith wyvern]

On the command buffer job managed by the ecb system

Basically it tells the ecb system that it needs to force complete all these jobs before it runs the buffer

[rustic rain]

oh, so by default it might run before this job is complete

[zenith wyvern]

Otherwise it will cause a dependency error

Pretty much, it has no way of knowing there's a dependency between the ecb system and your system since the ecb system runs on the main thread. so that's how you tell the safety system that there is a dependency

That's my understanding of it at least

[haughty rampart]

hybrid is not the way forward, it's more the way how 1.0 will initially function.

[zenith wyvern]

Why would there be 2 physics systems?

"Hybrid" basically just refers to the conversion system, everything at runtime should be pure entities

[rustic rain]

I feel like the best way to render things is pure code:
Calling DrawMesh() or DrawMeshInstanced()

But I might be totally wrong as I never even touched that subject yet

[haughty rampart]

no not really. hybrid refers to the whole game. different systems will not be able to be used in pure dots yet. e.g. cameras

[viral sonnet]

This means the scope of 1.0 includes strong conversion workflows allowing you to choose ECS for its value in solving specific challenges while leveraging GameObjects for other aspects of your production

[haughty rampart]

hybrid renderer for now

[zenith wyvern]

Okay well physics is not one of those systems

[safe lintel]

@viral sonnet my somewhat current setup has skinned monobehaviour characters which have ecs physics attached to the bones for entity collision and entity ragdolls, not really sure if its straightforward but its not exactly difficult either, just a bit fiddly to setup

[rustic rain]

Any idea what is better approach to this subject:
For example there's a universal Velocity component, and movement system will move all those entities based on it.
But what if Some of those entities have VelocityModifier component, which shouldn't affect Velocity itself

My guess are either creating several systems WithNone and WithAll for this extra component

or maybe there's some other solution?

I doubt checking entities for components during job is any good

[haughty rampart]

why would velocity modifier not affect velocity???

[rustic rain]

It's just example

[viral sonnet]

So you funnel everything into ECS physics? No MB physics at all?

[zenith wyvern]

I think maybe you want write groups? https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.17/manual/ecs_write_groups.html

That's kind of what it sounds like from your description

[safe lintel]

@zenith wyvern hybrid is a bit misused by unity imo, it can refer to anything that uses unityengine based things(ie hybridrenderer uses meshes and materials), as well as when people refer to actual monobehaviour components on entities

[zenith wyvern]

It lets you override certain systems based on extra components

[haughty rampart]

ecs is very use case driven and logic defined. if it's a bad example, then solutions for it could differ extremely and the best solution is not even among them

[viral sonnet]

yeah, the hybrid term is very vague with the Hybrid Renderer. Not sure why it's even called HR when it's pure ECS

[zenith wyvern]

True, kind of pointless to argue over the semantics of what hybrid even means at this point

[viral sonnet]

I understand it as MB + ECS

[zenith wyvern]

Unity has kind of mashed the meaning into nothingness all on their own

[safe lintel]

@viral sonnet yeah but tbh Id like to ditch it because it makes pooling & saving more complicated(for my inferior brain)

[haughty rampart]

hybrid on unity's definition refers to unity engine stuff and dots. not monobehaviour components on entities

[coarse turtle]

im kind of glad that class based component data still serialize decently w/ subscenes 🤔

[haughty rampart]

because it doesn't use pure ecs / dots

[safe lintel]

actually that term has been nebulous from the start, unity were referring to it when the initial proxy components existed

so it kinda stuck with the community I guess

[zenith wyvern]

And then they were seemingly using "pure dots" as an actual thing, which is no longer an actual thing as far as they are concerned

[safe lintel]

good old GameObjectEntity

@zenith wyvern yeah

[haughty rampart]

monobehaviour components on entities is deprecated anyways

[haughty rampart]

not currently unfortunately

[safe lintel]

and im just explaining how its definition has been used and varies by person to person @haughty rampart

[haughty rampart]

and i stated unity's latest definition of hybrid workflow

[safe lintel]

my comments werent directed at you when I mentioned this previously

[rotund token]

i'm pretty sure only 'hybridcomponents' are deprecated

not actually attaching components to entities

[rustic rain]

I don't get it, it updates so fast, it's actually inactive most of frames?

I have 2000 objects, I kind of assume that there's should be at least 1 per frame that gets removed

[rotund token]

if it says not run it means no entity query matched

it didn't even call update

[rustic rain]

yeah, that's what I mean by "too fast"

still "not run" with 20k

funny, I really think it's a bug

Impossible that most of frames are without queries

[viral sonnet]

put a Debug.Break or Log in the system. You will not catch it in the Entity Debugger

[rotund token]

not trying to take a dig at you more a frustration at work but, why do devs always jump to, there's a bug in the library/compiler first instead of a bug in their own code 😐

[rustic rain]

nature of most ppl I guess xD

[rustic rain]

I know exactly that it actually runs, because if I turn system off, no entities get destroyed

it's just funny it's not getting caught by debugger

[rotund token]

yeah but if it only runs 1/30 frames you'll never see it here

he's suggesting a debug to show how often it runs

[rustic rain]

ah

[rotund token]

if you debug the framecount you'll know exactly the frames it runs

[rustic rain]

Is it safe to call debug from different threads?

[viral sonnet]

exactly, it's impossible to catch 1 frame systems in the debugger unless you step through every frame and look for it

[rotund token]

debug.log yes

[rustic rain]

2 seconds

oh wait

I forgot frame count

[rotund token]

just to follow up this, you can subscribe to either the main thread only or the threaded version
Application.logMessageReceived
Application.logMessageReceivedThreaded

[rustic rain]

How to get some kind of unique per frame value?

[rotund token]

Time.frameCount

(not this.Time you need UnityEngine.Time)

[rustic rain]

frameCount can only be called from main thread kek

ok

[rotund token]

why is it not being called from main thread

[rustic rain]

I'll just assume it's the way it is, because it's threaded

[rotund token]

you're testing how often the system runs

all you care about is the log in the systemUpdate method

not in your job

[rustic rain]

but isn't it called every frame anyway?

[rotund token]

OnUpdate is only run if there is a matching query in the system

if there is no matching query, it shows not run

i.e. your above picture

if its run, it will always have a time

[rustic rain]

but how does it know if query is matching before running OnUpdate()?

[rotund token]

it's all handled in systembase

        {
            var state = CheckedState();

#if ENABLE_PROFILER
            using (state->m_ProfilerMarker.Auto())
#endif
            {
                state->BeforeUpdateResetRunTracker();

                if (Enabled && ShouldRunSystem())
                {
                    if (!state->PreviouslyEnabled)
                    {
                        state->PreviouslyEnabled = true;
                        OnStartRunning();
                    }

                    state->BeforeOnUpdate();

                    var world = World.Unmanaged;
                    var oldExecutingSystem = world.ExecutingSystem;
                    world.ExecutingSystem = state->m_Handle;
                    try
                    {
                        OnUpdate();```

[rustic rain]

uuugh, I wonder how it'll interact with Harmony patches

[rotund token]

a lot of stuff goes on before OnUpdate is called

if you want the system to always update regardless of query, add [AlwaysUpdateSystem] attribute

[rustic rain]

well, system runs about 40 frames per second

[viral sonnet]

hm, why is Convert To Entity with "Convert and Inject GO" not intended for childs for a GO in normal scene. How should this be handled?

seems I've to use manual conversion instead

[rotund token]

(there is a chance ConvertToEntity does not exist in 0.5; been deprecated for 2 years)

(i should actually go ask unity this)

[viral sonnet]

i would use subscenes but MBs get removed in builds

[rustic rain]

MBs?

[viral sonnet]

MonoBehaviours

[rotund token]

consider how much you like performance, surprised you use MB 🧐

[viral sonnet]

demo usage 🙂 I want to support MB spellcasters

for animation, movement, etc...

is there any intended way currently for GO conversion other than subscenes?

[remote crater]

Is it possible to have a Singleton accessed by many JobComponentSystems and SystemBases?

For example, I want to apply damage to entities

[rotund token]

no

[remote crater]

I think writing one damage apply ( armor/shields/etc adjustments)

So I just have to make hacky ugly bad style screw design patterns for now

I can make ugly code if that ain't available now

[rotund token]

Is it possible to have a Singleton accessed by many JobComponentSystems and SystemBases?

For example, I want to apply damage to entities

Sorry I'm not seeing the connection between your question and example. [You can use GetSingleton in any system, though if you ever edit this you should use GetSingletonEntity and get the actual component in the job]

[viral sonnet]

huh, so when considering MBs are not saved in subscenes, there's no real intended way for hybrid then other than the soonish deprecated ConvertToEntity. Man ... haha

[rotund token]

how are gameobjects not saved (via hybrid components which is now deprecated but we can come back to that)

lights etc on gameobjects in subscenes etc load in builds

personally my approach @viral sonnet would not to be to convert the gameobject part at all

[zenith wyvern]

There's ConvertToEntity scripts

[rotund token]

just build a gameobject view data base and put a component/key on the entity in the subscene

and instantiate/match them at runtime

[remote crater]

So you gave me two different conflicting answers. My question is: If I have a function that applies damage to an entity: Do I need to rewrite it in every single jobComponentsystem and SystemBase file I make, or can I make a global method all jobComponentSystems and SystemBases can reference it(proper software architecture).

[rotund token]

thats been deprecated for 2 years

[viral sonnet]

attached MBs on subscene GOs were not loaded. I have not tested adding them manually

[rotund token]

oh you mean function. i would not call a function a singleton

[zenith wyvern]

It's all I used up until I stopped developing in Unity, which was still the latest version. Subscenes are not well documented enough

[rotund token]

they will not be loaded unless you call AddHybridComponent<YOURCOMPONENT>

but this is deprecated in 0.5

anything not marked as a hybrid component is stripped in subscene

[viral sonnet]

yeah, guess this is the way forward. thanks, gonna stick to this. I don't like the other way around anyway 😄

[rotund token]

(but again not a good idea going forward 😅 but it should still work in 0.5, but removed in 1.0)

[remote crater]

I gave up making subscenes work yesterday due to no one knowing what was going on. I pull all my scenes in the main scene and enable/disable em now for a hack.

[rotund token]

the best approach if your logic is complicated is usually to write your logic in a struct and pass that struct to both jobs

[remote crater]

ty tertle

a struct?

will do

This will save me hundreds of hours over the next few years.

[rotund token]

{
    public BufferFromEntity<DamageInstance> DamageInstances;
    
    public void DealDamage(Entity entity, int damage)
    {
        DamageInstance[entity].Add(new DamageInstance {Value = damage});
    }   
}```

[remote crater]

Well maybe a hundred cuz I'd refactor when I saw it becoming a mess

WHOA

[rotund token]

you can pass this struct to multiple jobs etc

[remote crater]

I know how to use a struct 🙂

You're a boss tho

for bustin out straight 'zample code!

Remember, track me down at paradise city and get your greenbacks in a manilla gorilla envelope

[rotund token]

i'm not always the best at explaining things and personally find code examples much easier to understand

[remote crater]

100% yah

I understood you with struct

I was just impressed

you went full on example

Thats what a boss does

You a boss

[viral sonnet]

Do we have any info how the new approach in 0.5 looks like?

[rotund token]

hybrid is just being marked as internal only pretty much

sounds like issues supporting it except for specific components

they say to just use managed component data

but yeah i'm not sure if there's anything in place to handle the gameobject lifecycle

[viral sonnet]

your game doesn't run on the HR, right? How are you handling this right now?

[rotund token]

my personal game or at work?

[viral sonnet]

at work

[rotund token]

oh no, we don't use conversion at all

was written so long ago

it's horrible

[viral sonnet]

and your personal one uses HR?

[rotund token]

yeah i only have 2 gameobjects
a direction light
and a UIDocument script

[viral sonnet]

so you're using the animations package successfully?

[rotund token]

haha no, my game currently has no animations. that's future package update problem

i've intentionally just not worked on that area at all

[viral sonnet]

hehe, i see. I'm at a point where I got to get some animations though. This part sucks ass

[rotund token]

sorry i kind of lied

i do have idle animations playing through animation package but that's about it

but yeah most of the code i write myself is more libraries, i don't care that much about actual game implementation

[remote crater]

yah tertle buddy, worked

[rotund token]

i'm a bit weird, i'm all about game architecture

[remote crater]

I'm launching my MMO today or tomorrow

I'm beyond weird then

Cuz I'm not just architecture

I'm about it looking pretty

and speed

People know me as one of the fastest prototypers out there

yet my architecture is super boss too

You can tell the difference between a software architect and a software maker

the larger the project, the more it is easy to expand for an architect

[viral sonnet]

as I'm building an asset foremost, I'm puzzled how to deal with this. Investing into a deprecated workflow makes no sense but not sure how far the animations package is off. from the blog post it doesn't look to good when they imply we are still able to use GOs

[remote crater]

for a regular software engineeer/coder, often stuff falls apart like a house of cards built on a tower of jello

I need a moment, I'm dorking out how easy it was to solve this, okay, back to the grind. YOu can watch the live stream of me dev here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeBptUN1vSY

[rustic rain]

hmm, how New Input System is supposed to interact with DOTS?

[zenith wyvern]

It isn't

Not any time soon anyways

[viral sonnet]

sampling in main thread and writing to structs

[rotund token]

this is the general pattern how i do inputsystem + dots

if you're interested

[safe lintel]

@viral sonnet im sorta at the verge of canning my old mecanim characters in favor of using the dots anim package, depending on what you specifically need for animation it may already suit your needs. currently events dont exist, and not sure if statemachines exist either.

[rotund token]

    public class InputDefault : IComponentData
    {
        public InputActionAsset Asset;

        public InputActionReference CursorPosition;
        public InputActionReference Move;
        public InputActionReference PrimaryAction;
        public InputActionReference SecondaryAction;

        public InputActionReference CameraTurbo;
        public InputActionReference CameraMove;
        public InputActionReference CameraMoveY;
        public InputActionReference CameraLook;
        public InputActionReference CameraLookMouseEnable;
        public InputActionReference CameraLookController;
        public InputActionReference CameraZoom;
    }```
the reference component is created in a subscene
originally i sampled on update but i decided to stick with the intended inputsystem event approach

[remote crater]

The best way to do it

is tokeep your old player controller for gameobjects

then just load in the entity pos/rot/velocity, map to gameobject, controil game object with old player controller, then set rot/velocity/etc (not position)

Then what happens is

You can have your old gameobject style game with its hundreds of levels or whatever

and start adding new levels

and still have your player act normal

just make new enmies

its the proper software architecture, like no one knows it

I posted the holy grail video about this, and no one seemed to care

if anyone wants me to drop it, its an hour long video saying the same thing over and over in different ways

I'll conciseify it later once my mmo is outs oon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIEV14B20Pc&t=780s

For people who dork out over software architecture and wish Dots/ECS could be used in everyone's old GameObject games... You'll be stoked.

DOTS/ECS is marketted too hard towards making entirely new games.

Its like no one figured this out but me.

[rotund token]

my controversial take is a bit different - you shouldn't use entities if you're writing a hybrid game

just use monobehaviours and existing well developed libraries and write jobs for critical code

[remote crater]

By saying this, you do not know what I present

The only monobehavior in this is the playercontroller

[rotund token]

i'm basing this off having actually built a hybrid game released it

[remote crater]

Yes

[rotund token]

and it was a huge mistake for my company to rewrite their game with entities

[remote crater]

You don't get it man...

Everyone thinks that

Because they didn't watch this video

I actually have invented an ENTIRELY NEW thing

[rustic rain]

I don't really get what's going on in OnUpdate besides putting some data in singletons?
Also what are these types "InputCommon", "InputCamera"...?

[remote crater]

Literally, no one on the planet, but me posted this.

So, yes, its a huge headache

If you try any way but this way, I know this.

This is the Holy Grail of hybrid game solutions.

[zenith wyvern]

The gist of it is what Enzi said. You read your input in OnUpdate (on the main thread) and then run your jobs/update your entities according to that input

[rotund token]

That's the input result that various system use

    {
        /// <summary> Point in screen space. Screenspace is defined in pixels. The bottom-left is (0,0); the right-top is (pixelWidth,pixelHeight). </summary>
        public float2 ScreenPoint;

        /// <summary> Point in viewport space. Viewport space is normalized. The bottom-left is (0,0); the top-right is (1,1). </summary>
        public float2 ViewPoint;

        /// <summary> Is the cursor currently inside the view port. </summary>
        public bool InViewPort;

        /// <summary> A ray going from camera through the current <see cref="ScreenPoint"/> using <see cref="Camera.ScreenPointToRay(Vector3)"/>. </summary>
        /// <remarks> Displacement is set as a unit vector. </remarks>
        public Ray Ray;

        public bool InputOverUI; // TODO

        public ButtonState PrimaryAction;
        public ButtonState SecondaryAction;
    }```

wait this one is probably an easier example

    {
        public float2 Move;
    }```

Move is just say controller stick, or wasd

any system can read it, player controller, camera controller, map controller etc whatever

depending on state of your game

[viral sonnet]

any github, repo link?

[rotund token]

see you're missing my point. i don't think hybrid solutions should exist

[remote crater]

I have a .zip of an older build

And a youtube

Its a just a concept

[rustic rain]

so, basically when any move button is pressed, you assign data to singleton and once it's not you assign it to 0,0

and all your Character Controller systems are simply accessing that singleton?

[rotund token]

pretty much. you can just poll it on OnUpdate instead of using events (which I suspect most people do)

[remote crater]

Concept is this: Code your playerController once in monobehavior. Map the entity to the gameobject not being rendered or collision detection. Then take in position/rotation/velocity from Entity at start, processess player controller, output rotation and velocity to entity after.

[viral sonnet]

I'm with you but this is more of a symptom that we are even talking about hybrid. Unless Unity doesn't reach feature parity it'll be relevant for a long time 😦

[remote crater]

So as you change the player controller, it changes it for your old GameObject Only maps and your future Entity Only maps later.

You code one and done.

[rustic rain]

Somebody here asked

whether it's ok to call Singleton a lot from different systems

[rotund token]

i hate to say it, but that sounds like the default (and only) hybrid approach gnj

[rustic rain]

I actually now wonder if it is, kek

[viral sonnet]

yeah, we are doing this for years 🙂

[rustic rain]

ALlthought seems like it's just fear out of nowhere

[rotund token]

i'm not seeing what's special about this?

[rotund token]

so you need to be careful

[remote crater]

You can watch the video, I explain it for like 45 minutes straight. This is very very very huge for anyone who has an old game they want new levels with entities, but don't want to rewrite their player controller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIEV14B20Pc&t=780s

[rotund token]

GetSingleton actually creates a sync point on writers

GetSingletonEntity
then using GetComponent in job avoids this sync

[rustic rain]

oh, so it might ruin perfomance by overusing?

[remote crater]

going back to coding.

[rotund token]

depends what your singleton depends on. if you're sycning on an input call it's hardly going to stall anything. but if you say were writing your terrain gen to a singleton then did a get on it, could stall quite bad

[rustic rain]

you mean size of data matter in this case?

[rotund token]

no, the logic you're executing on your writes

say you're generating a giant density field and then write it to a singleton, if you call getsingleton on onupdate you need to wait for that field to be finished generating

if you getsingletonentity and then do the get in the job, no main thread sync, the job will be scheduled to after the density field generation occurs

most of the time it doesn't matter, it's just that a lot of people overlook getsingleton is really just a entitymanager.getcomponent

so same sync rules apply

[viral sonnet]

I'd recommend not using Singleton entities unless for a very specific reason. The alternative is a public field in your system which you can access from other systems too

[zenith wyvern]

It's fine as long as you're aware of how your data is being accessed

[rotund token]

tertle's 4th rule of entities development. Systems should never access other systems
the beauty of ECS is the decoupling of code

[zenith wyvern]

It's literally the same as writing a query for a component

Except you know, only on the main thread, unless you use the CDFE like tertle said

[hot basin]

have you more of these rules?

[rotund token]

they're all in my head ^_^'

[hot basin]

:<

[zenith wyvern]

I want to know what the last rule

Is

[rotund token]

you should avoid single component singletons due to wasted chunks

[zenith wyvern]

And the second last rule

[rotund token]

it's an infinite list that keeps expanding the more i read code people write

[hot basin]

i'm struggling with ECS hard, i suppose to not have references, so everything should be processed by "ticket"/event systems?

[rotund token]

events are controversial and can be abused really easily

[zenith wyvern]

I guess we should be worried if any of our code inspires one of these rules

[hot basin]

like "AttackComponent" with attacker and target?

[rotund token]

events really depend on what scalability you want to achieve

(also a lot of the time are just abused and used poorly)

[hot basin]

so how I should manage finding and attacking other units?

[rotund token]

that's a loaded question ^_^'

could be here all day

[hot basin]

anything else I came with is huge system with multiple jobs, like 1 job looks for nearby enemies and second one attack with intermediate data between with whatever form I need

so result of that system would need one structural change at the end

[rotund token]

so result of that system would need one structural change at the end
Why

[viral sonnet]

structural changes are not good

[hot basin]

sorry my bad, not structural change but ECB set component

[rotund token]

not ideal (depending on what you're doing) but much less bad
what in particular are you struggling to implement? Targeting? Dealing damage?

[viral sonnet]

you might want to look into alternatives to handle this like NativeStream for example. 1 frame data that just gets chained from one job to another is not fit for entities

[hot basin]

connecting those, every system is trivial but I struggle when I need one system to select something and next system doing something based on that

[rotund token]

without going into like, best practices or optimal performance ideas etc
would you just not have a basic 'Target' Component which simply has a reference to the entity your targeting

then the attack system can attack it, damage it etc

[hot basin]

but it uses entity refereence

and it needs a check

seems like something I shouldn't do

[viral sonnet]

often you can't linearize non-linear algorithms

[rotund token]

(side note, I consider the lack of safety on entity references to probably be the biggest flaw in entities atm)

by default with how they are used it's hugely problematic and performance limiting

i guess lifecycle management would be a better term

[viral sonnet]

true

[rotund token]

the push for static archetypes solves half the problem, but not the destroyed part

[zenith wyvern]

One of my more fun bugs was trying to track down an ecb accessing a destroyed entity. You get zero help at all

"The entity is destroyed". Thanks Unity. Thank you.

[viral sonnet]

entity.Exists check is very inconsistent. it's not in ECB destroy but it's in HasComponent

[rotund token]

i liked eizenhorn approach to avoid this and have adopted it

[hot basin]

that's why I assume entity references shouldnt be used like that

and Exist uses EntityManager so it can't be bursted?

[zenith wyvern]

You can use BFE.Exists but it's very unintuitive

[hot basin]

it cannot be parallelised*

[rotund token]

which is basically add this

[UpdateInGroup(typeof(SimulationSystemGroup), OrderLast = true)]
public class EndSimulationDestroyCommandBufferSystem : EntityCommandBufferSystem
{
}```
And only this EntityCommandBufferSystem is allowed to be used for destroy (and no other commands are allowed in this)

[zenith wyvern]

What's the Eizenhorn approeach?

[viral sonnet]

CDFE HasComponent can be used in burst jobs

[rotund token]

this way a destroy on an ECB can never break another ECB

[zenith wyvern]

Ohh, so you destroy in that ecb rather than destroying directly

Good idea

[safe lintel]

why not just use EndSimulationEntityCommandBufferSystem?

[hot basin]

because something may be writing to it

[rotund token]

System1 calls ecb.Destroy(entity)
System2 calls ecb.AddComponent(entity)

game crashes

by enforcing all your destroys occur after any other ecb calls, you don't need to worry about rare timing crashes

[safe lintel]

hm, surprised I havent actually run into this yet

[hot basin]

is there any way to have an array beside a dynamic buffer?

[zenith wyvern]

It only happened to me when I was trying to do parenting between entities. I stopped doing that and never looked back

[rotund token]

you can attach FixedList to components

[rustic rain]

Can't you just make your own system groups?

[hot basin]

but it's maxed at 4098

[rustic rain]

so you can put it's in correct order

[zenith wyvern]

You can use unsafe lists, if you're careful about disposing them

[rustic rain]

and put all your destroy system in it?

[rotund token]

trust me, you will fuck up eventually once you are in the 100s of systems

and then you luanch your game, start getting random crash reports with 0 debugging info

and spend weeks trying to track down a super rare timing bug

[rustic rain]

isn't groupping helps with that tho?

[zenith wyvern]

I really cannot stress how little info unity gives you when you run into this

It's literally just 'The entity was destroyed'

No info where it came from, nothing

[rotund token]

it's even worse in builds @zenith wyvern

[hot basin]

can't wait for new update, maybe it will help

[rotund token]

it just crashes with a really bad stack

or does it on the wrong memory then crashes the next frame

or at a completely random time because you've done something bad and corrupted your entity component store

[safe lintel]

another fun little refactor to do while waiting for 0.50

[hot basin]

so, entity references are good?

[rotund token]

they are required

i wouldn't say they are good 😅

[coarse turtle]

i had this plaguing me for the last 3 days 🥲

[zenith wyvern]

Sometimes you surely need one entity to interact with another

[rotund token]

i haven't implemented it, but my current project i'm looking at having only 1 shared entity reference (Target) then a buffer with any extra secondary references that all systems use

so the system that has a creature attack something uses the same target component as another system that the creature is mining wood

and then simply validating the target component at the start of each frame and then avoiding all checks on it

as a way to do this performantly and safely

again - not implemented yet, theory in my head

[hot basin]

I can't belive how much structural changes costs, it would be fairly easy to do this just by adding new component

[rotund token]

(but conceptionally it works really well with my AI)

at the end of the day @hot basin what's your scale and target hardware

[zenith wyvern]

You can use dynamic buffers and change detection as well

[rotund token]

if you're only making a basic game, few hundred thousand entities and only doing a few dozen archetype changes a frame

it doesn't matter if you're not targetting like xbox one/ps4

[rustic rain]

what about mobile?

[rotund token]

depends on your game again

but phones are much better than old consoles now

[rustic rain]

you mentioned consoles, I just think whether mobile have anything related to that statement too

[rotund token]

but i don't do mobile development so i haven't experimented with it

[untold tree]

Is there a way to have a local copy of the DOTS packages so I don't have to download them each time I start a new project?

[rotund token]

whereas my life at work atm is making ps4/xbox one work

[zenith wyvern]

Do dots projects even export to mobile?

[rotund token]

all packages are cached

[rustic rain]

well, they do have build package

so I assume they do

[hot basin]

my proportions are switched, I probably end up with couple thousands of units but I think all of them could change archetype in a frame

[untold tree]

I can't seem to install them from the cache though

[rustic rain]

Besides megacity showcase was presented on iphone

[rotund token]

appdata Local\Unity\cache\packages\packages.unity.com

all your package cache exists there

[hot basin]

I think TINY does

[untold tree]

Oh... I see there. I was doing it from a different location.

Let me try again

[zenith wyvern]

Have they mentioned tiny at all in the recent news push?

I haven't really been following it

[hot basin]

nope

[untold tree]

Thanks

[zenith wyvern]

There must be a lot of stories about all the project starts and stops that have happened around dots. Poor tiny

[hot basin]

it had strange niche

[rustic rain]

Playable ads

[untold tree]

When will it reach beta?

[hot basin]

I looked it up only to check sprite renderer integration with DOTS

[zenith wyvern]

Making dots games that worked in a browser could be a massive benefit, for things like game jams even

But yeah, seems like it never got off the ground...again

[untold tree]

I actually need to use it.

[coarse turtle]

Tiny was interesting since it used bgfx to handle the rendering and miniaudio to handle the audio playback 🤔

[hot basin]

do you guys use hybrid renderer?

[zenith wyvern]

In my game I kind of did. It was just a single hybrid entity with a big mesh that I redrew every frame

Not really typical usage I guess

[hot basin]

I was using it until 2021 got some shader features I needed

and I ended up with my own GPU skinning with GPU animation instancing

I wonder what UT will offer in this area

[safe lintel]

yes, though i feel trapped with 2020 and lack of point light support in urp

[hot basin]

in the end I even write my own mechanim-like animation graph as animator is slow as hell

[safe lintel]

hybrid with 2021 and urp deferred was working fine until like b12 or something, and then of course, the stay on 2020 announcement

[hot basin]

I mean I wonder if I'll benefit from this because UT seems to be not interested with this area much

[rotund token]

i use HR (hdrp) in 2021.2.7f1 fine

though i haven't tested builds

[zenith wyvern]

Are the SRPs actually in a usable place now? I feel like they were in limbo for years

[safe lintel]

i really dont know what their plans are, but that recent post did mention they wanted to make the sample projects showcasing specific use cases for 1.0, nordeus crowd sim was one of them so I have to imagine they might be considering updating that gpu animation package?

[rotund token]

i'm hoping the animation package is getting some love

[safe lintel]

or maybe it will just be an official example showcasing unofficial workflows to be forgotten to the wind like occlusion probes lol

[rotund token]

considering they said the animation team was basically dropping stuff in 2021 for it 😐

if we don't see something in 0.5 going to be massively disappointed

animations by far the thing that's always held pure implementations back

[safe lintel]

by dropping stuff you mean just no public updates statement?

[hot basin]

that's why I end up with my implementation but I had fairly easy case

[rotund token]

honestly i know a lot about future dots plans... except animations

black box on that one

[rustic rain]

what is even animation? in terms of data

[hot basin]

main thing I'm waiting for is enable/disable of components

[rotund token]

keep waiting 😅

[hot basin]

but seems it will not be in 0.50

[rotund token]

i don't understand how unity didn't realize this concept was hugely problematic from the start

[hot basin]

in my case is position of bones in time

[rotund token]

there are so many issues with it

[rustic rain]

so basically it's just arrays of transforms?

[hot basin]

yep

number of bones * number of frames big

[rustic rain]

well, I can see how it can be done directly through code then

[safe lintel]

@rotund token what specifically do you have issue with the animation package atm? scalability or something else?

[hot basin]

I probably could minimize it to keyframes and blend, but why bother

[rustic rain]

after all, everything will just come down to different matrix4x4 for mesh

[rotund token]

usability

[safe lintel]

like lack of ui? 🙂

[rotund token]

i want designers/artists to be able to use this package, not programmers

[rustic rain]

oh yeah, I didn't think of it

[safe lintel]

well at least that definitely seemed like it was around the corner

[hot basin]

I think I know, Unity doesn't make games

like Epic does

[rotund token]

i think fundamentally the concept of enable/disable on every component is potentially flawed

and should be an optional interface

90% of my components i'm never going to enable/disable

[hot basin]

yeah I think the same, probably should be avaiable only for tags

[rotund token]

so it could potentially be doing millions of checks a frame for something that is not needed

(that said, who knows how they've implemented it)

[hot basin]

and potentially tags shouldn't be counted in archetypes

[rotund token]

that's a bit breaking

for optimized algorithms

[safe lintel]

im not sold on the idea that component sets should be relatively static

[hot basin]

I think they should and tags should define it's behaviour

i.e. I have unit, ad that unit will be doing same few things over and over so I would like to have static data and something to tell me it's behaviour

[rustic rain]

isn't it going against data composition pattern?

you either have data to use or you don't

[safe lintel]

i just think for certain procedural games, changing components at runtime just seems like a more ideal workflow than having everything known beforehand

[rustic rain]

you shouldn't have any data you don't use

[hot basin]

you can use bitmasks like Jonathan said somewhere in the forum

[rotund token]

my data is not where i want it to be anymore

for simd

(this is actually the other flaw on enable/disable components, it breaks this)

and then they talk about optimizing this by grouping disabled components

at which point, you're making structural changes anyway 🤔

[hot basin]

yeah, you're right

[rotund token]

hence i have so many questions

[rustic rain]

why avoid structural changes tho?

[worn valley]

Is the enable disable components tied to the networking in ECS

[rotund token]

structural changes kill performance

[hot basin]

bookkeeping is costly

[rotund token]

it limits your working entity count from 100,000s to 1000s

[worn valley]

cause somewhere I read that you can't change components on networked entities

[rotund token]

yeah netcode requires a base static ghost archetypes

you can add/remove components (that aren't ghost components)

but these won't be serialized

[worn valley]

That is too bad. Seems to break the point of ECS

[hot basin]

but bitmasks don't make them and filtering only meas that you use entities at 0 or 1 value dependant of you want them or not

[rustic rain]

I feel like the actual reason behind this problem might be actually unrelated to structural changes

[hot basin]

everything else works as always

[rotund token]

if your data is
enabled, disabled, enabled, disable and you're only filtering on bitmask then yes you're not making structural changes

but your data is now not simd friendly

unity have publicaly stated they are looking at grouping enabled/disabled components so they would restructure your chunk to
enabled, enabled, disabled, disabled

so now your data is friendly

[hot basin]

but as far as I know this is not a structural change but part of the bookkeeping

[rotund token]

by structural change i just mean your data is changing

it's doing a memcpy

[hot basin]

I mean that copying entities between chunks is not nessesary

[rotund token]

thats really all adding/removing components is doing if you are swapping between 2 chunks

it's the exact same cost as long as you do not need to create new chunks (which does happen a lot)

[hot basin]

but doesn't need those checks

just memcopy inside chunk

but yeah that needs a lot more than a bitmask

[rotund token]

but you just know people are going to abuse it and make 1000s of enable/disables a frame

[hot basin]

but it's missing the point if it will cost alot

[rotund token]

nearly the entire cost of a structural change

is the memcpy

ok sorry im saying this wrong

i'm saying, if the chunk already exists

its nearly just as fast to do it

[zenith wyvern]

Doesn't a structural change force all jobs to complete immediately

[hot basin]

yeah, to prevent race conditions

but you are doing it in ECB as a sync point

[rotund token]

the big cost of structural changes is it creates huge amounts of new archetypes and chunks

if you managed to organize your code in a way that you only made structural changes that moved components between existing chunks, you could scale this without too many issues

[hot basin]

there should be a way to tell "keep this chunk" in common archetype case

you can probably tell ahead of time which archetypes will be used

[rotund token]

anyway way off topic the point was just that, enable/disable components are way more complicated than unity thought and that's why it's taken 18months and counting instead of the original 3 week estimate

[hot basin]

but now it seems that enable/disable components as a thing could be a wrong approach

[rotund token]

in theory it's very ideal right

[hot basin]

but why, you are doing in best case scenario same work as structural changes

with a lot of additional work

[rotund token]

stops archetype explosion

side note, the more archetypes you have the slower your queries become which effectively slows down all your systems

though i believe there is some major improvements to this in 0.5

with system queries caching the chunks

[hot basin]

I hope it brings something good

[rotund token]

way back when i joined the company i work at now, they just did the classic approach of constantly add/removing components

[hot basin]

samples included

[rotund token]

ended up with 100k+ archetypes and counting

[hot basin]

as there is not much of learning material now

[rotund token]

the entity queries became incredibly slow

something like 6ms/frame was just getting entities for queries

(hmm may be slightly miss-remembering, that 6ms might have been when i pushed it over 1mill archetypes. i think it was closer to 1-2ms actually)

[hot basin]

6ms? and no one did anything with it?

[rotund token]

but anyway, it was a measurable performance problem

[rotund token]

oh over time i managed to cull most of archetype changes down

still more than we'd like

i think we need to increase archetype space by 1.5x

unity only allows between 8-12k archetypes before running out of memory

[safe lintel]

how do you count how many archetypes exist?

[rotund token]

these days i've added it to my debug toolbar 😄

so i dont forget how to do it

[hot basin]

oh nice window

[rotund token]

so i can quickly load up the source code and tell you!

[hot basin]

EntityManager.Archetypes?

something like that i think

[rotund token]

EntityManager.GetAllArchetypes()

[safe lintel]

ahh cool

[rotund token]

oh yeah i'm very proud of this window

[hot basin]

ui toolkit?

[rotund token]

yep

i write all my debug code so it can run in development builds

and this toolbar controls it all

scales the camera etc to not obstruct view (can be minimized)

[hot basin]

so it's like SR debugger but for DOTS?

[rotund token]

technically its not just for dots

[hot basin]

do you instantiate different view for non dots project?

[rotund token]

i don't do non dots projects

[hot basin]

is there a company that do only DOTS?

[rotund token]

we only do DOTS

but this toolbar is my personal library

[hot basin]

nice! best workplace ever

[rotund token]

but yeah, you just create a system, inherit from ToolbarGroupSystem, point to a Visual element and it's basically all done

its nice in the sense you can put your system in client or server

and it will only show if the server/client world runs etc

and if you shut it down removes from the bar

all the good stuff

(i love debugging tools)

[hot basin]

I think I like tools in general

It seems I'm making only them lately

[rotund token]

i just like writing tools, frameworks/libraries that makes other developers/designers/artists life easier

i don't care so much about writing say, a complex level editor

i'm just trying to make this library the most developer friendly experience you could imagine

maximum workflow

[hot basin]

nice catchphrase 😄

[safe lintel]

that physics debug is beautiful

[rotund token]

you actually have no idea but i don't want to brag >_>

[safe lintel]

current physics debug is just horrid, no sorting hurts my brain

[rotund token]

yeah it really bothers me the unity physics debugger uses gizmos

and i want something i can use in development builds

as much as i try to discourage it, management and QA just love testing in builds instead of editor 😐

[hot basin]

then how do you draw your debug?

[rotund token]

i have a whole drawing library

that works from burst

[hot basin]

but what you call to draw?

[rotund token]

sorry what do you mean?

like to render it on screen?

[hot basin]

yeah

[rotund token]

            RenderPipelineManager.endCameraRendering += this.RenderPipelineManagerOnendCameraRendering;```

depending whether its using new SRP or old pipeline

i just inject it into the render pipeline with a commandbuffer

        {
            this.commandBuffer.Clear();
            this.BuildFrame(camera, this.commandBuffer);

            context.ExecuteCommandBuffer(this.commandBuffer);
            context.Submit();
        }

[hot basin]

RenderPipelineManagerOnEndCameraRendering* 😄

so it's just some mesh to render?

[rotund token]

what can i say, i'm a sucker for auto generated naming 😄

[rotund token]

pretty much

[hot basin]

strange that IDE don't scream at you

[rotund token]

the ide named this when i hit auto generate method

i just forgot to rename it

[hot basin]

thank for explanation! it's quicker than gizmos?

[rotund token]

oh much much faster

magnitudes faster

[safe lintel]

how many archetypes does your current(steam) project use approx? just tested for my fps, 680ish in a small test scene

[rotund token]

i havent checked in like 6 months since we havent had issues

but last i looked between 6-12k

[hot basin]

and can you draw a line?

[safe lintel]

didnt you say you run out of memory at 12k?

[rotund token]

we edited the package to increase what's allowed

[safe lintel]

ah

[rotund token]

we were hitting 30k for ages at a somewhat acceptable amount

but yeah slowly got it down

i think we're still at 3x memory allowed for it

i think we only need 1.5x

but rather burn 20MB of memory than crash

if someone sits down and plays a 20 hour session

[rotund token]

i currently support these types

[hot basin]

now I'm more interested in your rules 😄 should make a forum post for it

[rotund token]

i've been meaning to expand this drawing library a bit and support more types and features

been sitting idle for probably a year now

ive also been meaning to make it public

but it currently uses just a tiny snippet of proprietary code i need to rewrite

[hot basin]

yeah sadly you can't share much when made in the company

[rotund token]

its not done in company

all this is my own code

i share a lot of my code with my company, not the other way around 😄

for the record, aron granberg has a library that's more polished that lets you do a similar thing
https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/gui/aline-162772

[hot basin]

I made that mistake with my renderer

[rotund token]

(im not as much of a fan of the implementation from an entities perspective but it works in burst)

(it's included in a* pathfinding if you own a license)

i highly recommend a burst friendly drawing library, either aron or write your own. i don't think we've had a more useful debugging tool than being able to draw out data from burst jobs

[hot basin]

I'm hard case of "I'll make it myself" and made a HPA pathfinding myself

[rotund token]

drawing out pathfinding has been one of our best uses for it 😅

[safe lintel]

yeah aline is quite handy @hot basin

[rotund token]

oh yeah here you go, aline has a benchmark which would pretty much match what im doing

comparing gizmos and yeah its legit this different

[hot basin]

wow, nice

then probably I'll check it out

definitely saved, thanks!

[safe lintel]

would buy a native ecs 3d pathfinding project so fast if aron put one out. or anyone really

[rotund token]

i feel like if i wasn't so lazy, i'd have so many assets i could sell

because i have exactly that

[safe lintel]

frywallet.gif 😉

[hot basin]

with our own navmesh?

or are you using unitys

[rotund token]

i ported recast to dots

then added pathfinding to it

i also have a version before this that used unitys navmesh

pretty sure i posted pictures of that on the forum like 18months ago

i added optimal reciprocal collsion avoidance to it

https://gamma.cs.unc.edu/ORCA/

which runs amazing well, 200k entities at above 60fps and one day i'll solve my spatial query limitation and double that

so yeah, i have all this sort of jazz

[hot basin]

did you publish it somewhere on git?

[rotund token]

nope 😦

i don't really like publishing stuff until i consider it production ready

or simple enough it doesn't matter

[hot basin]

good approach

how did you avoidance in parallel?

is that ORCA made with this in mind?

[rotund token]

that paper i linked supports it

the whole concept is each actor does half the work without communication

[hot basin]

oh nice! saving it for later

oh I know what should I ask

how do you keep you map/graph for pathfinding

I ended up with field in the system

[rotund token]

for my navmesh?

[hot basin]

but I assume that is wrong approach

[rotund token]

as i ported recast it's basically all c++ like code

[hot basin]

I mean between frames

[rotund token]

oh

dont have my project open atm and its been a few months but from memory it's likely just stored as a pointer on the system (or on a singleton cant remember)

[hot basin]

dynamic buffer with nodes seems wrong but it's the only way besides unsafe magic that will work

[rotund token]

oh yeah it's stored so i support multiple navmesh worlds

for different actor types right

you might not like this but, this is how it's stored on a component

    {
        private readonly NativeArrayProxy<NavMeshWorld> worlds;

        [NativeDisableUnsafePtrRestriction]
        private readonly AtomicSafetyManager* safetyManager;

        internal NavMeshWorldsProxy(NavMeshWorlds world, SharedSafety sharedSafety)
        {
            this.worlds = new NativeArrayProxy<NavMeshWorld>(world.Worlds);
            this.safetyManager = sharedSafety.SafetyManager;
        }

        public NavMeshWorlds ToNavMeshWorld()
        {
            return new NavMeshWorlds { Worlds = this.worlds.ToArray(this.safetyManager) };
        }
    }```

i have this concept of native container proxies

basically it lets me store native arrays on components

then rebuilds the safety in the system that needs it

[hot basin]

I don't speak in unsafe 😄 sorry

[rotund token]

so yeah, to answer the question
it's NativeArray<NavMeshWorld>
stored on a singleton

[hot basin]

singleton monobehaviour?

[rotund token]

singleton entity component

NavMeshWorldsProxy : IComponentData

[hot basin]

so it's unsafe ptr to native array?

[rotund token]

not exactly

so these native proxies are actually a concept i kind of yoinked from the physics package

any other system simply goes GetSingleton<NavMeshWorldsProxy>().ToNavMeshWorld()
which is basically just a wrapper for NativeArray<NavMeshWorld>

[viral sonnet]

why is RaycastInput so damn weird? it only has start/end ??

[rotund token]

read the source, it actually tells you why

[viral sonnet]

lol google sent me to an old doc haha

[rotund token]

so raycastinput just converts to a ray internally for use

and ray says this

    /// This struct captures the information needed for ray casting.
    /// It is technically not a Ray as it includes a length.
    /// This is to avoid performance issues with infinite length Rays.
    /// </summary>
    public struct Ray```

unless your question was you wanted other features?

not the fact it uses start/end

instead of origin/direction

[viral sonnet]

huh, i don't have these code comments

[rotund token]

you can't see the actual source?

if not time for a new ide 😆

because unity does an overall exceptional job documenting the source code in their dots packages

[viral sonnet]

no, that's weird. i'm using VS 2022

[rotund token]

oh yeah classic
VS does not show package documentation at least not by default

[hot basin]

wow

didn't know

[viral sonnet]

right, that's annoying. yeah unity code comments are stellar

[rotund token]

i believe there might be a way to do it, but don't ask me

otherwise resharper plugin lets you see proper source

or our whole dev team has pretty much switched to rider because of dots development

overall just a superior unity ide imo but dont want to start anything 😅

[viral sonnet]

my company uses msdn action pack. otherwise I'd be on rider too probably

[hot basin]

what is this private readonly NativeArrayProxy<NavMeshWorld> worlds;

[viral sonnet]

everyone says how great it is

[hot basin]

yeah I'm also using rider

[viral sonnet]

anyway, thanks tertle, that has answered my question

and led me to another task because having no comments sucks

[rotund token]

this actually exists, for the most part, in the Unity.Physics library

com.unity.physics@0.6.0-preview.3\Unity.Physics\ECS\Base\Components\PhysicsComponents.cs

(avoid me posting a huge amount of source)

i have my own copy and have expanded it to other native containers

but the concept is based off this file

line 176

the tldr is it's just the nativearray ptr + length

the other part
com.unity.physics@0.6.0-preview.3\Unity.Physics\Base\Containers\AtomicSafetyManager.cs

is what lets you regenerate the safety handle to allow the native array to work safely in different systems

in collections sometime after 1.1 when they remove dispose sentinal (1.1 is already out, it has a conditional wrapping of dispose sentinels to allow removal)

you should be able to simply attach native containers to components

and this won't be needed

[hot basin]

wow, they did?

so I can actually have NativeArray In component itself?

[rotund token]

there's some stuff about this i can't talk about so i'll leave it at that

but collections 1.1 changelog has

Added

    REMOVE_DISPOSE_SENTINEL ifdefs in all containers for future removal of DisposeSentinel.```

DisposeSentinel is the class inside native containers that stop them being unmanaged and going on components

1+1=?

[zenith wyvern]

Seems like it would have the same restrictions as unsafe containers no?

Just faster I guess

[rotund token]

except you know, safe 😄

[viral sonnet]

huh, is this not going completely against entities? I mean, I welcome the change

[zenith wyvern]

Oh like, the safety is going to be handled in a way other than disposesentinal?

Huh

[rotund token]

dispose sentinel isn't for safety

it's for memory leak detection

AtomicSafetyHandle is for safety and its already unmanaged

i actually have a collection of semi safe containers

containers with AtomicSafetyHandle but without dispose sentinal

[zenith wyvern]

I guess I thought safety was about memory leaks

[rotund token]

so they provide safety for parallel writing etc

but don't track memory leaks

[hot basin]

is collection package fixed?

[rotund token]

with entities? no

you still need 0.15

i'm assuming entities 0.5 will use new collections

(on the memory tracking, i actually dont know what magic unity is going to use to track leaks. using a class was such an easy approach)

[hot basin]

oh collections are released now

[rotund token]

(i suspect it'll have something to do with their new memory management)

anyway i've said way too much today and done way too little coding

be more intermittent

[hot basin]

but latest jobs + collections works?

[rotund token]

if you aren't using entities

if you were doing a monobehaviour project with jobs for specific optimization then yes its considered released

[hot basin]

in most projects in my company I don't

[haughty rampart]

latest collections totally work with latest entities

[hot basin]

i'm getting errors

[safe lintel]

anyone using github copilot? when it works, its kinda creepy how well it works

made a simple ascii cube unwrapped to faces in comments with numbers at each vertex and it was able to figure it out each face after the first

[safe lintel]

its also very handy for writing non lambda jobs and all the boilerplate code

[viral sonnet]

sounds cool! the code completion from vs2022 is also pretty great.

copilot seems way more advanced

[safe lintel]

funnily enough i found the code completion for vscode to be pretty poor

[viral sonnet]

vscode is shit tier ... lol

the only redeeming factor is that it's free

writing python and setting it up was pretty cool but for c# and bigger projects... ooff

[safe lintel]

yeah its crazy(and also super dumb at times), but for some things you can prime it, like add a comment of your intended functions purpose and it will spit out something that can occasionally be on the money

[worn valley]

Does it do any DOTS stuff?

[viral sonnet]

the first good auto completion I saw was in vs2022. it's often totally on point.

[safe lintel]

yeah it handles dots stuff

[viral sonnet]

like setting all the variables in jobs was pretty much just tabbing though and auto completing 😄

[safe lintel]

maybe vs has way improved since but i find even rider isnt that great at it for jobs

[viral sonnet]

vs2022 has improved a LOT

kind of welcoming because I use it for work and intellisense was degrading to something really useless over the years

either it was slow or had wrong suggestions

really interesting what AI has brought to the table in terms of code completion

I mean we write similar stuff all the time

to have that shared now in a model and the implications of how that will look in a few years is pretty mind boggling

especially for such a large repo site like github

on the other hand, programmers have cried when new blood was using intellisense. can't think of how we will think when fresh programmers use such forms of auto completion ... haha

[old voice] back then we still had to write line per line

[safe lintel]

yeah, at times it feels like star trek holodeck command ish, "give me something that can handle player movement", boom

[viral sonnet]

/* handle realistic graphics */ -> press tab

I guess we will get there someday

[safe lintel]

before or after dots 😅

[viral sonnet]

dayuuum

[rustic rain]

How is it even possible to reach mil archetypes

Or dots saves literally all of them?

Even those that aren't used in jobs?

[rotund token]

any archetype that ever exists

exists forever

nCr explodes pretty fast

you have 50 components, and say you have 10 components per entity

this gives a potential archetype count of 10,272,278,170

how do you reach that many?

[rustic rain]

Uugh

[rotund token]

add/remove them in random ways

[rustic rain]

Why not just have registry of what archetypes should be saved

[rotund token]

say you have component ABCD
you have an entity with component A,
you add B, now you have archetypes A, AB
you add C, now you have archetypes, A, AB, ABC

now say you remove components B then C

in that order

you now have A, AB, ABC, AC

[rustic rain]

Yeah, I get how it grows exponentially

[rotund token]

if you removed them in C B then you'd still have the original A, AB, ABC only

[rotund token]

chunks are never destroyed

only created

(its something that unity should/will probably address at some point)

ALSO something people don't realize is for every archetype you create

you actually create 3

say you have 1 component, A so 1 archetype

unity also Creates A + Disable, A + Prefab

[rustic rain]

But why create some archetype you don't ever need in the first place?

[rotund token]

i reduced our archetype count

from 30k

to 12k

removing 1 component

because this 1 component, pathfindingcomplete or something (was a long time ago)

was added at very random times/states

so it could be added to pretty much any archetype combo in the game

and then other components could be added or removed after

[rustic rain]

Sounds just like architecture flaw

[rotund token]

funny enough it only became an obvious issue

in entities 0.10 i think it was

before that unity didn't have fixed counts

[rustic rain]

So, about archetypes again

Does dots create them itself for every possible combinations

Or

[rotund token]

any combination you that you create

[rustic rain]

Only when such combination occurred?

Like first entity created

Ok

That makes much more sense

But still it's useless waste

[rotund token]

var entity = ecb.CreateEntity();
ecb.AddComponent<A>(entity);
ecb.AddComponent<B>(entity);
ecb.AddComponent<C>(entity);
ecb.AddComponent<D>(entity);

this is 4 archetypes

even if
A, AB, ABC never actually exists in update

because it exists for this fraction of time

(this is why instantiating with archetype is important - or better just using conversion. well apart from performance issues)

[rustic rain]

So

Once again, why not keep registry of entities you want to keep

Create all archetypes at the beginning

[rotund token]

me or unity?

[rustic rain]

And only create new when code tells one

Unity

[rotund token]

how can unity know what archetypes you need?

it only creates them as you request it

[rustic rain]

You tell it

[rotund token]

well that's exactly what happens if you use conversion

[rustic rain]

So it only keeps archetypes that are used by jobs

Kind of force coder to put some code about archetypes in OnStart

Entities.TryAddNewArchetype(compA, compB)

And if code tries to access unregistered archetype either error it or create it dynamically

Nah

Just error it

Creating new archetype during job excecution seems bad

So, any of this makes sense?

Maybe I suggest it to unity or smth xD

[rotund token]

what you're suggesting is just adding overhead to what it already does?

it's not like it creates random archetypes

it only creatures archetypes when you ask

[rustic rain]

You mean when you actually request it in job?

[rotund token]

jobs have nothing to do with archetypes

[rustic rain]

I actually mean to not create archetypes just because entitiy with such archetype appeared

[rotund token]

but an entity doesn't exist without an archetype?

[rustic rain]

But create archetypes because they were requested by code

[rotund token]

an entity is just 2 integer values pointing to an archetype

[rustic rain]

Only 1 archetype?

[rotund token]

yes

an archetype is just the definition of components on an entity

[rustic rain]

Ah

Ok

[rotund token]

each chunk has an archetype assigned, and inside the chunk is a collection of components

the entity index/version effectively just points to this position in memory

[rustic rain]

I thought archetypes are all possible combinations of components that existed

And entity knows about all of them

Or system somehow...

Well, then yeah

Just requires garbage collector for unused archetypes

[worn valley]

You can make up an archetype and then spawn an entity of that type

I don't like the terminology of archetypes. Really hard to understand

There are the archetypes that exist as chunks and then there are templates that you use to create an entity which is then put into the chunk with all the rest of its kind

[rustic rain]

is UI toolkit working fine with entities?

I guess you'd need some kind of static object with UI component for it

[zenith wyvern]

Same deal as input - there's no built in interaction with dots. You have to do your ui stuff on the main thread and build the bridge between ui and dots yourself

[royal otter]

Hey can anybody help me with this?
https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/DOTSSample/blob/5a8230597a8c4b999b278a63844c5238dacf51b6/Assets/Scripts/Game/Main/NetworkStatisticsClient.cs
I am trying to use and show the RTT in my game but its value is always zero!

[rustic rain]

So I have this prefab for player.
and by following guide I defined this HYBRID_ENTITIES_CAMERA_CONVERSION in build player settings
So what exactly is happening when I create this prefab as entitiy?

Gameplay wise camera just moves to position local to spawned Player

[rotund token]

whats the issue @rustic rain ?

HYBRID_ENTITIES_CAMERA_CONVERSION just marks camera as a hybrid component

[rustic rain]

I'm trying to understand what is exactly happening, since MainCamera still exists

why game view is given to freshly created camera

and what would happen

if you create more cameras like this

Also, any tip where do you put your InputSystemGroup?

I tried this solution but

apparently Unity doesn't want me to use it

[UpdateBefore(typeof(FixedStepSimulationSystemGroup))]

[rustic rain]

#archived-dots message

[rustic rain]

[UpdateInGroup(typeof(InputSystemGroup))]
public class PlayerInputSystem : SystemBase
{
    private InputActions input;

    private float2 movementValue;

    protected override void OnCreate()
    {
        RequireSingletonForUpdate<InputMovementComponent>();
    }
    protected override void OnStartRunning()
    {
        input = new InputActions();

        input.Player.Movement.performed += context => movementValue = context.ReadValue<Vector2>();
        input.Player.Movement.canceled += _ => movementValue = float2.zero;

        input.Player.Enable();
    }

    protected override void OnStopRunning()
    {
        input.Player.Disable();
    }
    protected override void OnUpdate()
    {
        var inputMovement = GetSingleton<InputMovementComponent>();
        inputMovement.value = movementValue;
    }
}

What is wrong with my system

it doesn't appear in debugger

during runtime it looks like this

I have my group, but no system appears in it

[round shoal]

I don't know but I just had an issue where my system had no reason to be updated, which was the issue. I don't know exactly how DOTS decide when to update and when not to, maybe it checks for both "ForEach" and "EntityQueries", read the components they look for and use that to run or skip the update ?

I say that because your update has no queries (not sure if GetSingleton count as one)

[rustic rain]

this example has no queries as well

also

it's not just not getting updating

it's literally not even showing up

I mean

I just created new system 0 changes xD

Maybe I needto declare some kind of work

job

[zenith wyvern]

You generally want the [AlwaysUpdateSystem] attribute for a system that's polling for input

Otherwise by default a system will not update unless it has a matching query (unless it has 0 queries)

[rustic rain]

InvalidOperationException: Cannot require EntityQuery for update on a system with AlwaysUpdateSystemAttribute
Unity.Entities.SystemState.RequireForUpdate (Unity.Entities.EntityQuery query) (at Library/PackageCache/com.unity.entities@0.17.0-preview.41/Unity.Entities/SystemState.cs:748)
Unity.Entities.SystemState.RequireSingletonForUpdate[T]```

oh wait

I forgot to remove some code I pasted for checking

[zenith wyvern]

As nibbler was guessing, the GetSingleton call creates an implicit query for your system

Meaning it doesnt have 0 queries meaning it won't update unless it matches

[rustic rain]

hmm

    {
        RequireSingletonForUpdate<InputMovementComponent>();
    }

this might be the case

bruh

secret errors

yep

that was it

some class broke due to name change

thanks, actually helped with that info

Hmmm, is there a way to remove all components from entity?

this entity is created through conversion

which I don't really need in the first place

or maybe there's a way to create singletons without it?

Basically an entity to keep track of player input

for all other jobs

World.EntityManager.CreateEntity(ComponentType.ReadOnly<InputMovementComponent>());
ok, that was easier than I thought

[rustic rain]

Is there any way to ref component in my own code?

outside of job loop

I guess after creating component won't move anywhere, so I can just have memory pointer to it?

[rustic rain]

nope, I can't

at least not without publicizing entities assembly

[zenith wyvern]

You store the entity and access the components through it with the entity manager

[rustic rain]

yeah, I kind of wanted to avoid that process and write directly to component

[zenith wyvern]

The "component" is just a piece of data in a chunk. A piece of data that might move in memory any time a structural change happens. The whole point of the entity/entity manager is to track that and provide access to it.

Essentially the entity is the "pointer"

[rustic rain]

Singletons move during structural changes too?

[zenith wyvern]

Yes, a "singleton" is just a wrapper around a query that points to a single entity

[rustic rain]

getting by value is fine then

I'm trying to think of a way to record input actions, that happen only once per button press

Or maybe I could just use direct reference to Input system

[zenith wyvern]

Track the input in OnUpdate, and go from there

[rustic rain]

and subscribe whatever other action system needs to performed event

yeah, I either need to make an 'Update' solution

or which seems to not work well with ecs

event system

[zenith wyvern]

I don't know what you mean by "update solution". What exactly are you trying to do that doesn't work with ecs?

[rustic rain]

by update I mean, just assigning value per frame

instead of just doing smth like this

        input.Player.Spawn.performed += _ =>
        {
            
        };

[zenith wyvern]

Why wouldn't you be able to do that?

[rustic rain]

I am, but that would mean

I can only access that event in main thread

so I can't really schedule parallel jobs that depend on action inputs

[zenith wyvern]

OnUpdate() {
  if( Input.Performed ) {
    Entities.ForEach(Whatever) {
      // Do Some crap as a result of input
    }
  }
}

How is that not doing what you just said?

[rustic rain]

oh

me dum dum

but that still

not event subscription

but per frame checking

[zenith wyvern]

The "subscroption" style of input polling is still doing the exact same thing. It's still doing an update every frame polling for your event, you just don't see it. I think Tertle posted an example of using the subscription style input events yesterday. I just use the polling method as it's easier for me to follow

[rustic rain]

yeah, but it's still doing it. So why should I do that job again?

I know it's just a drop in an ocean

but looks like it's just made for OOP

[zenith wyvern]

Brother if you're not willing to make some concessions on how Unity normally does things in order to work with dots you're in for a rough ride

Maybe some day we'll have an input system that's beautifully integrated with ecs, but we don't have it yet. For now we have to poll on the main thread and execute jobs as a result of that. That code I posted is the easiest and simplest way to do that

Like I said tertle posted an example of what (I think) you actually want yesterday, you can dig from that if you're desperate for the event response style

[rustic rain]

yep, I'm fine with it

but doesn't hurt to try find a better way

I am digging from it tho

at least partially

[coarse turtle]

~~I've got a probably dumb problem. I'm trying to alias a FixedList64<byte>.Buffer pointer into my own custom struct.

So I have something like this

unsafe struct ReadOnlyQueue<T> where T : unmanaged {
  public voic* Ptr;
  public int Capacity;
}

ref FixedList<64> fixedList = ref structWrapper.FixedList;
var readonlyQueue = new ReadOnlyQueue(fixedList.Buffer, fixedList.LengthInBytes);

so I'm looking at readonlyqueue's Ptr content and I can see that it's pointing to the correct address, but the contents of the pointer are different compared to FixedList64<byte>.Buffer's content 🤔~~

[coarse turtle]

ah nevermind, figured out my issue, I guess don't alias a pointer contained in a struct and write an extension method which takes a readonly reference

[worn valley]

Pointers are a pain. Does the pointer change at some point after initialization?

[coarse turtle]

ah nope the addresses are the same, so my issue was actually elsewhere where I was writing a sort of "safer" api so no one else has to deal w/ pointers

but I guess passing a reference via in versus ref made the biggest difference for me. I should probably look into how in works on a compiler level when I grab a readonly reference to the struct 🤔

cause that's all I had to change to fix my issue

[worn valley]

I think IN assumes that the data is read only and won't change and ref is readwrite and will always assume it will be written to

[coarse turtle]

yea

i figured, technically since I only have a readonly queue, I could just grab an alias to a reference readonly FixedList<64>.Buffer, but I got garbage data when I read from the pointer

// NOTE: Pass the FixedList64<byte> as an actual reference instead of a readonly reference.
// Not sure why, but passing the collection by in causes the contents of the pointer to be 
// garbage data when aliased inside another struct.
[MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.AggressiveInlining)]
// Originally I had it as `this in FixedList64<byte> collection
public static unsafe ReadOnlyQueue<T> AsReadOnlyQueue<T>(this ref FixedList64<byte> collection) 
    where T : unmanaged {
    var size = UnsafeUtility.SizeOf<T>();
    return new ReadOnlyQueue<T>(collection.Buffer, collection.LengthInBytes / size);
}

[spiral flint]

Should any Jobs questions be asked here?