archived-dots

[rustic rain]

and it resulted in adding component to literally every entity in World

xD

[rustic rain]

I wonder if it's a good practice to use DestroyTag instead of destroying entity through buffer

[rustic rain]

and then destroy in different system

[rotund token]

Hmm, I think the double command buffer systems do a similar thing without an extra structural change

You definitely need at least some type of strategy for managing destroying of entities otherwise you will eventually run into timing bugs causing crashes as the project grows. Whether you prefer double command buffer systems or a tag component dedicated cleanup systems that's up to you.

We use the dedicated system with tag component at work but I've found I don't like it as much as double command buffer systems

[worn valley]

What is a double command buffer system?

[rustic rain]

by double command buffer you mean 2 ECB in a row? Like
EndSystemECB
PostEndSystemECB?

I thought of that too btw

but kind of uncertain of what would be a good practice

Avoiding unnecessary components indeed seems good tho

[rustic rain]

ooof, my workflow with prefabs is becoming really bad

amount of total general components

is getting close to 10

going adding all those components

to all prefabs

feels bad man

[wide bay]

Hey, is there any Known Issues for the latest packages of DOTS? I didn't find anything online and it will be really useful to know if one should go with DOTS right now or not...

[rustic rain]

one shouldn't go with DOTS right now

unless you're a madman and ready to deal with a lot of unimplemented stuff kek

[karmic basin]

By reading the forums and the bug reports one could get a feel of problems people are going through

Like @rustic rain just said, DOTS as a whole is still highly experimental

Still, one can safely go with Collections, Jobs, and Burst packages. In a lesser extent, ECS and Math are close to ready too

[wide bay]

Well there are a lot of threads there, it will be hard to go through it and collect the issues (and find the ones that are related to you)

[karmic basin]

True

[wide bay]

Yeah, I am starting to use ECS, Math, and Animation, I am not sure about the Animation package, but I only use them for really simple tasks

By the way, the Animation package is the only way to run skin animation right?

[karmic basin]

Animation is far from ready and it looks like it stopped receiving some love :/

[wide bay]

The issues tracker Unity has is really hard to work with, so its not that easy to find issues there

It seems all the DOTS package's are at halt, but they posted something about it being in development (DOTS, not the animation package specifically)

Now I am starting t worry that they will deprecate it

and create something built in with the hybrid renderer

[karmic basin]

Yeah that post from december is the latest news we have as far as I'm aware.

and animation didn't stand out as a priority ^^

[wide bay]

:\

Well I hope they'll improve all the packages needed for DOTS because it was pretty hard so far to get correct information about using it...

most of the things are outdated and the docs are horrible (to say the least, the Entities docs are fine I guess...)

[karmic basin]

I think it's more about getting back on track with editor compatibility and pushing Entities towards 1.0 before anything else (but really read quickly)

[wide bay]

Yeah I guess you are right

[karmic basin]

Yeah because experimental. They doubled-down on the up-to-date docs and even remastered/new samples once it gets further to a stable state.

Which makes sense

We are early, shame on us 🙂

[wide bay]

Lol yeah

[rustic rain]

at least

in the end we'll be already somewhat proficient in dots once it's in released state kek

[karmic basin]

True true

Only benefit of being early-adopter. PLus we're supposed to help shape it for the future (but I'm not weightful enough in the Unity world to be part of that)

[rustic rain]

well to me personally

OOP world feels bad

really bad

meanwhile ECS is so pog

yet, still manage to get best from OOP, since System classes can work with abstractions

[karmic basin]

I'm tool agnostic. Whatever works for the job at hand is good-enough for me 🤷‍♂️

[deft stump]

the right tool for the right job.
OOP just feels weird in gamedev.

but in another field (mainly webdev since I previously came there), it's works.

[radiant berry]

Hello, so i am starting to learn a bit about dots, how i am seeing it now, If i for example would want to make a character controller i would need to store all data in a component type like the walkspeed and gravity value etc. and then make a charactersystem script doing the logic is that right?

[worn valley]

Yes. The script is a system in this case. Systems never have any data stored in them and components never have any logic, just data

Then the system only acts on entities which have the components attached to them. If that system doesn't see an entity with all the components it doesn't need, it will no longer run

[radiant berry]

yeah, it looks good so far, i will wait untill there is an actual release tho to actually start using it

[worn valley]

May as well experiment with it. It is a much better way to make games IMHO. Everything is more separate so you don't get really weird bugs and it's easier to plan the execute order of everything

[radiant berry]

yeah, i do plan on doing that but i first need to get an idea of how i would structure a whole system like a character controller

[worn valley]

There is an ECS character controller on the asset store. It's called Rival and is very good. You can check that out for ideas!

[safe lintel]

theres also a free one in the physics samples(see the pinned messages in this channel)

[civic ermine]

Hello!
I am an Unreal Engine user.

I am looking to try Unity DOTS.
Is DOTS available for Personal Liscense?

[worn valley]

yes

Go to the dots forum, it is a bit more obtuse on how to download the ECS stack

[civic ermine]

Ok thxs

[rustic rain]

https://pastebin.com/8k2fqquv

Here my fork of some open source character controller I made (it was a bit outdated and wasn't working from the box)

utils class is from here (original character controller)
https://github.com/ssell/UnityDotsCharacterController/tree/master/Assets/Source/Utils

[rustic rain]

dud

We need a ECB that will accept actions kek

from inside job

    protected override void OnUpdate()
    {
        if (GetSingleton<GameState>().state == GameStatus.Running)
        {
            var playerVelocity = GetSingleton<PlayerVelocity>();
            internalCounter += playerVelocity.x * Time.DeltaTime;
        }
        else
        {
            internalCounter = 0f;
        }
        label.text = internalCounter.ToString();
    }

Because apparently getting singletons is expensive

this code costs 0.06ms

[deft stump]

why not cache the singletons?

[rustic rain]

how?

never saw any mention of that

(EntityManager.GetComponentData<GameState>(gameStateEntity).state == GameStatus.Running)
Doing that gives same perfomance

or even worse

huh

NativeQueue

that thing I never saw

[deft stump]

I don't know what you're trying to do but.

//psuedoCode
public class SomeSystem : SystemBase
{
  private GameState gameState;
  void OnCreate()
  {
    gameState = GetSingleton<GameState>();
  }
  void OnUpdate()
  {
    DoWorkOn(gameState);
  }
}

does this not work???

[rustic rain]

but that's copy of gameState at moment of creation

no?

Meanwhile my GameState is smth that can be updated through game

and I need to track changes

[candid epoch]

if you don't destroy the original entity with the game state component on it, this shouln't be an issue

[rustic rain]

no I mean

I reguraly do

SetSingletone<GameState>(gameState);

with different properties

[devout prairie]

I think you're right @rustic rain it would cache the component value..

[rustic rain]

so if I got singleton once, it probably won't be same

[devout prairie]

I think what you're best to do is cache the Entity that holds the singleton component.. and then grab the component from it with GetComponent in your OnUpdate

if i understand correctly

[rustic rain]

nah

0 difference

imo

it's not getting singletons

that was slow

but apparently changing UI element text kek

[devout prairie]

Hehe ok well yeah

Regards the above, i do cache the entity in my systems generally.. so if i have to get a single component or buffer, i generally have a field with the Entity for that buffer/comp cached, and then grab the comp/buffer at the start of OnUpdate.. not sure if it makes much of any difference tbh

[rustic rain]

yay

Using NativeQueue is pog

with events

it's sort of like

ECB but with system actions

kek

[safe lintel]

@deft stump I dont think you should be using getsingleton in oncreate, as others said it will never change if it is updated and also tbh im not really sure if entity data exists at the time of the system creation? imo safer to either use onstartrunning or onupdate. can also use cdfe to get the singleton data by using the entity in a job. tertle mentioned something about getsingleton can create "a sync point on writers" but not really sure what that meant.

[rustic rain]

subscenes converted even before program is run tho

so entities from there will exist

[pliant pike]

am I forgetting that if you use GetComponent() then if you want to change that component you have to use SetComponent() 😕

[safe lintel]

@rustic rain as binary data on disk, that doesn't guarantee anything about when its loaded. a simple test of using HasSingleton<T>() on a tag inside of a subscene returns false in OnCreate and true in OnStartRunning

[rustic rain]

I see

I guess results are unreliable

since I had opposite experience

[pliant pike]

when your managing the creation of your own systems and order it shouldn't be that much of a problem

you kind of have to manage them eventually at some points

[safe lintel]

I use the default initialization and havent found the need to create/destroy or enable/disable.

[pliant pike]

CalculateDamageJob(Burst)(6519.75ms)

I think I have some optimizing to do

[north bay]

tertle mentioned something about getsingleton can create "a sync point on writers" but not really sure what that meant
If I'm allowed to interpret tertle's words, they mean that when you call GetSingleton<T> all jobs that write to T will have to be completed

[rustic rain]

what

really?

unintentionally creating 50 sync points

[safe lintel]

so people, think this is the week we get 0.50? 🤔

[rustic rain]

omegalul no

Is there any example how to disable standard conversion systems?

[karmic basin]

At half of the quarter ? That's an optimistic thought ^^

But let's cross fingers and hope 🙂

[safe lintel]

im not optimistic though I am anxious 😉

[hollow jolt]

how to properly read entities translation inside a mono script ?

i been using this so far :

var P = World.DefaultGameObjectInjectionWorld.EntityManager.GetComponentData<Translation>( entity ).Value;

but looks like the default conversion system has something more sophisticated for this

[rustic rain]

translation is Local

LocalToWorld is global

if you always want to be sure you get world space coordinates

look for LocalToWorld component

[hollow jolt]

its the same in my case

the object is at the root of the scene

[rustic rain]

what's question about then?

everything seems in check so far

[hollow jolt]

the is a nasty jitter im trying to solve

the mono position won't sync up with the simulation

(ecs-physics)

using the default components seems to add this " smoothing " system

trying to figure out how to use a similar method

just found GraphicalSmoothingUtility

[karmic basin]

The translation component is one of many that can be computed as the LTW in the end https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.17/manual/transform_system.html

[hollow jolt]

what's LTW ?

local 2 world ?

[karmic basin]

Where does your system run

Compared to the physics systems

[hollow jolt]

    [UpdateInGroup(typeof(FixedRateSystemGroup))]
    public class PlayerK_System : SystemBase
    {
      // logic 
    }
class FixedRateSystemGroup : ComponentSystemGroup {}

    [UpdateInGroup(typeof(FixedRateSystemGroup))]
    public class SetupFixedRateSystem : ComponentSystem
    {
        //const float deltaTime = 0.02f; // simulation rate = 50 FPS 
        const float deltaTime = 0.1f; 
        // https://forum.unity.com/threads/fixedrateutils-enablefixedratesimple-sets-deltatime-but-update-rate-is-still-the-same.859072/#post-5706391
        bool HasRun = false;
        
        protected override void OnUpdate()
        {
            if ( HasRun ) return; HasRun = true;

            var group = World.GetOrCreateSystem<FixedRateSystemGroup>();
            
            var fixed_rate = group.FixedRateManager;

            if( fixed_rate == null ) fixed_rate = new FixedRateUtils.FixedRateCatchUpManager( deltaTime );

            else fixed_rate.Timestep = deltaTime;
            
            group.FixedRateManager = fixed_rate;
            
            Debug.Log("[PlayerK::FixedRateSystemGroup] Ready");
        }
    }

and then in MonoBehaviour :

var P = World.DefaultGameObjectInjectionWorld.EntityManager.GetComponentData<Translation>( entity ).Value;

[rustic rain]

GameObjectConversionSystem
What do I need to reference for this?

I'm a bit lost

[karmic basin]

Oh reading from mono then ? Did you try in lateupdate ? IIRC it should run after ecs systems

[hollow jolt]

🤔

ok

[hollow jolt]

maybe a missing assembly ?

[rustic rain]

ahem

I have no Conversion

is that additional package?

[karmic basin]

The big wall of code you pasted is to slow down the rate ?

[hollow jolt]

Hybrid

[hollow jolt]

well yes , i want a fixed update rate

this way when i log the delta time its always consistent

[hollow jolt]

u can use either one

[rustic rain]

yeah, thanks I found it

now I wonder how I can remove some UnityEngine components before HybridRenderer gets to them

[hollow jolt]

on before scene load ?

static method

[rustic rain]

no

like I want to make my own renderer

meanwhile keeping Hybrid Renderer

for everything I didn't cover

[hollow jolt]

so both of them would work in the same time ?

[rustic rain]

I need to steal SpriteRenderer from him

everything else can be left untouched

[hollow jolt]

idk about making a custom hybrid render but sounds like u would need to fork the entities package and change the class names to have a parallel conversion system working

[rustic rain]

nnnnah

it's probably way more simple

[hollow jolt]

wouldn't it be harder to modify the existing one to support multiple render systems ?

[rustic rain]

rn I want to try update in group before main conversion group

and DestroyImmidiate

sprite renderer

after I convert

[hollow jolt]

oh why not use your own conversion system then ?

[rustic rain]

I do use it

[hollow jolt]

you can manually execute all the conversion code

[rustic rain]

but that doesn't stop from hybrid conversion system to run too

[hollow jolt]

hybrid "conversion" shouldn't run if the root game object has no convert-to-entitiy

[rustic rain]

well

how else am I gonna convert my entity?

either Subscene, which I don't want to have at this point

or convert component

[hollow jolt]

make your own convert component

its not too difficult

the source code is available

[rustic rain]

sounds way more complex than it should be

[hollow jolt]

maybe just a different approach

i would just copy/paste everything (inside the conversion system component) and invoke my own render pipeline

if i had one

[rustic rain]

it's not custom render pipeline

just not using HybridRenderer

[hollow jolt]

hybrid *

[rustic rain]

that's all

I can render everything directly through Graphics API

no need to secretly have all those game objects

[hollow jolt]

nice

been thinking to make my own

[rustic rain]

in 2D it's simple

3D is a no no xD

[hollow jolt]

why ?

[rustic rain]

meshes are way more difficult to deal with

compared to using same Quad mesh

when rendering my sprites

[hollow jolt]

u mean the catched polygons in memory or something ?

i would assume you generate the quads on the fly

[rustic rain]

well there's supposed to be either quad

or plane

and it's supposed to be one for all

unless you need smth extremely fancy

[hollow jolt]

ohh just use this multiple times

one API call per mesh

[rustic rain]

yyyep

[hollow jolt]

and each would need a unique call per unique material

[rustic rain]

one API call per literally everything in the scene

[hollow jolt]

i see

[rustic rain]

what if all you have is Sprite-Default-Lit? xD

[hollow jolt]

well u can also have material property for one custom shader that have wide support for many effects

[rustic rain]

yeah, that was my goal

[hollow jolt]

might not be very efficient for large sprites

[rustic rain]

as for now

Gotta figure out how to be friend with hybrid renderer

[hollow jolt]

idk much about hybrid tbh

sort of using conversion component

im guessing its batching the materials / meshes somehow

[rustic rain]

no I mean

how to stop hybrid

from wokring on my sprite renderers

[hollow jolt]

delete it lol

or don't use convert to entitiy check box

and make a custom mono-component

[rustic rain]

even if I make my own convert to entity component

I'd have to rewrite shitload of code

which is just uugh

rn I have this

and I'm thinking if this would be safe to my project assets

kek

I'v read scary things about this method

[hollow jolt]

maybe update before or something ?

[rustic rain]

I have it

but

not doing anything about component

just makes it so both my component

and hybrid are spaned

like this

my component is there, but so is sprite renderer

[hollow jolt]

well... clone the repo and edit the sprite renderer conversion system

to make it stop the conversion process

[rustic rain]

bbbbruuuh

[hollow jolt]

it is 1 file

probably 1 line lol

[rustic rain]

welp

it was so much easier

lol

[hollow jolt]

see for your self

[rustic rain]

sprite.enabled = false;

I feel bad for discussing it so much

[hollow jolt]

since when ?

[rustic rain]

wdym?

[hollow jolt]

what's that line ?

mono enabled ?

[rustic rain]

yeah

lol

looks like this

[hollow jolt]

idk if the hybrid render cares if the component is enabled or not

[rustic rain]

it does

not just hybrid

everything

it ignores any disabled component during conversion

which is pog

[hollow jolt]

didn't notice that

anyone familiar with Unity.Physics.GraphicsIntegration ?

[safe lintel]

its for the physics - graphics interpolation iirc

[rustic rain]

hmm, is there any way for Entities.ForEach to return me index of entity in query?

so I can fill my array with those indexes

I do Run Withoutburst anyway

[safe lintel]

do you mean entityInQueryIndex?

[rustic rain]

is that same thing as if I for loop of NativeArray of entities from query?

I mean

are those indexes go from 0 to number of entities total?

[safe lintel]

id expect it to if its run but getting a nativearray is a sure bet

[rustic rain]

ok, I'll just test

yep

from 0 to total

that's poggie woggie

ah, f
I remember now why I had trouble with it

I need to chunk batch job

since it's the only way to separate separate instances of SharedComponent

[hollow jolt]

should we use System update - ForEach for physics calculations ?

the [UpdateInGroup(typeof(SimulationSystemGroup))] public class MousePickSystem : SystemBase is not using foreach

but just scheduling a burst job

and it would combine dependencies : ( m_BuildPhysicsWorldSystem.GetOutputDependency() )

compared to my system which just runs Entities.ForEach( ( - ( on a single player instance )

im not combining dependencies tho

[safe lintel]

foreach just gets codegen'd to a IJobChunk in the background if its scheduled. my own rule is if you are modifying the simulation, then it needs to be updated in the FixedStepSimulationSystemGroup

with [UpdateAfter(typeof(ExportPhysicsWorld)), UpdateBefore(typeof(EndFramePhysicsSystem))]

and after your job dependency via endFramePhysicsSystem.AddInputDependency(handle)

[rotund token]

it's a good rule

[gilded glacier]

how much restricted is the gameobject conversion, and should I be using it for like ... everything ?

if things haven't changed much, then the only thing that can be converted are transform, rendering, and physics related components (plus custom monobehavious)

also, I got discouraged by the hybrid renderer, as it didn't work with my custom shader (no fancy stuff, just combining textures based on uv data), and I also dislike the bootstrap magic, as it's just slow reflection, it includes everything (even stuff I don't want), and it's run right after the app launch, which isn't always desirable

so I was thinking of separating my project into the ecs part, where the main logic, data, and all the things I can do in ecs be ... and the other part, where gameobjects are accessed, updated, created, destroyed (including components), and both parts would be communicating with each other using event and command entities (with stuff like SpawnHammerGameObjectData in such entity)

(the gameobject side would have it's own system, and those could be in their own dedicated world ? I don't know, I'm just clueless)

[rotund token]

best practices would be everything

but your own project determines what is possible

[gilded glacier]

and what are those ?

[rotund token]

the best practice would be using conversion on everything

creating entities (from scratch) at runtime is generally not a good idea

[gilded glacier]

and why is that ?

[rotund token]

runtime conversion is slow, creating entities in code can be slow as well (and if you do it slightly wrong, you create a lot of extra archetypes). Also you should be striving to make your approach as data driven as possible allowing designers/non programmers construct the entities as they want.

now if you're a solo dev then do it however is quickest for yourself

[robust scaffold]

Me and my runtime authoring 2.1M entities. Hrm

[pliant pike]

yeah I've create a 1 million in a second or less

if you batch them with a nativearray you can create them amazingly fast

[gilded glacier]

I really need a book or something ...

[pliant pike]

I'm kind of doing what you want, I have gameobjects as the visual aspect and entity stuff as the code stuff

I don't convert the gameobjects to entity's and things work fine

[gilded glacier]

depends what is fine

I don't want to sacrifice performance in order to make a framework that is just worse combination of both if I don't have to

[pliant pike]

I mean with the fundamental way dots is, its not to hard to change and adapt things later on

like with the way I have mine setup up I can easily change the gameobjects to dots whenever I want

[gilded glacier]

how do you have it ?

[robust scaffold]

Yep. Hybrid Renderer was a mistake.

[pliant pike]

I just get the gameobject guid and put that in a component on the entities when I create them

then whenever I want to change anything on the gameobject I just use that unique id

although I thinking about I think there are components that can store gameobjects completely so that might have been a better choice

but still if I went full entities I would still use something like that because it means I can keep the rendering the animations, the gameplay, everything really separate and have them only reference one another when if they ever need to

[gilded glacier]

managed component data do have that option, but I would keep an eye on how the code travels around the memory, as those data are just an index for an array of objects stored elsewhere

[pliant pike]

yeah I'm not sure mine is the best way but it seems to work ok

like I did this with gameobjects and the unity navmesh and all the of the code is dots, a basic dots state machine, etc https://twitter.com/calabitale/status/1431244778058964998

Calabi (@calabitale)

Finally completed a simple loop of entitys entering, moving along, and exiting queues. #gamedev #unity3d https://t.co/Z5x6jCouUC

▶ Play video

Twitter · Aug 27, 2021, 1:18 PM

[gilded glacier]

I love to complicate things, so I have an array of gameobjects and entities with an int that is the index for the array

[pliant pike]

sounds simple enough to me if the arrays don't change then should work fine 🤷

[gilded glacier]

that's the limit

but I intend to pool the objects as well and do all the fancy stuff

[pliant pike]

yeah my objects are pooled

[gilded glacier]

certainly the navmesh thing is something you can only do with gameobjects, if you don't want to use some third party stuff

I mean you could, but I don't think that can be also done with lighting or so

[pliant pike]

there are some ways of doing it and there is another dots navmesh in the works, but I couldn't be bothered to figure them out

[civic ermine]

Can the ECS Hybrid Renderer support skeletal mesh or static mesh only?

[robust scaffold]

What are the guys doing milling around outside the queue? Trying to jump the line?

[safe lintel]

@civic ermine both

[civic ermine]

Oh nice!

[safe lintel]

Need the animation package to do any animation though

[ashen cedar]

hi all, im new to using ecs and i want to know how do i add in trialrenderer and display them into my entity?

[ashen cedar]

also whats the best way to store entity into a list or array so i can reference it back in the future? or is that not recommended?

[rustic rain]

hybrid renderer is quite literally just dummy game objects that follow entities with classic renderer components tho

you might want to make sure your custom shader works as it is

[umbral rain]

@zenith garden дебил вернись

[rustic rain]

simple List or array would work

[ashen cedar]

it errors out

when I try to do List<Entity>

[rustic rain]

well

it depends in what context you are trying to use it

if simply in system outside of job

you can keep however you want

jobs only work with native containers

[ashen cedar]

so i have a class object

i want to create a list and store it in there

[ashen cedar]

ah nvm that works

how do i access that component data btw

[ashen cedar]

is it bad if i keep doing getcomponentdata?

[rustic rain]

no

that's what you do when you schedule jobs anyway

[ashen cedar]

i see

also we are using systembase right

jobcomponentsystem is phasing out right

[rustic rain]

I don't use anything else at all as of now

but I'm doing smth really simple

[ashen cedar]

because rn, my frames drops to like 20 fps but it can goes up to 200 fps

so idk what im doing wrong

[rustic rain]

use profiler

[ashen cedar]

alr

[rustic rain]

and look up what's eating those spikes

so far, the most expensive thing for me is Tiny's 2D physics kek

1.2ms every frame

for no reason sadkek

[ashen cedar]

ah

[rustic rain]

also keep in mind entity debugger is extremely expensive

inspector and all of this

build can be about 5 times faster

[ashen cedar]

geez

[rustic rain]

why would use coroutines with dots kek

[ashen cedar]

im in the process of implementing it actually

im trying to optimise this project

so i should convert all coroutines to jobs right

[rustic rain]

uuugh

jobs are just black box calculations

I'm not sure if you should compare them

[ashen cedar]

ah

but if i want to improve perf

[rustic rain]

you put data in job, job does it's magic, you take data out of job

[ashen cedar]

i see

i have some doubts btw as well

whats the difference between schedule and schedulepararrel

[rustic rain]

schedule will run job only on one worker thread

parallel will split it between many

[ashen cedar]

ah

[rustic rain]

it's only useful when either you have way too many entities or your job iterations are so expensive that splitting them will overcome schedulling overhead

[ashen cedar]

ah alr

also if i want to access data from another class in a systembase (job) script, how would i do that?

use a gamemanager instance?

[rustic rain]

World.GetOrCreateSystem<T>()l

[ashen cedar]

Ah

also

since im doing Entities.ForEach to loop through all the entities right

could i do another for each inside?

because i want to compare each entity against every other entity and check their distance apart each other

[rustic rain]

no

[ashen cedar]

oof

[rustic rain]

everything inside that loop

is bursted

[ashen cedar]

i see

so i cant do a loop against other entities?

[rustic rain]

so you just grab data you want to compare beforehand

and use

WithReadOnly(yourData)

[ashen cedar]

i see

how do i grab

the data btw?

i havent touched until that

[rustic rain]

GetComponentDataFromEntity

[ashen cedar]

i see

so i should only use entities.foreach after

i got the data

[rustic rain]

yeah

those loops can only use local variables

captured in OnUpdate

[ashen cedar]

alr gotcha

var entityArray = GetEntityQuery(typeof(Translation)).ToEntityArray(Allocator.TempJob);

so i gotten the array right

do i loop through that array in Entities.ForEach?

[rustic rain]

why do you need entities

you need data you want to compare

[ashen cedar]

o right

[rustic rain]

entitiy itself is just integer that points where it exists

[ashen cedar]

i see

so do i do GetComponentDataFromEntity

below that line

[rustic rain]

yeah, you do that

[ashen cedar]

alr

[rustic rain]

and that would be array of all entities of that data

[rustic rain]

which you access by entity

[ashen cedar]

so translations is the array that im gonna loop through right

[rustic rain]

I guess

what are you even trying to do

[ashen cedar]

so im trying to compare

all of the entity with each other

to compare their position

[rustic rain]

and then

[ashen cedar]

move the current entity if they are too far etc

so like align them up into a flock

its a flocking system

[rustic rain]

well

you don't need entity array then

[ashen cedar]

ah

[rustic rain]

if you only care about translations

[ashen cedar]

ye

well i do need other component data as well

like speed etc

i still dont get how to access component data in the entity loop oof

[rustic rain]

translations[entity]

[ashen cedar]

ah

[rustic rain]

any idea how I can reference this HybridEntitiesConversion class?
I can't find what assembly it's in

as my Unity doesn't see Unity.Rendering assembly

[ashen cedar]

so my systembase script starts running instantly when i start the game, is there a way to only start a job only when my main thread invokes it?

or to put in simply

so i have multiple flocks

i want to start one job for each flock so it can multi threads but idk how to do it

[ashen cedar]

wanna clear some doubts about job systems

so from what i know, i can create a job system using systembase class script and do entities.foreach and schedule it

so when i do that, am i creating one single job?

[rustic rain]

no, it's per frame loop

if you only need job on demand

you can create it yourself

[ashen cedar]

oh how would i do that

can u link any tutorials or docs?

[rustic rain]

there's manual in unity

and quate a lot of tutorials out there as well

[ashen cedar]

the ones that i watch just shows me about systembase

so thats why i thought this is the only way to create a job

is it the jobcomponentsystem?

[rustic rain]

nnnah, you need struct Job

IJob is the simplest example

[ashen cedar]

i see

thats only use to run one single job right?

like run a job once

[rustic rain]

that's what Entities.ForEach does under the hood

every frame

[ashen cedar]

ah

so entities.foreach is calling ijob

on every frame?

[rustic rain]

it does some compiler generated jobs

Entities.ForEach is kinad just interface for developer

[ashen cedar]

i see

[rustic rain]

you can always do jobs the way they were initially introduced

and for some cases you have to

most tutorials

are actually explaining this

[ashen cedar]

correct me if im wrong, so every single onupdate frame, im creating 1 single job for each entities right?

[rustic rain]

instead of Entities.ForEach

you seem to not really understand what job is

[ashen cedar]

afaik, job is like a thread

that is task to do something

to ease the stress of the main thread

[rustic rain]

look up code monkey

he has a lot of vids

on job system

and how to use them as hybrid for classic OOP projects

[ashen cedar]

ah alr

for now i have used systembase for my movementsystem which i think its correct because i want it to move every frame

[ashen cedar]

is running an ijob in a coroutine not recommended?

[ashen cedar]

how to get componenetdata in an ijob

[rustic rain]

you put in public field

before scheduling

[ashen cedar]

well to specify, im using an ijobparallelfor

so the loop is inside the job

[rustic rain]

no difference it's all the same

whatever you want to be in job

you put in fields

[ashen cedar]

but how do i get the specific component in that entity

different entity has different data

before i schedule the job, i dont have any access to them

[rustic rain]

entity manager has them

[ashen cedar]

i mean i do, but only to one entity

i did

o wait

but entitymanager is read only

when i passed it in

o waittt

[rustic rain]

it's not read only

you specify

it yourself

[ashen cedar]

if i didnt make it readonly

it errors out

[rustic rain]

read the error, it probably will tell what's wrong

[ashen cedar]

it tells me to make it readonly oof

MoveRandom.manager is not declared [ReadOnly] in a IJobParallelFor job. The container does not support parallel writing

o ye i remember now, i need it to setcomponeentdata

so i was using maanger.setcomponentdata

soo theres no way to get the component data within the job?

[rustic rain]

just define it before job even starts

[ashen cedar]

alr

and uh

how do i set component data then?

or i cant

[rustic rain]

those arrays you get in job

they are actual component data

you can write to it

[ashen cedar]

ah

i see

so instead of passing entity arrays

i should pass in the component data array

right?

[rustic rain]

that is smth I'm not sure

as I barely work with jobs structs

[ashen cedar]

i see

id just try it i guess

[rustic rain]

since my project is fully in DOTS, I get away with entites.ForEach

[ashen cedar]

ah

gotcha

dont think the data is actually being set welp

o ye anyh idea how to rotate mesh to the direction they are moving to

[stone osprey]

Im using the hybrid approach and well, i need to turn all entities invisible which are outside a certain area...

            // Hides entities which are outside the movement area for not showing them to the user.
            Entities.ForEach((ref Entity entity, ref LocalTransform lc, in GameObject go) => {

                // Provide support for different renderer types.
                Renderer renderer = null;
                if (EntityManager.HasComponent<MeshRenderer>(entity)) renderer = EntityManager.GetComponentObject<MeshRenderer>(entity);
                else if (EntityManager.HasComponent<SkinnedMeshRenderer>(entity)) renderer = EntityManager.GetComponentObject<SkinnedMeshRenderer>(entity);

                var vec2 = (Mapbox.Utils.Vector2d)lc.pos;
                if (renderer != null) renderer.enabled = movementArea.InArea(vec2);
            }).WithoutBurst().Run();

However, this in incredible slow... 800 entities take like 0.7-1ms each frame.
Any ideas how i could speed this up ?

[worn valley]

You just want the mesh to stop rendering?

[stone osprey]

Yep, just wanna turn it invisible

[worn valley]

I think you can add a disabled component that stops the renderer from doing anything

Can't remember how to do that but I am pretty sure that is what you want

[stone osprey]

Also with the hybrid approach ? My MeshRenderer and SkinnedMeshRenderer here are... well the unity mono ones

[worn valley]

Oh so you aren't using entity renderer?

[stone osprey]

Nope, im using a hybrid approach... entities are just the data in my project while prefabs still do that rendering stuff for me ^^

I basically tie them up, attach the gameobject to the entity and stuff like that

[worn valley]

Oh I see. I would cache all the data you need to access since getComponet is expensive

You could set up a hashmap that used the entity as the key and the value references the mesh renderer in some way

You'll still need to disabled on the main thread though. You can just do all the expensive calculations in a bursted job

You want to end up with an array at the end of the frame that is a list of what to disabled and what to enable. Does that make sense?

[stone osprey]

Alright i see, theres no easy solution ^^ Thanks... im gonna try to cache it first.
Damn i hope they allow us to run multithreaded mono stuff with dots some day

[stone osprey]

Yep basically ^^

[worn valley]

They probably won't. That is super hard cause game objects are all about references everywhere

[stone osprey]

Well that makes sense, but they should leave that to us. The example above could be scheduled perfectly, because those processed entities do not interact with each other ^^ But i guess unity thinks we are too stupid and wanna guide us instead

[worn valley]

Burst just doesn't work with references. Lots of reasons for this but yeah they are also trying to make it easy for users not to screw up.

There are some geniuses but most programmers are average and this is about making it easy not to introduce insanely hard to track down bugs

You may be able to write c# threaded stuff if you really want

But I have no idea how to do that

[stone osprey]

Oh well, guess the caching stuff works... well its not really caching, but i transformed the previous code into 2 seperate loops...

            // Hides entities which are outside the movement area for not showing them to the user.
            Entities.ForEach((ref Entity entity, ref LocalTransform lc, in MeshRenderer meshRenderer) => {
                
                var vec2 = (Mapbox.Utils.Vector2d)lc.pos;
                meshRenderer.enabled = movementArea.InArea(vec2);
            }).WithoutBurst().Run();
            
            // Hides entities which are outside the movement area for not showing them to the user.
            Entities.ForEach((ref Entity entity, ref LocalTransform lc, in SkinnedMeshRenderer skinnedMeshRenderer) => {
                
                var vec2 = (Mapbox.Utils.Vector2d)lc.pos;
                skinnedMeshRenderer.enabled = movementArea.InArea(vec2);
            }).WithoutBurst().Run();

And now its blazing fast

Like 6 times faster... only because i removed those if conditions, crazy

[worn valley]

If conditions are the devil apparently

[stone osprey]

Totally ^^ guess im gonna start a petition to ban those if conditions entirely

[worn valley]

Oh you may have issues. in should be for readonly and there you are setting it.

[stone osprey]

Oh you are right, thanks ! But unity doesnt like ref or out with those mono components on entities... atleast it tells me that :/

[rustic rain]

I think it's about calling HasComponent not IF itself

[stone osprey]

Thanks, that makes sense ^^

[ashen cedar]

uh so can anyone help with setting componenet data in ijobs?

i still cant find anything bout it

[karmic basin]

What do you have right now ? Usually you would write to a native container to extract data from an IJob

[ashen cedar]

so atm i have 3 nativearray

of the component data

[karmic basin]

But yes with ECS you can write to components through command buffer to avoid sync points

[ashen cedar]

how would i do that though?

[karmic basin]

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

[ashen cedar]

well i dont wanna use systembase

[karmic basin]

read those

[ashen cedar]

o

[karmic basin]

oh okay so not from ECS but raw Job

[ashen cedar]

ye

[ashen cedar]

this is my code so far

[karmic basin]

k lemme read

[ashen cedar]

mTest is an entity list (i only want to update the data in these entities)

i didnt comment it so uh mb

the job is in the coroutine coz i only want it to run every TickDurationRandom

[karmic basin]

You want to get back targetdirections and targetspeeds ?

[ashen cedar]

yes

or even better, set the data directly in the job

but if i cant, then getting back it and setting it on the main thread is fine too

[karmic basin]

OK, then just try job.targetdirections[indexYouWant]

[ashen cedar]

o

can i loop through

that

and do manager.setcomponentdata

[karmic basin]

yup, it's the native array you passed IN

[ashen cedar]

alr

[karmic basin]

you just get it back from the job once it's completed

[ashen cedar]

but i need to set targetdirections[i].Value to TargetDirection

at the end right

[karmic basin]

nah the collection is just here to retrieve the values. You dispose of it at the end anyway

[ashen cedar]

i mean in the

ijobparallel

 TargetSpeed += speed * weightSeparation;
            TargetSpeed /= 2.0f;

because im only setting the placeholder

[karmic basin]

oh yes

[ashen cedar]

alr

[karmic basin]

make your containers TempJob instead of Persistent

you dispose of them everytime

[ashen cedar]

ight

btw is this actually efficient xd?

like we're running setmanager on the main thread

the job thread is really doing much

[karmic basin]

or keep them persistent if you know the size and always the same and then you can dispose on application quit or whatever

[ashen cedar]

ight

[rustic rain]

I swear I hate the way the did quaternions in dots

it's awful

every time I need to go back into GameObject world

I have to cast quaternion into Quaternion

[ashen cedar]

ok welp this isnt gonna work xd

[rustic rain]

float4x4 into Matrix4x4

[ashen cedar]

my frames drops to 20 ever second

[rustic rain]

just to get correct rotations

[karmic basin]

you would have to test with your number of entities, see if you get benefits. I guess you could have heavy computations for a lot of flocking entities 🤷‍♂️

honestly never tried a job in a coroutine

[rustic rain]

why are you even using coroutine

I heard bad things about it

[ashen cedar]

eh

so im trying to run this job

every randomtick

u got any suggestions other than coroutines?

[rustic rain]

what is goal?

[ashen cedar]

set a random direction to go to

so the flock is always moving

[rustic rain]

so why do you need coroutine in the first place here?

[ashen cedar]

well i wasnt using jobs in the past

so coroutine was to seperate a thread

and to do this every tick

tick is like 1s

so uh what should i do for this case

[rustic rain]

you can do ticks by simple time comparison

[ashen cedar]

i see

so do this on basesystem

and use time comparison

[rustic rain]

lastTime += delta;
if (lastTime>= interval){
lastTime %= interval;}
or smth like that

[ashen cedar]

alr ty

[rustic rain]

different ways to do that without much of an overhead

[ashen cedar]

imma move this to basesystem ecs then

systembase*

also do u know why my mesh is doing a global rotation

not a local one

[karmic basin]

oh then if you use ECS I would recommend using IJobEntityBatch to iterate whole chunks

[ashen cedar]

ight

i hope it will solve this issue

frames drop to 20 every 1s

when it moves

[karmic basin]

you'll get the entities from the entity query and the components from the chunk instead of doing getcomponentdata which should already provide more speed

[ashen cedar]

alright

[karmic basin]

manual is pretty helpful on those https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.17/manual/ecs_ijobentitybatch.html

[ashen cedar]

gotcha ty

[karmic basin]

worth reading 2 to 3 times while you implement it to get the max out of it 🙂

[ashen cedar]

ArchetypeChunk batchInChunk, int batchIndex

whats this btw

[karmic basin]

you're welcome, have fun

[ashen cedar]

i have never touched archetypechunk

[karmic basin]

well manual should help understand but basically batchIndex is your current entity in this iteration

[ashen cedar]

i see

batchinchunk should be a native array right

[karmic basin]

nah

it's the chunk you're iterating

can have a few, the Execute method from the job will run on each chunk

[ashen cedar]

ah

[karmic basin]

FROM it you'll get your native container

[ashen cedar]

i uses entityquery to get the chunk right

[karmic basin]

yes

[ashen cedar]

alr

[karmic basin]

the entities selected from the query and passed to the job will be the ones iterated upon

[ashen cedar]

and to pass it to the job

its the same as ijob

[karmic basin]

the query is passed as a parameter of the schedule call, not as a field of the job struct

and same for components you need to access, instead pf passing them as fields, you retrieve them from accessors from the chunk

[ashen cedar]

ight

[karmic basin]

(because of the query you know you only get entities with that components, so don't need to get on an individual basis, should be faster :))

[ashen cedar]

alr

[karmic basin]

see here, the query is a param of the schedule https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.17/api/Unity.Entities.JobEntityBatchExtensions.Schedule.html

but it should be well explained on the manual page 🙂

[ashen cedar]

i see

alr

[karmic basin]

Have fun 😉

Oh and last thing, don't know if you already saw that, but Unity showcased their own Boids implementation a while ago with a public github. Probably uses deprecated stuff now, and was quite messy at a first glance, but maybe can give you ideas ?

[ashen cedar]

ah

alr

was it the

classic boids project?

[karmic basin]

not sure if it was called "classic"

[ashen cedar]

bro if its this im gonna laugh so hard

[karmic basin]

i can find the link if you want

[ashen cedar]

because this is actually an assignment

we are required to optimise that game

so i decided to implement DOTS

[karmic basin]

oh no it's not in space it's fishes swimming

^^

[ashen cedar]

i see

i thought he just gave us some projects unity made lmfao

[karmic basin]

could have been 🙂

[ashen cedar]

xd

but honestly dots is really useful

[karmic basin]

Oh I'm dumb it's actually in the samples repo, under advanced usage: https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/EntityComponentSystemSamples/tree/master/ECSSamples/Assets/Advanced/Boids

[ashen cedar]

damn

i see

but i really hate how dots is in development since 2018

so alot of tutorials are invalid considering how unity loves to deprecate methods every day

[karmic basin]

Yup the wait is painful

[ashen cedar]

like systembase was the 3rd implementation of jobsystems

[karmic basin]

Yeah but it's getting better, API is gettnig more stable

[ashen cedar]

ye

maybe it will be out this year

[karmic basin]

Wait for ISystemBase xD

[ashen cedar]

damn

re learn again

[karmic basin]

we're expecting 0.50 this quarter

[ashen cedar]

i see

[karmic basin]

That's okay you'll be able to transfer knowledge 🙂

[ashen cedar]

ye

o ye wanted to ask this

so in this project they uses a trial renderer

[karmic basin]

then they intend to push towards a 1.0 release

[ashen cedar]

so when i converted it to ecs, i can only seem to render meshes

so does this mean, particle effects, trial renderer etc arent possible?

my lecturer told me something like coding my own custom shader and i have 0 idea on that

[karmic basin]

trial as trail renderer ?

[ashen cedar]

o ye

mb

yep that

[karmic basin]

Yeah full DOTS is not ready

[ashen cedar]

i see

so theres no way to render trails for now right

unless i uses custom shaders or something

[karmic basin]

ECS, Jobs, Burt, Collections are pretty good to go

for particles, light, audio, and such, you'd need to go with gameobjects

[ashen cedar]

i see

alr

[karmic basin]

I'm not expert in rendering, didnt see how far the hybrid renderer can go, so I shouldnt answer this 🙂

[ashen cedar]

ight

also whats the point of batchindex if they are using a for loop at the bottom

[karmic basin]

they talk a little about it with what they called companion objects https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.17/manual/hybrid_component.html

[ashen cedar]

oo

i was thinking of creating another entity just to render the trail but i doubt thats efficient

[karmic basin]

Because I was apparently drunk, it's the index of thebatch as the name implies, my bad

[ashen cedar]

o

i see

alr

also in that manual

they did the entity query in the oncreate

for me i should do it in onupdate if i want to get the newest info every tick it runs right

o wait im dumb

i should only get it once no matter what

@karmic basin sheesh its fucking optimised (for me)

[karmic basin]

Nice 👍

[ashen cedar]

uh anyone knows how to rotate ecs meshes to the direction they are moving to?

[rustic rain]

quaternion.LookDirection

[amber flicker]

There are many examples of this - likely even the whole genre of game you're trying to make. There's a reference project a friend made here if it's helpful: https://github.com/ElliotB256/ECSCombat

[ashen cedar]

            Vector3 targetDirection = TargetDirection.Value;
            targetDirection.Normalize();

            Vector3 rotatedVectorToTarget =
             Quaternion.Euler(0, 0, 90) *
              targetDirection;

            Quaternion targetRotation = Quaternion.LookRotation(
              forward: Vector3.forward,
              upwards: rotatedVectorToTarget);

            Quaternion smoothRotation = math.slerp(rotation.Value,       
            targetRotation, RotationSpeed.Value * dTime);

             rotation.Value = smoothRotation ;

this is what im doing rn

and its rotating globally

[ashen cedar]

ah alr

[rustic rain]

hmm

[ashen cedar]

@karmic basin hey, for the unitybatch job right, is there anyway to not loop through chunks but instead an entity list?

because i have different flocks right, and each flock has their own entities, so i dont wanna update all of the entities, just the ones in each flock

(well i do need to update all the flock, so essentially i need to update all the entities, but different flock has different data so idk how to identify which entity the flock is in and use that data accordingly)

actually i got an idea

[karmic basin]

Yeah the purpose of the batch job is to iterate chunk

You can go back to a simple EntitiesForEach to iterate entities from a query and it will write the job for you

[ashen cedar]

i see

i think for my case its more effiicent to iterate chunk since i need to iterate all the boids

i just need to know which flock they are in and apply the specific flock data

[karmic basin]

I would probably try using SharedComponentData as a first naive implementation, but I would also look at the entity debugger how much space entities in my flock take in the chunk, just to make sure the SCD doesn't fragment the chunks more than iI had

[ashen cedar]

no point iterating over the flock list and then do entitiesforeach on the entity list

since both is iterating over all the entities whereas the 2nd way is more inefficient

[ashen cedar]

i see

[karmic basin]

you could also have a previous job that stores entities in different container for different flocks

[ashen cedar]

ah

what im doing rn is

i have an entity list

when i generate a new entity

i add it to the lis

[ashen cedar]

how do i check this btw

like which area do i look out for

[karmic basin]

https://forum.unity.com/threads/chunk-info-ui-explained.586729/

there was a more official explanation, but I can't find it again

[ashen cedar]

should i be worried

theres random spikes

[karmic basin]

🤷‍♂️ if it was me I would just reach a first working implementation first, then begin to optimize starting from the worst, but I'm no expert ^^

[ashen cedar]

ah

alr

[robust scaffold]

looks like standard garbage disposal operation.

[worn valley]

Could be something else creating garbage.

[keen cobalt]

Wait hax did boids too?

I just finished mine

It was a pleasant experience:))

[ashen cedar]

Oo nice

I'm still in the middle of doing it but I can't seem to get the movement to work

[keen cobalt]

Did u use unitys physics system or ur own?

I had a horrible time with unitys physics system, my code was running at 7 fps... But i think that was mostly because of me using Getcomponents in the update loop lol

[ashen cedar]

It doesn't really have a physics system. It's actually an old code and I'm converting it to work with ecs

The old code uses transform.Translate

Which ecs can't access transform methods

[keen cobalt]

I did this

Not sure what ecs is tbh

Im a noob

[ashen cedar]

Ah it's the entity component system, which I think it can't access unity api like transform functions etc

[keen cobalt]

Oh

[ashen cedar]

So I need to convert it to transform.positon +=

Same for rotation

The old code uses RotateTowards which I can't use it too

So I need to convert to either lerping or some other way

[keen cobalt]

Old code as in, it used to run on a old version of unit

Or was it just something u did before

I need to learn about ecs lol will do it next weekend

[ashen cedar]

Yes

It's running on the game object classic system

And our job is to optimise it

So I thought of implementing unity DOTS

// Update is called once per frame
  public void Update()
  {
    Vector3 targetDirection = TargetDirection;
    targetDirection.Normalize();

    Vector3 rotatedVectorToTarget = 
      Quaternion.Euler(0, 0, 90) * 
      targetDirection;

    Quaternion targetRotation = Quaternion.LookRotation(
      forward: Vector3.forward,
      upwards: rotatedVectorToTarget);

    transform.rotation = Quaternion.RotateTowards(
      transform.rotation, 
      targetRotation, 
      RotationSpeed * Time.deltaTime);

    Speed = Speed + ((TargetSpeed - Speed)/10.0f) * Time.deltaTime;

    if (Speed > MaxSpeed)
      Speed = MaxSpeed;

    transform.Translate(Vector3.right * Speed * Time.deltaTime, Space.Self);
  }

so ye i need to convert this script

[safe lintel]

are you both students? is dots an assignment or something?

[ashen cedar]

im a student ye and im trying to implement dots

[safe lintel]

just hoping your professor didnt assign dots specifically 🙂

[ashen cedar]

nah, he said to optimise a project, i just decided to implement dots

[white island]

protected override void OnUpdate()
    {
        float3 playerPos = GameObject.FindGameObjectWithTag("Player").transform.position;

        Entities.ForEach((ref CellComponent cell, ref RenderMesh rMesh, in Translation translation) =>
        {
            rMesh.mesh = CellLODMeshGenerator.generate_mesh(
                new int2(16, 16),
                0,
                new Texture2D[]{
                    new Texture2D(16, 16, TextureFormat.RFloat, 1, true)
                }
            );
        }).Schedule();
    }

it says Entities.ForEach uses ISharedComponentType RenderMesh. This is only supported when using .WithoutBurst() and .Run(), so where do I put the .Run? (and also can I use the burst compiler on the generate_mesh function if it's just a static function elsewhere?)

[coarse turtle]

Entities.ForEach((RenderMesh mesh) => { ... }).WithoutBurst().Run()

highly doubt you would be able to make generate_mesh burst compatible. Pretty sure Texture2D is not a blittable struct unless it's your own custom struct.

[white island]

Oh does burst compilation need to have blittable data types? Hmm

[ashen cedar]

hey

if i create new entities on user input, and i want to update new entities created, i need to do an entity query on every update right

[white island]

How can I destroy an entity?

[amber beacon]

¯_(ツ)_/¯

[ashen cedar]

anyone know why the entity is rotating but the sprite is the same direction

[safe lintel]

EntityManager.DestroyEntity(entity) or similar via EntityCommandBuffers @white island

[white island]

Yes, but how do I do it within a system? (inherit systembase)

[safe lintel]

entitymanager is a property of the system

if you mean within foreach, you need .WithStructuralChanges and .Run

[ashen cedar]

pretty sure u can access entitymanager by doing this in system but correct me if im wrong

[white island]

okay, got it, thanks. i heard using the entitymanager to remove things can cause blocking problems?

[ashen cedar]

anyway to access public variables in other scripts (monobehaviour) from systembase?

[white island]

You just do it normally

[ashen cedar]

how?

o wait

hold up

ye idk how

normally would be to do a public variable, put in the script and drag it in using inspector

so uh can anyone help

[worn valley]

Bring a firehose to a super soaker fight

[ashen cedar]

can i use GameObject.Find() in systembase?

[rustic rain]

Yeah, it's static method

[worn valley]

It's really inefficient though. So be careful.

[ashen cedar]

So well rn, I have a flock system, each flock has their own rules so I want my system base to retrieve these rules however these rules are stored on a monobehaviour script so do u guys have any advice for this?

[rotund token]

don't store them in a monobehaviour 😅

[ashen cedar]

can i schedule 2 jobs in a systembase at the same time

[rotund token]

you can schedule as many jobs as you want

[ashen cedar]

alr

[ashen cedar]

o

well i store them there coz i can edit them in my inspector instantly

[rustic rain]

So I saw some mention

that GetSingleton

causes all scheduled jobs to complete

if they use that component

is that true?

[ashen cedar]

is it possible to use entityquery to filter out only entities with a component and a particular value in that component?

[rotund token]

yes

you can avoid syncs by using GetSingletonEntity in the system and passing it to the job and using GetComponent<T> within the job to get the component

[rotund token]

only shared components, really not something you want to do

[ashen cedar]

i see

so rn im using ijobentitybatch where it uses batches from an entity query right, but because mine is a flocking system, i would like to schedule one job for each flock. i currently already have an entity list that stores all the entities in each flock,

so what kind of ijob should i use to loop through an entity list?

[rustic rain]

so I need to pass ComponentDataFromEntity?

to jobs

so they create dependency and all?

        var playerVelocityData = GetComponentDataFromEntity<PlayerVelocity>(true);
        var player = GetSingletonEntity<PlayerVelocity>();
        //float velocity = GetSingleton<PlayerVelocity>().value.x;
        Entities.WithReadOnly(playerVelocityData).ForEach((Entity entity, ref Translation translation, in BackgroundMovement backgroundComponent) =>
        {
            var velocity = playerVelocityData[player].value.x;
            translation.Value.x -= backgroundComponent.MovementSpeed * delta * velocity;
        }).Schedule();
    }

like this?

Commented - before

all lines with var are after

[rotund token]

you can just do GetComponent<PlayerVelocity>(player )

[rustic rain]

inside job?

[rotund token]

yes

[rustic rain]

wait

is that legal?

[rotund token]

yes

[rustic rain]

            var velocity = GetComponent<PlayerVelocity>(player).value.x;
            //var velocity = playerVelocityData[player].value.x;

so

[rotund token]

it just codegens to GetComponentDataFromEntity under the hood

[rustic rain]

that is exactly same thing as my previous code?

huh

I see

[rotund token]

yes

its just less effort

[rustic rain]

welp, thanks a lot

so many code optimisations to do now

I will prob reduce amount of lines by 10

simply because of this

what about EntityManager btw?

does it force incomplete jobs to finish too?

I assume yes, since it seems like the only safe solution...

[rotund token]

yes

[rustic rain]

ah damn, silly limitation

if I have foreach with component type

with write access

I can't do that GetComponent

[rotund token]

the alias issue

[rustic rain]

Is there just any way to run threaded job without burst that works with monos?

when you know 100% it's thread safe

kind of disable all those limitations

[rotund token]

pretty much nothing in unityengine (i.e. monobehaviours) can be used off thread

you can totally use classes etc in a threaded (non-burst) job

but yeah, not unityengine stuff

[rustic rain]

I can assign fields or change transforms

pretty sure

[rotund token]

you can assign fields because that's not using anything in unityengine

you should not be able to write to transform unless you use transformaccessarray

[rustic rain]

thing is, job won't let me run with any managed type at all

only single threaded

[rotund token]

actually yeah that's probably true, might not let you pass in managed memory

you'd have to pin the memory and pass it in as a pointer

[rustic rain]

bbbrrruh

how to deal with this

I need to keep game object for animator

yet if I convert to entity

obviously it won't keep any info about GameObject prefab

and thus no animator

on respawn

[ashen cedar]

eh how would i go around updating all the entities in an entity list on every tick (1s or so)?

would i use ijobforparrallel or is there a better way?

[rustic rain]

entities.foreach

[ashen cedar]

entities referring to the entitylist right?

[rustic rain]

wait you mean you have actual List<Entity>?

[ashen cedar]

yes

an actual one

[rustic rain]

you need job

and move list to NativeList/array

[ashen cedar]

which kind

i tried ijobforparrallel and its giving me this error

IndexOutOfRangeException: Index 0 is out of restricted IJobParallelFor range [24...24] in ReadWriteBuffer.
ReadWriteBuffers are restricted to only read & write the element at the job index. You can use double buffering strategies to avoid race conditions due to reading & writing in parallel to the same elements from a job.
Unity.Collections.NativeArray`1[T].FailOutOfRangeError (System.Int32 index) (at <9baebf9af86541678fd15bfdbf5f26eb>:0)
Unity.Collections.NativeArray`1[T].CheckElementReadAccess (System.Int32 index) (at <9baebf9af86541678fd15bfdbf5f26eb>:0)
Unity.Collections.NativeArray`1[T].get_Item (System.Int32 index) (at <9baebf9af86541678fd15bfdbf5f26eb>:0)
FlockingSystem+FlockJob.Execute (System.Int32 index) (at Assets/Scripts/Testing/FlockingSystem.cs:226)
Unity.Jobs.IJobParallelForExtensions+ParallelForJobStruct`1[T].Execute (T& jobData, System.IntPtr additionalPtr, System.IntPtr bufferRangePatchData, Unity.Jobs.LowLevel.Unsafe.JobRanges& ranges, System.Int32 jobIndex) (at <9baebf9af86541678fd15bfdbf5f26eb>:0)```

[rustic rain]

just look up manual

mr.k sent you yesterday

all job types have examples

[ashen cedar]

alr

[rustic rain]

on how to use them

in those manual

Unity didn't leave us without any docs

[rustic rain]

ok I'm extremely dissapointed by perfomance of full dots 2D solution

[gusty comet]

Wait we have a 2d dots now?

[rustic rain]

I took 2d physics from Tiny

180 fps on PC, 30 on mobile lol

for extremely simple graphics

and game logic

[gusty comet]

Let's be real the whole dots is yet another half baked feature that they overhyped, pushed out way too early and then backtracked and it will now be a zombie like the input system(s) the UI system and many others.

Heck the newest editor release does not even properly save your progress anymore.

[rustic rain]

I'm not sure why perfomance is so bad, but I assume that's because there's way too overhead

for my little solution