archived-dots

[rotund token]

Haven't seen that

[worn valley]

Best way to figure out how to build a good mesh renderer in dots is use game object conversion to make it and then copy that info. Your matrix is invalid in LocalToWorld because it needs a 1 in there and your world render bounds is also zeroed out.

[mystic mountain]

So I think unity have cleared my defines when I downgraded version or something^^ Seems it caused my ghost prefabs to fail serialize etc. 🥴

[karmic basin]

Then why not go for 5 fields ?

No it's not as ugly as you think 😛

[white island]

alright, now my entites look like this, but still arent showing up...

[karmic basin]

looks like you don't have a rendermesh ?

which by the way the renderbounds would have been computed automagically for you if you had I would assume

but don't quote me on that hehe

[white island]

yes i do lol

[karmic basin]

RenderMesh.Mesh looks unassigned though

[white island]

oh, it isnt, it's generated, which is why im confused

[white island]

Okay,even though I am close, maybe instead of creating new entities from scratch, I should be instantiating prefabs and setting the emeshes? not sure how t odo that though

pardon me folks the ECS workflow hasnt quite clicked in my brain yet

[tranquil jay]

Hello! I have a VFX on a MonoBehavior where I want to send an event to trigger an explosion burst.

My logic is to have a NativeArray where I put the float3 positions within various ForEach-es in various Systems.
Inside a MonoBehavior i go over that NativeArray and use the float3 positions to do the triggers, then I dispose and recreate the NativeArray for the next frame.

My issue is that I cannot access that NativeArray from inside Lambdas because it's trying to access a "this".
I cannot access a Singleton Monobehavior either.
I cannot GetSingleton<VisualEffect> because it's a class

**
Is it possible to make the lambdas access that NativeArray in a legal way?
Or is it possible for my VFX to be triggered from within a lambda to avoid having to cache all the positions?
Or is it possible for a MonoBehavior to access some sort of storage of my explosion float3s ?
**

[coarse turtle]

You can try creating a local reference to your native array.

NativeArray<float3> aliasToClassNativeArray = this.classNativeArray;
Entities.ForEach((...) => {
  for (int i = 0; i < aliasToClassNativeArray.Length; i++) {
    // Do some logic with aliasToClassNativeArray;
  }
}).Run/Schedule/Parallel(); // For ScheduleParallel you may need to make it readonly to avoid contention

[tranquil jay]

I do need to write to it to accumulate my events. and aliasToClassNativeArray will be a copy if struct, or if it's a class it will give me an error

[coarse turtle]

it's a copy of the struct sure

but a NativeArray contains a pointer

you'll be pointing to the same memory address

[tranquil jay]

I try tomorrow that code, I seem to recall the using a local variable workaround and now I understand why, thank you @coarse turtle ❤️

[white island]

Yeah I cant figure out why I am not able to see my meshes. They are there and are correct at least

[rotund token]

your local to world doesn't seem to match your world render bounds

[white island]

That is intentional, actually, for a complicated reason. Does that cause problems with the rnederer

renderer

Ok uh here is my situation
-I have a level editor, and part of the build process is that everything marked as "scenery" is stitched together into a single mesh for each "cell" (a 256x256 space) to reduce draw calls for static objects
-The stitched mesh is exported
-For each cell the mesh is read from disk and then built and spawned as an entity
The reason that the render bounds have such an offset is that a cell might have like, a rock in the middle of the field and that's it. And so while the spawned mesh is at 0,0,0, that rock mesh is actually over at 100,0,100 or something

but I just realized

since it's all 1 big object that's only going to be 256x256 in breadth (since that's the size of the world chunks) I could just make that my render bounds

Wait. The meshes are there. but they are invisible.

And it's not backface because I moved my camera inside of them and I still see nothing

what is this.

[rotund token]

material issue?

[white island]

No, the material is fine. I even set it to double sided. The mesh has triangles, and even shows up right in this preview, so I dont believe it's my deserialization code.

[safe lintel]

if you just slap the material onto a basic cube and convert it to entity it shows up fine?

[white island]

it works fine.

it's just an HDRP/Lit material, nothing fancy

[river lake]

is that mesh gonna be anywhere near the size of the renderbounds you are setting?

[white island]

Possibly, but unlikely

like maybe, if I were to fill the entire thing with rocks and trees or whatwever

[river lake]

maybe try using Mesh.RecalculateBounds if you are exporting from unity?

[white island]

Oh I also have code to recalculate bounds, but it didn't do anything

[river lake]

perhaps the problem is not with the bounds then 😄

[white island]

Yes I figured that part out. But i have no idea what it could possibly be

because the material works, the mesh is deserialized correctly...

[river lake]

does it work without converting to entity?

[white island]

Well my whole system is made to use ECS, but I’ll try tomorrow.

[river lake]

does anyone know if it's possible to do raycast in jobs? specifically animation rigging constrain jobs

i am trying to get the raycasting info from my animation before the rigging constrains but doing something like

CollisionWorld collisionWorld = World.DefaultGameObjectInjectionWorld.GetExistingSystem<BuildPhysicsWorld>().PhysicsWorld.CollisionWorld;

isn't allowed in the constraint :X

[rotund token]

what you're doing doesn't look like you're doing it in a job? at least not a job in a system

[river lake]

yup, it's a job for the animation rigging package

sadly i have no idea how the different system groups in ECS are updated relative to unity's core gameloop

my last resort would be extracting raycast info from the animations itself but that feels like going a pretty big round to do simple IK

[eager pawn]

haha, i was actually thinking about that, but i want to access these 5 fields randomly, and it seems easier to just do unitComponentList[randomUnitIndex]. that's why i think i've decided to just go with dynamic buffers, at least for now

[verbal pewter]

I know this isn't exactly DOTS related, but not many people are familiar with the Unity.Mathematics library outside of here. Does anyone know if an angle passed to math.cos should be degrees or radians? Trying to implement boids in 3d and this solution (https://stackoverflow.com/a/65266247/4565536) mentions that some libraries expect values to be in degrees while most expect radians. Trying to figure out if I need to convert the angle value from degrees to radians or not. The documentation is, of course, no help.

[devout prairie]

F*** hell can unity not just serialize dicts for the inspector

Off topic sorry, i just like it here

[karmic basin]

IIRC in radians

let's find out

Library\PackageCache\com.unity.mathematics@1.2.1\Unity.Mathematics\math.cs

        /// <summary>Returns the cosine of a float value.</summary>
        [MethodImpl(MethodImplOptions.AggressiveInlining)]
        public static float cos(float x) { return (float)System.Math.Cos(x); }

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.math.cos

An angle, measured in radians.

[verbal pewter]

Thanks so much!

[eager pawn]

    public class ShopSystem : ComponentSystem
    {
        protected override void OnUpdate()
        {
            Entities.WithAll<ShopComponent>().ForEach((Entity entity, ref ShopComponent shopComponent) =>
            {
                DynamicBuffer<IntBufferElement> shopUnits = EntityManager.GetBuffer<IntBufferElement>(entity);

                for (int i = 0; i < shopUnits.Length; i++)
                {
                    int randomIndex = Random.Range(0, shopUnits.Length);
                    //EntityManager.CreateEntity(TypeManager.GetType(shopUnits[randomIndex].Value));

                    Debug.Log(randomIndex);
                }

                EntityManager.CreateEntity(TypeManager.GetType(shopUnits[0].Value));
                EntityManager.CreateEntity(TypeManager.GetType(shopUnits[1].Value));
            });
        }
    }

why does this give me error structural changes when i add the second CreateEntity, but not if i just have the first?

also since i have two element in my buffer, wouldn't Length return 2? so wouldn't my randomIndex be 0, 1, or 2?

oh nevermind

Description
Return a random int within [minInclusive..maxExclusive)

so since it's maxExclusive ig i don't need to do Length - 1

[haughty rampart]

component systems are deprecated with version 0.50. change it to SystemBase. also make sure you use mathematics.random for random value generating. not sure about the error, but it might queue up the changes before creating the entities

[eager pawn]

damn im using some old stuff... should i also change the entities filter? im using the WithAll instead of WithName

[haughty rampart]

WithName() filters for an entity name, not for components

[north bay]

The problem in your snippet is that the first CreateEntity => structural change invalidates the DynamicBuffer

[haughty rampart]

ah yeah right, tbh, don't use the entity manager at all, rather use ECB's

much less issues with those

[eager pawn]

alrighty

[karmic basin]

This one is a misleading trap from the API. It allows you to name your job. 😛

[haughty rampart]

ah yeah right, my bad. i was first thinking about that it names an entity, then that it query's for an entity name, but no, correct, it names the job. never needed it (yet)

[eager pawn]

why do i have to write System.Random rng = new System.Random();

instead of using System; and the Random? is it cuz it assumes Random is UnityEngine.Random?

[haughty rampart]

yes. but you should use mathematics.random not System.Random / UnityEngine.Random

[eager pawn]

sorry but... whats that? i don't see any math.random

[karmic basin]

You can use this shortcut
using Random = Unity.Mathematics.Random;

[eager pawn]

ohh unity.math icic

thx

how do i get a random uint seed? if im not wrong i think on unix you can use /dev/urandom

but im on windows

[real vigil]

Yo! I've been trying to upgrade entities package to 0.50, but I, for the life of me, can't get rid of these errors. Tried to look around for anyone else with the same problem, but couldn't find anything on this, so anyone here know what's going on? I've been trying to remove/reinstall all dots packages, but the wall of errors inevitably returns when I install entities 0.50

[eager pawn]

there's probably better ways but i'd comment code out, then when errors disappear i would un-comment until i found it

[solar spire]

what Unity version are you using

[coarse turtle]

are you on 2020.3.3x LTS?

Cause that error typically on an incorrect version of Unity with Entities 50.

[real vigil]

2020.3.17f1

[solar spire]

Upgrade to .30+

[real vigil]

Is the fix really that simple? 😅

[eager pawn]

what do u use for random seeds on windows? Mersenne Twister?

[real vigil]

Man I feel like an idiot again. Thanks vertx, I'll try that out

[eager pawn]

how do you get your seed? im on windows and i have WSL so ig i could use /dev/urandom?

[haughty rampart]

you can put in any seed or leave it out. it's just a uint

[eager pawn]

hmm but would it make sense to read the /dev/urandom file from the linux filesystem for the uint?

[haughty rampart]

but that would always be random

[haughty rampart]

if you want it always random, just don't pass in anything

[eager pawn]

that's not possible. it gives

ArgumentException: Invalid state 0. Random object has not been properly initialized
Unity.Mathematics.Random.CheckState ()

https://forum.unity.com/threads/runtime-error-on-random.548449/

giving it a seed like var rng = new Random(0x6E624EB7u); does work tho

[haughty rampart]

strange. that is not happening in my systems

[eager pawn]

https://i.imgur.com/gQzk1wJ.png

im on this and i only got entities, jobs, and burst packages added

using UnityEngine;
using Unity.Entities;
using Random = Unity.Mathematics.Random;

namespace AutoAllStar
{
    public partial class ShopSystem : SystemBase
    {
        protected override void OnUpdate()
        {
            Entities.WithAll<ShopComponent>().ForEach((Entity entity, ref ShopComponent shopComponent) =>
            {


                var rng = new Random(0x6E624EB7u);
                //var rng = new Random();


            }).ScheduleParallel();
        }
    }
}

[dapper vine]

new Random((uint)System.DateTime.Now.GetHashCode());

[uncut rover]

@eager pawn this may interest you
https://github.com/Dreaming381/Latios-Framework/blob/v0.4.5/Documentation~/Core/Rng and RngToolkit.md

[eager pawn]

thx ill check it out. also maybe you could look at my problem

    public partial class ShopSystem : SystemBase
    {
        private EndSimulationEntityCommandBufferSystem commandBufferSystem;

        protected override void OnCreate()
        {
            this.commandBufferSystem = World.GetOrCreateSystem<EndSimulationEntityCommandBufferSystem>();
        }

        protected override void OnUpdate()
        {
            EntityCommandBuffer.ParallelWriter ecb = this.commandBufferSystem.CreateCommandBuffer().AsParallelWriter();
            BufferFromEntity<IntBufferElement> buffer = GetBufferFromEntity<IntBufferElement>(true);

            Entities.WithAll<ShopComponent>()
            .WithReadOnly(buffer)
            .ForEach((Entity entity, int entityInQueryIndex, ref ShopComponent shopComponent) =>
            {
                DynamicBuffer<IntBufferElement> shopUnits = buffer[entity];



            }).ScheduleParallel();

            commandBufferSystem.AddJobHandleForProducer(this.Dependency);
        }
    }

i've tried with a readonly buffer and without it, but for some reason i keep running into errors no matter what i try :((

this line gives the error DynamicBuffer<IntBufferElement> shopUnits = buffer[entity];

System.ArgumentException: A component with type:{0} has not been added to the entity.
This Exception was thrown from a job compiled with Burst, which has limited exception support. Turn off burst (Jobs -> Burst -> Enable Compilation) to inspect full exceptions & stacktraces

that's the error with readonly set to true

[coarse turtle]

It looks like IntBufferElement may not exist on the entity, is there a reason you're not accessing the dynamic buffer as a parameter in your ForEach and opting to use DynamicBufferFromEntity?

[eager pawn]

just inexperience and following tutorials. ill try the parameter solution.

i think i might have missed a step when creating the buffer?

    public class GameManager : MonoBehaviour
    {
        private void Start()
        {
            EntityCommandBuffer ecb = new EntityCommandBuffer(Allocator.Temp);
            
            EntityManager eventManager = World.DefaultGameObjectInjectionWorld.EntityManager;
            Entity entity = eventManager.CreateEntity(
                typeof(ShopComponent)
            );

            ecb.RemoveComponent<ShopComponent>(entity);
            ecb.AddComponent<ShopComponent>(entity);

            DynamicBuffer<IntBufferElement> shopBuffer = ecb.AddBuffer<IntBufferElement>(entity);

            shopBuffer.Length = 2;
            shopBuffer[0] = new IntBufferElement { Value = 0 };
            shopBuffer[1] = new IntBufferElement { Value = 1 };
        }
    }

[coarse turtle]

your ecb is never played back since you're manually constructing it

A commandbuffer is just a storage of commands that needs to be played back at some point in time

All you're doing is constructing a command buffer and never executing it.

[valid haven]

HDRP: Added: Added minimal picking support for DOTS 1.0 (on parity with Hybrid Renderer V2).

not sure what this means. In 2021.2b13

[uncut rover]

@eager pawn you can start by running you code without burst to have a better idea of the actual error

[eager pawn]

i recoded everything and removed the gamemanager with the monobehaviour. i now got something that's working. ^^

[karmic basin]

Looks like it's about Graphics Picking. It's a technique in Rendering which provides an alternative to Raycast picking.

Consider trying to select an object a user clicked through the transparent material of a hollow shape. Casting a ray would intersect with the collider shape between camera and aimed object.

So the gist of the technique is to render off-screen each different object with a unique color, hashed from its ID for example. Now when user clicks on viewport, you can pick the pixel color at clicked point coordinates, revert back from color code to ID, and here is your target object, regardless of obstacles in front of the camera.

That's my best guess anyway 😛

[valid haven]

sounds like a good guess. Thanks.

[karmic basin]

Ah found it here https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/Graphics/pull/6071

Looks like they're more concerned about having a bridge with BatchRendererGroup rather than transparent edge-case 🤔

The basic idea here is to define a new shader for URP/HDRP and use that only when rendering the BatchRendererGroup objects for the picking (renders object instanceIDs in a tiny 4x4 texture, then read it back from CPU).

[white island]

It does work

[river lake]

if it also works when you hit the converttoentity on that gameobject you just created, you can probably play spot the diff and get it working hopefully :X

[dull copper]

Unity's DOTS stream up in a bit (20+ minutes)

[white island]

That, actually helped. It was on the wrong layer mask. Thank you.

Question: how do I change the name of an entity as it appears in the heirarchy

[river lake]

there's a setname function in entitymanager

[white island]

ah ok thank you

[gusty comet]

dots q&a about to start.

aaany minute now...

[lusty pewter]

late as usual

[dull copper]

https://www.twitch.tv/unitytech

live now

[slow vault]

Dunno if CpyAnd is in here, but here is better to chat than Twitch 😅

I use DOTSNET instead of Netcode, because back when those were first releasing, Netcode seemed super focused on making competitive FPS games work and not much else. DOTSNET seemed more flexible. I haven't kept up with Netcode at all since their FPS sample released, so others may be able to chat more about how Netcode is flexible & usable now?

DOTSNET is tricky to learn as a networking rookie, but the dev is super active & helpful. And super flexible for my Minecraft/Astroneers-inspired game.

[devout prairie]

Finally talking about dots on the stream

[gusty comet]

"We were a little bit silent about dots" 😅

[lusty pewter]

kinda weird to talk about the basics...

[safe lintel]

i assume this is aimed at those who dont know what dots is\

[gusty comet]

feels like marketing rather than q&a

[dull copper]

that's what GDC is 🙂

[devout prairie]

a touch rushed tbf, if i didn't know dots i'd be none the wiser based on what he's saying

[gusty comet]

you'd expect a q&a to be different than showing sizzle reel

gdc's nature has nothing to do with it

[vast wedge]

ask hard questions in twitch chat - i'm sure after the introduction they'll get into more details

[safe lintel]

are they collecting questions now?

[dull copper]

if you can even ask questions

apparently you can

[lusty pewter]

it's raining questions

[devout prairie]

ehhh lebaron question

[dull copper]

I'm totally expecting it to be jump from 0.5 to 1

[slow vault]

"communicate every quarter" and "release next quarter" means "no communication til the next release", right?

[dull copper]

with minor fixes to 0.5

[lusty pewter]

already said animations will be 1.0 right?

[devout prairie]

just said no anim in 1.0

:cries:

[lusty pewter]

cries in 1.0

[vast wedge]

1.0 doesn't usually mean 1.0 with Unity features 😄

[devout prairie]

so basically - if you make games, that have game stuff, like animation, forget about it until 6 months after 1.0

[dull copper]

so much for the 3 year plan :p

[north bay]

6 months sound optimistic

[dull copper]

I mean 1.0 was supposed to just be core DOTS all along but everyone expected animation and audio to be part of it 🙂

[vast wedge]

omg so many questions on twitch haha the last 7 hours of interviews there were hardly any questions

[lusty pewter]

that's why i build everything with hybrid (at work). huge pain in the ass but at least we can use some game object stuff that works..

[vast wedge]

i have a mental image of a thousand DOTS nerds in clown costumes getting out of a little volkswagon 😄

[dull copper]

I don't really agree on this current view on DOTS enabling you to run things on lower end devices

unless he's talking about like some future vision

[gusty comet]

sounds nice for the investors though

[dull copper]

if you do something that needs brute force computing, sure it does help but you've then already designed the game to work with some DOTS tech.. but if you have traditional game and port parts of it to DOTS/ETC, you won't see huge gains for it.. can even have negative perf impact in some cases

[devout prairie]

well he's talking about the ability to gain a lot of performance to run the same content on lower end devices right

[gusty comet]

I don't think they've said anything so far that we didn't know, right?

[dull copper]

when I still evaluated DOTS and just used Unity's own DOTS systems and none of my own, things actually slowed down due to less performant rendering and physics

[devout prairie]

that's kinda why i'm annoyed about animation missing because it's such a huge bottleneck in unity.. but i think there's other stuff that can benefit a lot from dots performance

[dull copper]

it was actually related to what I asked on the twitch chat... I found out that letting job system to run uncapped worker thread amount just caused perf to tank

[devout prairie]

URP is definitely slower by default than old standard renderer

[lusty pewter]

tbf isn't that something that they are working on atm?

[devout prairie]

in my experience at least

[dull copper]

if I limited the whole job system to run on few threads, it improved DOTS system cost

but limiting the whole job system's worker amount is silly... you'd just want to limit the certain systems there and get huge gains

[gusty comet]

Was it the ecs that slowed things down or was it just hybrid rendering/dots physics?

[dull copper]

now I can only max like 1/4 of my cpu capacity

[safe lintel]

@devout prairie maybe im still in denial but im still hoping the animation team returns to public releases

[devout prairie]

i think in a lot of cases limiting to single threaded with burst will give better performance

unless you're using large data/iterations

[safe lintel]

like theyve made it clear that 1.0 no animation, but I just kinda hope it resumes unofficial/experimental releases soonish that fall outside of the whole "production ready" disclaimer they are pushing around 1.0

[devout prairie]

man it would be nice if they did, it's such a key thing

[gusty comet]

According to the animation roadmap, dots is the only thing they're working on. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[dull copper]

my issue here is that to get good perf on more traditional game design / content, you'd have to push it back to few threads, where whole DOTS was advertised to go wide on all cores

[safe lintel]

if i see some of the main animation guys(mecanimdev, adam mechtley, some others i cant recall) say: "yeah not gonna release anything until its actually production ready" then obviously id be crushed

[dull copper]

I'm only on 12c / 24t system... I can only imagine how badly this works on 32c system 😄

[devout prairie]

yeah it could be a year at least in that case before we see anything at all

[slow vault]

That's pretty much what they have to do, I think. The same thing happened in the New Input System; Renee hacked together a way to make it work with DOTS, and then it got frozen since they didn't wanna spend time on continuously making it work with random DOTS changes and get the NIS out of preview

[gusty comet]

I think Unity became super conscious of their current reputation. I fully expect no animation release until it is "production ready"

they are publicly traded after all, they should care about their rep

[safe lintel]

renee's work was like a personal/hackweek thing afaik, the dots animation team have been working on it full time

not quite the same thing

[slow vault]

True, but still.. not exactly having much hope re: animation based on that 🙃

[lusty pewter]

so there is a "DOTS new input system" package? is the source code available?

[slow vault]

It's a branch on the InputSystem repo on Github: https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/InputSystem/tree/dots-input

Also might need this: https://forum.unity.com/threads/dots-input-prototype-hackweek-2020.926939/#post-7304473

[lusty pewter]

we'll now i know what i'm doing this weekend

[gusty comet]

Got my hopes up. last commit: Jul 13, 2020 🙃

[lusty pewter]

doesn't matter. good inspiration for my own project 😉

[slow vault]

I'll double-check to make sure my old repos that had it all working still work on the new DOTS next week, but yeah... the thing that makes new input work in DOTS might break since it's all about turning those input classes into systems.

[devout prairie]

i wonder if the attaching tags approach worked out quicker than just having the tags as components on all entities and polling them

[safe lintel]

im assuming this is dumbed down 🙂

[river lake]

doesn't sound performant imo :X

[devout prairie]

i guess it would be if there's only limited numbers of tags so minimal restructuring stuff

[gusty comet]

performance probably came from burst rather than ecs

[devout prairie]

well if you consider the inefficiency of running hundreds of mono's all randomly accessing memory over and over every frame

compared to highly contiguous batches of memory accessed only when needed, it's going to be night and day right

but in practice, is it a difference between 1ms and 0.1ms

or even less

[safe lintel]

heh 1.0 with 2022 confirmed! (except not at all but seems like thats their optimistic goal)

[gusty comet]

you can still do that with jobs ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[devout prairie]

i guess it all ads up

[river lake]

putting it in jobs would make more sense ://

but yea maybe they have other stuff that work tgt with it

might just be more convenient i guess

[gusty comet]

so many questions in chat that'll never get answered even if the stream had infinite time...

[slow vault]

The very pointed and emotionally-charged questions will never get answered, like that wall from ashkan

Kinda expected since there's no real communication though 🤷‍♂️

It's all pent up

[river lake]

yea even tho it has valid points i wanted to know abt

iirc he said 0.51 is like 6 mths away, not sure tho

[valid haven]

when in 2022 tho, they are wrapping up 2022.1 now... hopeful it drops earlier in 2022.2alpha

he said 2-3 months for 0.51

[river lake]

😮

[gusty comet]

this has been a rather disappointing session honestly. looks like IPO really did a number on unity.

[lusty pewter]

6 months would be brutal. i take the 2-3 months. would love to update 2021 projects

[valid haven]

I want 1.0 to drop in alpha as soon as possible.. I have a lot of work to convert my custom hybrid ECS to DOTs and Unity Physics.

[dull copper]

wonder if we'll even get 2022.2 alphas....

normally we would have had them for a long time already

[safe lintel]

lts? no idea, havent followed the betas since dots got locked to 2020 😦

[valid haven]

I would be really disappointed and surprised if DOTS 1.0 dropped like the day 2022 LTS drops.

I think its more likely it hits the tech stream.

[gusty comet]

Don't worry, it'll drop just a few days before LTS!

(Please keep in mind I did not specify which LTS)

[valid haven]

I refuse to believe it.. because it will screw up my plans 😛

[river lake]

haha

[lusty pewter]

would have been funny if he said it does not use DOTS

[river lake]

sadly we all know in our hearts dots wont be rdy anytime soon

[lusty pewter]

depends on your definition of ready

[river lake]

they are like completely rehauling systems to be multithreaded and cache aware

after years of stuff that dun care abt that

[river lake]

tats true

[valid haven]

I am perfectly fine with 1.0 not being 100% pure dots.. I am even ok with it not having some desirable features like audio and animation. The benefits are still there.

[river lake]

their original goal was to build another unity from unity tiny 😄

[lusty pewter]

would already be great to have up to date sample projects without 100 TODOs

[river lake]

same, even after using dots for like almost a year, i still can't get used to doing hierarchical transforms in dots

most of the time my brain is like thinking abt whether i am doing the dependencies right so that things dont get updated one frame late

[lusty pewter]

really curious about the performance impact of the replay system. i guess a racing game produces not that many different kinds of inputs so it's not that high but i guess we'll never know

[dull copper]

I don't think it's even that game specific thing... for mobile racing game you probably have more limited amount of inputs but having like double the input values wouldn't change the cost. it's also not something new... people have done this for replay systems for a long time if their sims have been deterministic

[lusty pewter]

done my own with DOTS but not sure if the implementation was that optimal. that's why it would have been interesting to know how theirs performs

[dull copper]

I'd guess the main reason why people haven't used this in this manner is because doing deterministic simulation which you can rewind and resimulate using Unity has been really hard

stateless dots physics would help a lot on that

[lusty pewter]

isn't the current approach of dots physics to keep as little state as possible?

[white island]

1. can the Havok physics interact with GameObject physics?
2. Can a monobehaviour raycast against Entities colliders and physics?

[rustic rain]

entities physics don't interact with go physics

[dull shell]

guys, anyone used dots netcode, is it good enough to use?

[eager pawn]

1. im trying to create a list of all the units in the game. one idea i have is to read all files in the UnitComponents folder, and add each unit into a dynamic buffer.
   or alternatively, maybe i could just manually create the list of units myself using a blobasset and a blobarray which would also make the data immutable?
2. i want (preferably) a fixed sized mutable datastructure that holds a bunch of randomly selected units, for example, shopUnit[0] might hold a unit[randomIndex], although it's no big deal to use a dynamic buffer for this.
3. all the units have a baseAttack and an Ability() where the ability will be something like Debug.Log("unit 1");.. so i was thinking i would have one system per unit type, but the only way i know how do distinguish between Entity unit1 and Entity unit2 is by filtering by component types, which would mean i would need to create a component for each unit too?

i hope im making sense. im inexperienced and i don't have really have a reason to do things in any particular way so im fine with a completely different approach that may be better at accomplishing my goals, thx :))

[dull shell]

3. it really depends on what exactly unit type means in your game, and how much optimization you want etc

for example if you store unit type in some component and select all entities with that component, then you can check component value to get type you need, its acceptable way

[eager pawn]

Alright, I will implement something real soon like that. Ig It just seems like it wouldn't be very DRY because I would repeat myself by creating new IComponentData for each unit where the only difference is their name.

Pseueocode:

Unit1 { blobassetreference}
unit 2 {blobassetreference}
unit 3 {blobassetreference}

Blobassetreference {int baseAttack;}

... This seems weird to me, but maybe it's not wrong

[dull shell]

Not sure what you mean, im not familiar with dots ECS specifically, IComponentData is basically new component? Why would you need to create it for each unit?

[eager pawn]

Yes, a new component. I want unit1 system, unit2 system, and unit3 system.

The only way I know how to make different systems is by adding a component tag and filtering.
pseueocode:

Entity.WithAll<Unit1> { Debug.Log("unit 1")}
Entity.WithAll<Unit2> { Debug.Log("unit 2")}
Entity.WithAll<Unit3> { Debug.Log("unit 3")}

[dull shell]

if you dont need to store any new data for each unit type, you can just use Unit component and inside it property like int UnitType and get units like that
foreach unit component iterator {
//get component data here
if (unitComponent.UnitType != (your unity type from system)) continue;
//your system code
}
or you can just make component for each unit type, since you making new system for each unit type anyway

or 1 system and 1 component for all unit types with something like switch for conditions and multiple methods (for each unit type) (so you wont iterate for units you dont need)

[eager pawn]

Hmm okay, maybe I could make things more generic like you suggest

again, pseudocode, but something like this? (i removed the blobasset for now for simplicity)

{
    public int baseAttack;
    public int unitType;
}

Entities.WithAll<UnitComponent>.ForEach(() => {
    if (UnitComponent.unitType == UnitTypeEnum.Sonic) {
        // sonic system
        UnitComponent.baseAttack = 1;
    } else if (UnitComponent.unitType == UnitTypeEnum.Mario) {
        // mario system
        UnitComponent.baseAttack = 3;
    }
})```

[eager pawn]

^

[dull shell]

ye, something like that

[eager pawn]

yeah okay, i don't know what made me think this wasn't possible to do 🤔 but i like it! thanks, having one system and one component for all generic units make much more sense than doing one for each xDD

although, won't the mario system and sonic system override the data of unitComponent.baseAttack? or perhaps that's only if you use that sharedcomponent thingy

[dull shell]

is it like init System? well you working with instance of component for each entity, you cant override anything

if i understand you

[eager pawn]

dw, im pretty sure im wrong. i was thinking since both entities hold the same component, then changing the component's data would mess things up. it's probably more like they hold different instances of the same component so it won't happen

UnitComponent#1.baseAttack = 1;
UnitComponent#2.baseAttack = 3;

same "object" but different "instances"

[dull shell]

yes, components are entities data basically, its dynamic data mostly that you changing for each entity (like position of entity), as well as "static data" that you dont want to be changed, but technically you can (like unitType)

[eager pawn]

right! this solved a lot of headaches for me and i think things finally are clicking. this was super helpful, thank you :DD

[devout prairie]

so in 0.5 is there any clarity on hybrid work ie is the game object conversion stuff still the same or anything changed with the whole 'companion' thing

i'm guessing that's more in 1.0 territory

[safe lintel]

they havent really mentioned anything (and took away AddHybridComponent)

[stone osprey]

Small question, what unity version does support Spans in C# code ?

[deft stump]

unity doesn't support span<T> I believe

[stone osprey]

Not even ReadOnlySpan ?

[deft stump]

oh correction, I'm wrong

they do support it

[stone osprey]

Since when ? My 2021 editor says they cant be found 😮

[deft stump]

I'm on 2021.2.10f1

[stone osprey]

Im using asmdefs and stuff, do i need to add something to them ? ^^

[deft stump]

no, you don't, but my 2021.2.10f1 isn't complaining at all

[stone osprey]

I have 2021.1.6f :/

System.Memory is not available at all

[deft stump]

well I think I'm wrong, i dunno.
I'll just shut up lmao XD

[valid haven]

I haven't looked into subscenes much, do they provide any benefit when origin shifting large scenes?

I have my own hybrid ecs/jobs system, with a large world coordinate library. In my monobehaviour prototype, I have a render space of 50km (before shifting object renders) and the world space scenes of 2km (for physics colliders) and while origin performance is acceptable, I am looking to convert it to and curious what strategies exist out there to accelerate this kind of overhead.

[tame pelican]

Can someone tell me how to handle trigger collisions, all tutorials are using JobComponentSystem which is obsolete. Also I couldn't find anything at the documentation either.

[stone osprey]

Just updated to unity 2021 and got this...

0,0): error error DC3002: Script.Client.ECS.Systems.Reactive.ReactiveSystem`3/AddedJob: generic jobs cannot have their reflection data auto-registered - you must use the assembly-level RegisterGenericJobType attribute to specify which instantiations you need

What does this even mean ? That Reactive Systems job uses a passed generic, thats all... why shouldnt this work anymore ? ( Worked in 2020 )

[uncut rover]

@tame pelican just replacing JobComponentSystem by SystemBase does not work on hte exemples ?

[uncut rover]

you have a generic job somewhere that need to be declared for burst to take it into account.

something like [assembly: RegisterGenericJobType(typeof(AbilityCostConsumerSystem<GENERIC>.CostHandlerJob))]

[tame pelican]

obviously not, in tutorials you create jobhandle which requires inputDeps which you don't get with OnUpdate overrided method of systembase

[uncut rover]

use Dependency instead
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.50/api/Unity.Entities.SystemBase.Dependency.html#Unity_Entities_SystemBase_Dependency

[stone osprey]

Thanks !

Another issue...

Library\PackageCache\com.unity.dots.editor@0.10.0-preview\Runtime\Unity.InternalAPIEngineBridge.002\TreeView\TreeView.cs(779,28): error CS1061: 'ListView' does not contain a definition for 'm_ItemHeight' and no accessible extension method 'm_ItemHeight' accepting a first argument of type 'ListView' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)

Why do i get this error now ?

[tame pelican]

I'm not sure how to combine that with the physics

[uncut rover]

do you still have com.unity.dots.editor package in your package.json ? You need to remove it if you have entities 0.50

[uncut rover]

https://forum.unity.com/threads/how-do-i-detect-collisions.1257156/#post-7990239

[karmic basin]

The official samples were up-to-date to entities 0.17 and physics 0.6
https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/EntityComponentSystemSamples/tree/master/UnityPhysicsSamples/Assets/Demos/2. Setup/2d. Events/2d1. Triggers/Scripts
If you use 0.50 (a PR is on the way to update the samples) or working from an old tutorials, you can always read the changelog from some date in the past to nowadays and apply any upgrade required

[stone osprey]

Oh... since when ? xD Im gonna try this, thanks

I hate upgrading packages

[karmic basin]

yeah they merged the editor within entities

they said it in the upgrade guide or forum post, can't remember

[stone osprey]

Alright... what went wrong this time ? xD

Im gonna cry

[coarse turtle]

make sure you're on 2020.3.30 lts

[karmic basin]

make sure you are in version 2020.3.30f, and follow upgrade guide

[stone osprey]

Doesnt dots work with 2021f ?

I cant go back

[coarse turtle]

Not until they release 0.51 in q2 of 2022

[karmic basin]

Read the annoucement in the forum 😉

[valid haven]

I just want to know when 1.0 will drop into 2022 tech stream alpha/beta... 😐

I have no interest in developing against 0.51, which will change radically for 1.0.

[stone osprey]

Fuckkk... i need 2021 for spans but cant use it with entities ?

I hate it

[karmic basin]

The editor improvement look nice though, won't they help you meanwhile ?

oh .51 not .50, I misread ^^

[valid haven]

My concern is I am in the process of developing my game backend infrastructure. Redoing this work late in my development cycle is a no-go. Editor tools/enhancements are nice to haves for me, nothing more.

[karmic basin]

Fair

[valid haven]

My project depends on 2022 tech, so its really not an option anyway and my release target is 2022 LTS.

[stone osprey]

Can i use entities with 2022 beta ? xD I bet thats also a no, right ?

[valid haven]

The DOTS 0.50 release seems to be mainly target at those who already had DOTS projects. If someone is early in their development cycle today, I have a hard time imagining they would want to start their project in 2020.

[valid haven]

not yet... hopefully once 2022.2 alpha/betas drop.

[stone osprey]

Okay which entities version should i use for 2020 lts ? ^^

0.50 can be used with 2020 right ?

[karmic basin]

2020.3.30f mini

for entities 0.50

and follow this https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.50/manual/upgrade-guide.html

[stone osprey]

Thanks, but 2020.3.32f should also work right ?

And JobComponentSystem is gone now ? Can i still use it like this :

            // Add the added component job
            var addedJob = new AddedJob{
                ecb = ecbParallel,
                entityHandle = GetEntityTypeHandle(),
                componentHandle = GetComponentTypeHandle<TComponent>(true),
                added = added.AsParallelWriter()
            };
            addedJob.ScheduleParallel(newEntities, inputDeps).Complete();

?

[karmic basin]

Dunno what happened between 30 and 32, didn't have a look so can't answer

[karmic basin]

JobComponentSystem is obsolete now yeah, replace with a SystemBase

Please read the guide, all your concerns and more are raised

But yeah you can schedule a job like you did in SystemBase

[rotund token]

https://github.com/Extrys/UNITY-DOTS-0.50-2022-beta-compatibility

Just going to leave this right here

[valid haven]

tempting lol

[karmic basin]

Nice

[safe lintel]

im quite disappointed it appears the newest game sample isnt based upon dots(like megacity, fpssample etc) 😔

[haughty rampart]

told you

[safe lintel]

yep, you were right!

[uncut rover]

I have yet another good reason (in addition to generic blob) to have the entities package as a local package then. Thanks for sharing !

[stone osprey]

Something i cant find in the migration guide... Cant we use "commandBuffer.DestroyEntity(query)" anymore ? It says its invalid

Ahhh solved

They renamed that, doesnt make sense but they did... cool

Is there a way to check if an entity command buffer is "active" ? Or created ?

[safe lintel]

er var commandbuffer = system.CreateCommandBuffer() @stone osprey

[stone osprey]

That creates one... but what if i have one for this frame and i want to check if its still existent ? Hard to explain but i have a system where those are being created automaticly

[coarse turtle]

Have you looked at the IsCreated property?

[safe lintel]

assumably you have a system that plays them back right? like that timing between creation and playback is where they are valid

[eager pawn]

So umm, how do i set a dictionary on a entity? Nested dynamic buffers?

[rotund token]

Generally you don't and it'd need to be quite large to be worth it

That said I just released a dynamic hash map https://forum.unity.com/threads/dynamichashmap.1256154/

[eager pawn]

Is this restricted to the normie types like int, float etc, or can I use entity and stuff too?

[rotund token]

Anything unmanaged

[eager pawn]

Is it mutable?

[rotund token]

Yes

The only thing to really note is that if you're storing Entity it won't remap if you set it up in a subscene so you need to populate it at runtime instead

[eager pawn]

That's cool, thanks for creating this. I'm a bit worried your package might break in the future, but you seem very active with dots

[rotund token]

It's unlikely to break unless unity deleted dynamic buffers

Only other real alternative is to use unsafe hash map and deal with having to manage the memory yourself

[half jay]

im creating Meshes at run time and want to storage texture in NativeHashMap, but its require blittable type. So can i store texture in BlobAssetReference and the Blob asset store as value in NativeHashMap?

[rotund token]

Does your texture storage need to be on an Entity?

Seems like it should just be held in the system that's applying it

[half jay]

nope, im just have static class with this NativeHashMap. Im wondering is it a nice decision store texture as BlobAssetReference ?

[tranquil jay]

I am being on 2020 LTS just because it's LTS. Is 2022 stable enough to switch for this or would it be better to wait for Unity official 2021 support

[rotund token]

I'm not using that just pointing out someone else's work

[safe lintel]

@tranquil jay unless theres something specific you need, id just stay on 2020.

[devout prairie]

Eh no thanks

[calm edge]

what is the best way to get a reference to a different system from inside a system? OnCreate doesn't seem to work because the other system isn't created yet, so OnStartRunning?

[rotund token]

Use on create

And use getorcreateexistingsystem

As the name suggests it will create the system if it doesn't exist yet

[tranquil jay]

I need the Decal upgrade of URP which is 11+, and it stops at 10 in 2020

[eager pawn]

sorry for being dumb but how did you intend me to use this? I tried adding it in the package manager using git url, but it didn't work, at the moment i just extracted your files into my assets folder, but i get errors like: 'UnsafeHashMapData' is inaccessible due to its protection level [Assembly-CSharp]csharp(CS0122)

is this cause im using a different version of collections or something?

[eager pawn]

at this point i almost feel like doing

units = [unit1, unit2, unit3, unit4, unit5, unit6, unit7, unit8, unit9];```

but it's probably better to do [EntityOne, EntityTwo, EntityThree] for the first dimension, and then give each entity a dynamic buffer for the second dimension?
alternatively maybe nested UnsafeList

[eager pawn]

Wait I could just use unsafehashmap?

[harsh onyx]

Unity devs please give us a native Materiallist that can only be written during start and awake, so we can point to those materials

[haughty rampart]

you sure you want that? why not just apply the material to the mesh renderer in the editor?

[harsh onyx]

Was writing about it yesterday in the advanced section. Unity instantiates a new material when switching materials, they even wrote it on the material documentation.
Lets say you select 30 units in an rts and instead of switching a boolean in the shader (which can be costly depending on how big the shader is and how many different shader those 30 units have) you could just point to the exact same highlightmaterial (that is readonly).. which then can easily be batched also.

[haughty rampart]

but material is part of a SharedComponentData iirc, so just point to that?

[harsh onyx]

gotta try it out thanks

[vocal wing]

Hi. Not sure if it’s the right channel, but what could be the reason the job system is limited to 1 worker thread on a headless build on Linux? I tried launching with -job-worker-count 2 and it just logs JobSystem: Invalid job-worker-count value 2 must be between 0->1 right at the start. Any hint on how I can find out more where this limit comes from? (2020.3.30)

[misty wharf]

Hi, i have a question about shared component data :
Can i treat it like static fields ? so if Entity a changes the shared component, the change will also be visible for Entity b (in its shared component) ?
If not do you have any reccomendation how i can achieve something like this ? (like a buffer that can be accessed by all entities)

[safe lintel]

@vocal wing how many cores/threads on the system?

[haughty rampart]

that's exactly what sharedcomponentdata does

[misty wharf]

perfect thanks

[haughty rampart]

but you can't use it with scheduleparallel()

[vocal wing]

It's 2/2 running on a c5.large instance using amazon linux if that helps.

[safe lintel]

1 thread is reserved for the main thread

so what its saying is normal

[vocal wing]

ah, i mean 2 threads per core

so 4 hardware threads it should be

[safe lintel]

hm I guess I would double check the vm definitely has access to 4 threads? otherwise I guess its not normal

[vocal wing]

oh nevermind, I missinterpreted it. it's actually 1cpu, they just call it vCPU, so I guess you're right. i'll try it with more cores to see how it behaves.

[ionic sierra]

is dots easy now?

[stone osprey]

Any idea why i get this shitty error ?

What do they even mean with reflection data ? I think i do not use reflection anywhere

[ionic sierra]

How to do dots?

[stone osprey]

No idea honestly

I just try to run my job like this

            // Add the added component job
            var addedJob = new AddedJob{
                ecb = ecbParallel,
                entityHandle = GetEntityTypeHandle(),
                componentHandle = GetComponentTypeHandle<TComponent>(true),
                added = added.AsParallelWriter()
            };
            addedJob.ScheduleParallel(newEntities, Dependency).Complete();

Any one having an idea why i get the error above ?

[safe lintel]

@ionic sierra hasnt really changed in terms of ease of use from before 0.50 to current.

[ionic sierra]

ok.

anyone know how to instantiate soemthign in dots?

[haughty rampart]

EntityManager.CreateEntity

[safe lintel]

take a look at https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/EntityComponentSystemSamples @ionic sierra

pinned messages has links to docs

[haughty rampart]

dots uses reflection

for some things

[stone osprey]

Thanks... do you have any idea how i can solve the issue above ? My code looks like this :

        protected override void OnUpdate() {
            
            var ecb = atFrameStartBuffer.CreateCommandBuffer();
            var ecbParallel = atFrameStartBuffer.CreateCommandBuffer().AsParallelWriter();
 
            var addedEntityCount = newEntities.CalculateEntityCount();
            var removedEntityCound = entitiesWithStateOnly.CalculateEntityCount();
            
            var added = new NativeList<Transmution>(addedEntityCount, Allocator.TempJob);
            var removed = new NativeList<Transmution>(removedEntityCound, Allocator.TempJob);

            // Add the added component job
            var addedJob = new AddedJob{
                ecb = ecbParallel,
                entityHandle = GetEntityTypeHandle(),
                componentHandle = GetComponentTypeHandle<TComponent>(true),
                added = added.AsParallelWriter()
            };
            addedJob.ScheduleParallel(newEntities, Dependency).Complete();  // ERROR HERE
        }

Once i try to schedule the job it throws that weird error

[haughty rampart]

don't think it has anything to do with your code

[stone osprey]

Oh well... thats actually worse... so do you think i have the wrong package versions ?

[haughty rampart]

nah

what's ReactiveSystem line 117?

[stone osprey]

Thats a system i wrote myself... the code above is copied from it, the last line is the line where the error happens ^^ The line where i try to schedule added job

[haughty rampart]

what's newentities?

[karmic basin]

a query it looks like

[stone osprey]

Yep just a query... newEntities selects all newly created entities ^^

I also cant find any other sources on that error... no forum posts or similar stuff sadly

But this piece of code ( from unity itself ) causes it...

Looks like T is my "AddedJob"... and the check reflection method simply checks for a null pointer

But i have no idea why its null and throws that issue

[karmic basin]

my best guess would be something went wrong during codegen but I'm not sure

[stone osprey]

Is there a way to trigger the codegen again ?

[haughty rampart]

try restarting unity

[eager pawn]

I'm stuck rip

[stone osprey]

Did... but the error persists :/

I hate such errors... what else would you suggest ?

[karmic basin]

Delete Library folder to let Unity rebuild it ?

[stone osprey]

You mean the whole package folder ?

[karmic basin]

Nope, the Library folder

[stone osprey]

I will try this, thanks ^^

Hopefully it works...

[eager pawn]

If you can't delete lld.exe try restarting ur pc.. That's what I had to do to delete library folder

[vocal wing]

yes, you were right. with an actual 4 thread instance I get 3 workers. thanks. 🙂

[stone osprey]

I have several errors in the entities 0.50 package...

Like 110

At some points there even errors like "List" ambigious calls or however you write that word

Any idea why this is happening ?

Looks like there no posts about that issue in the forum... sooo im kinda stuck with it

Especially the subpackage editor is full of errors

Those are my packages...

Anyone having an idea ?

[safe lintel]

did you just upgrade to 0.50 to try to fix your previous error?

[stone osprey]

I upgraded yesterday ^^ and i just rebuild the library which results in this beautifull errors above

[safe lintel]

i would comment out that one job/system that seemed to give you errors

[stone osprey]

I will... but currently i have all those issues above ^^ The ones in the entities package itself

[safe lintel]

occasionally I get like 15 errors in entities package when one non entities package thing is broken, some odd new quirk of the codegen i guess

[stone osprey]

So this is no big deal ? Does it even compile with errors in it ?

[safe lintel]

not until I fixed my own shit

[haughty rampart]

regenerate the project files

[eager pawn]

Still need help with multidimensional datastructures on entities. I'm aware of a couple solutions, but idk if they're any good

Or if my design is even good in the first place but I think so

[haughty rampart]

also: what ide are you using?

[stone osprey]

So i still have like 130 errors inside that damn entities package and i still get the damn jobs error which makes no fucking sense... i hate it, i think its easier to go back to 0.17... or does anyone know how i can resolve all that weird errors ?

I already rebuild library

Wheres that one dots god that always has a solution ?

[eager pawn]

Maybe I shouldn't even do this in ecs and just make it in non-dots code

[stone osprey]

When i try to clean and build my solution... this happens

Entities cant even find collection stuff like UnsafeList or NativeList

"Type or Namespace not found"

What the heck am i doing wrong ?

[haughty rampart]

regenerate your project files

[stone osprey]

How ?

Actually never did this before ^^

I recently deleted the library folder... if thats what you mean

[haughty rampart]

edit -> preferences -> regenerate files

[stone osprey]

Thanks 🙂 I just clicked it... anything else to do ?

Well somehow this didnt worked, the exact same errors

Did anyone got entities 0.50 to work ? If so... could you please post your package manifest ?

[eager pawn]

that's what i got from my project i started 4 days ago

[stone osprey]

Thanks ! Do you use 2020 lts ?

[eager pawn]

yes

[stone osprey]

Great ^^ And do you get any errors inside your IDE regarding the damn entity packages ? My rider ide told me there like 138 errors inside Unity.Entitites

[eager pawn]

no, but i would get similar types of errors every day cuz my code is wrong lol. i have no errors as of now tho

[haughty rampart]

are there still the 'type not found' errors

[stone osprey]

Yes there are... i will now just take @eager pawn package manifest and rebuild the lib... i hope this fixes this damn issue

[eager pawn]

oh btw my project is unity 2d, no idea if that has an affect on package manifest

[stone osprey]

We will see ^^

[karmic basin]

Should NOT do that honestly

[stone osprey]

Why ? 😮

[karmic basin]

well it will remove your packages and put the ones in the list

2 different projects are... different projects

[stone osprey]

Yes which is great because mine do not work... i get errors like crazy from entities 0.50 because it cant find certain stuff xD

[stone osprey]

Errors like those

Its german, but basically "Type or Namespace not found"

[karmic basin]

it won't rebuild entities 0.50 because you use it

but it will remove any package you have installed and @eager pawn did not

• install the 2d packages you don't care about if your project is not 2d

and so on

[stone osprey]

Alright how should i ever solve those damn errors above ? ^^

[karmic basin]

Do you use assemblies ? Maybe assembly references broke when you upgraded 🤷‍♂️

[stone osprey]

Yes i use asmdefs... but how would i fix this ? The errors are inside the entities package... my code is fine

Like entities editor cant find certain classes... entities itself doesnt even know what an unsafe or native list is during build and such stuff

[haughty rampart]

can you make a new project and import all your assets from your existing project?

[stone osprey]

Oh well this will take hours :/

[haughty rampart]

why? just export all to a unitypackage, then import them

[stone osprey]

Well i could try this ^^

Besides that... is it possible that entities 0.50 only works with 2020.3.30 and not with 2020.3.32f ?

Both are lts versions

[haughty rampart]

nah, works with 30+

[eager pawn]

im on 31f and it works fine

also did you see my issue mindstyler?

[stone osprey]

Alright... so this cant be the problem

So i deleted all packages and resolved them again... same issues

EditorWindowBridge... where is this shit even from ?

[safe lintel]

Can you paste your packages.json?

[stone osprey]

there it is 🙂

[safe lintel]

Remove platforms package

[stone osprey]

Gonna try this, thanks ! What is this even for ?

[safe lintel]

Wait actually you need to upgrade it to 0.50 same preview version as entities

Confused it with the dots editor

Which got merged into entities

[stone osprey]

Alrightttt, putting it back into the packages ^^ one moment

Well it cant find the platforms package anymore... damn

Ah looks like its hidden

[safe lintel]

It should be the exact same preview version as entities

So just modifying it by text should do the trick

[eager pawn]

If I'm not wrong, adding com.unity.platforms in the package manager should give u the newest version automatically

[safe lintel]

That too

[stone osprey]

Alrighttt soooo

The platforms version should be fine now, right ? Its exact the same like that from entities

Oh wait

it cant be found

So i have installed it now... "com.unity.platforms" version 0.50 preview 4

Lets see how it goes

WEllllllll

Same issue...

My updated package manifest looks like this now...

Sooo i had some progress here... It now tells me the following

It cant find a "UnityIAPIEditorBride.dll"

Which may cause that issue above

Does anyone know what that is and where i can get this from ?

[stone osprey]

I regenerated the project sources and this issue is gone now

Finally

So back to previous issues...

        protected override void OnUpdate() {
            
            ....
            
            // Add the added component job
            var addedJob = new AddedJob{
                ecb = ecbParallel,
                entityHandle = GetEntityTypeHandle(),
                componentHandle = GetComponentTypeHandle<TComponent>(true),
                added = added.AsParallelWriter()
            };
            addedJob.ScheduleParallel(newEntities, Dependency).Complete();  // Error, Reflection Data was not set up by initialize() call ??
      }

      public struct AddedJob : ...{}

Does anyone have an idea why this wont work in entities 0.50 ? Its a schedule & job related error....

[haughty rampart]

no. what issue?

[safe lintel]

what about separating schedule and complete?

[stone osprey]

Tried that, same error :/

[karmic basin]

AddedJob implements which kind of job ?

[stone osprey]

IJobChunk ^^

[karmic basin]

OK it's deprecated but I don't know if obsolete yet or if you can still use it

[stone osprey]

What should we use instead ?

My editor says its still fine and not marked with obsolete or deprecated ^^

[karmic basin]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.50/manual/ecs_creating_systems.html

oh ok probably still fine then 🙂

[stone osprey]

Hmmm... so the replacement for JobChunk is JobBatch basically ?

[karmic basin]

added is a Native container ? you instanciated it ? Sorry I'm just throwing ideas

IJobEntityBatch yeah

was already advised on 0.17

[stone osprey]

Yes like this var added = new NativeList<Transmution>(addedEntityCount, Allocator.TempJob); it looks like that the damn was not initialized is a direct job issue, i will try to replace it real quick with entity batch

[karmic basin]

yeah actually you would have had a different error if you didnt instanciated the container, my bad

[stone osprey]

Well i replaced it real quick... but the error stays 😦 :

This little piece of code causes it in the schedule method

T is the Job struct

The job is nested in an class because it makes use of some generic stuff... is this probably the issue ?

[safe lintel]

whats TComponent?

[stone osprey]

The Generic i was talking about ^^ Its a generic job which worked pretty fine... its basically nested like this :

public class GenericSystem<T>...{

   public struct AddedJob{ // Works with component T }
}

[safe lintel]

'which worked pretty fine' in 0.17?

[stone osprey]

Yep it did ^^

Looks like that nested struct is really the problem, scheduling jobs outside the system works fine

Please tell me theres a nice solution to bypass this problem...

[river lake]

it's a problem of the new codegen which only works on the outer most declaration and forgets generics and attributes

[north bay]

You can try using this in your on create
JobEntityBatchExtensions.EarlyJobInit<YourJob>()

No idea if burst will catch your job tho

[eager pawn]

I want a dictionary/map on a component. I could explain in further detail what game I'm actually trying to make if that helps? Maybe my entire approach is wrong.

[stone osprey]

You are my hero... it works, thank you so much !

[safe lintel]

@stone osprey was that error being called during playmode or actually preventing a compile?

[rotund token]

Do you not have a : restriction on this type?

[safe lintel]

@rotund token what do you mean by restriction?

[rotund token]

: struct

Etc

[safe lintel]

ah

[whole gyro]

Do you need to change the dictionary at runtime? If not, there is an implementation of a BlobHashMap that has been shared here and on the forums. If you do need to change it at runtime, then the best solution probably depends on the size of the dictionary. If its a small, I would just use a DynamicBuffer and iterate the entire list to find the matching element.

Or use this from @rotund token : https://forum.unity.com/threads/dynamichashmap.1256154/

[eager pawn]

Tertle code ain't working for me, although it's just a few accessibility errors so ig it shouldn't be too hard to rewrite stuff. Not sure if there's a version mismatch or something that's causing it 🤔

But yeah, a blobhashmap and a dynamichashmap is exactly what I want. I in the blob, I want exactly 5 unit tiers with each tier holding units. Later on, you will be able to customize each tier (but not the amount of tiers), so I could put some of the tier 2 units from the blob into tier 2 of the dynamichashmap

[whole gyro]

Hmm, I would probably need to know more about your use case, but I'm wondering if you even need the hashmap. Can you just have tag components for each tier and then use a query to grab the units for a given tier?

[eager pawn]

When the game starts, a datastructure with all units will be put inside it, as well as their associated tier. This can be a fixed length and Immutable.

If you choose to customize a tier, let's say tier2 (similar to customizing a card deck) you can copy a bunch of t2 units into the dynamic buffer, obviously this has to be mutable. I don't think a single dimensional array will work, but if I had two I could do something like, pseudocode:

unitTiers = [1,1,2,2,3]
units = [unit1, unit2, unit3, unit4, unit5]

In this example, unit5 would be the only tier 3 unit.

Since I have 5 tiers, you're suggesting maybe I could 5 entities, the first with tier1conponent, the second with tier2component, etc? Then each entity holds a dynamic buffer? I think that works too.

[whole gyro]

With the dynamic approach, each element would store a reference to the unit and the tier it is in. Basically, just squish your two arrays together. So it would be something like:

struct TieredUnit : IBufferElementData {
  public Entity Unit;
  public int Tier;
}

And the idea with tagging is that you never need to store the list of units by tier. Instead, the tier is stored on each unit entity as a tag. Then you can query for all entities that have the Tier2Tag.

[eager pawn]

Ohhh, I didn't even consider I could do it that way, I will try it first thing when I wake up tomorrow :DD

[uncut rover]

@blur
You probably don't need a map structure since you seem to have a fixed immutable dimension. If you now you have 5 tiers and then you want to have any number of unit of any tier, a simple implementation would be to have one buffer per tier so 5 in total.
For the non mutable structure you could do the same and have a blob asset with one blob array per tier.
Of course this is bad if you want to have a 6th tier at some point...

[stone osprey]

During play... But its solved now :)

However... After upgrading to entities 0.50 my whole simulation group is pretty slow now... looks like theres something weird going on

[stone osprey]

Btw... is it now more performant to tag entities with empty components in entities 0.50 ? In previous versions it was quite expensive due to heavy copy operations from one archetype into another and similar stuff

[viral sonnet]

I don't think anything changed there. But I'm also not using structural changes and I haven't done a specific test to compare 0.17 to 0.50.

from what I've seen in my own project and report from others. There are no performance differences between 0.17 and 0.50

[rotund token]

Ah could you let me know what's wrong? I didn't test pulling it out of my library but I did have a quick check that it wasn't depending on anything else of mine

Does it depend on something internal from unity?

[eager pawn]

yeah, i think internal unity things may have changed, for example, CollectionHelper does not have a CheckIsUnmanaged method
https://i.imgur.com/4YtVJLA.png

im new to c# so idk exactly what internal means, but UnsafeHashMapData is an internal struct, maybe it was public in a different version? "'UnsafeHashMapData' is inaccessible due to its protection level"
https://i.imgur.com/Xt07cZK.png

and finally, the "it" variable never gets assigned to a value
https://i.imgur.com/q979ZI8.png

i added your code by extracting all files, including the license and stuff, and put them in a brand new 2020 LTS 31f project
https://i.imgur.com/EfxBNsb.png

that's the manifest for the brand new project

[karmic basin]

@eager pawn internal is an access modifier that basically means "restrict usage to files within the same assembly only". Read more here for example https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/programming-guide/classes-and-structs/access-modifiers

So yeah you can't really use internal stuff unless you recode it yourself

[haughty rampart]

you could also add [InternalsVisibleTo()] to the assembly

[stone osprey]

Damn 2020 lts performs kinda bad... sometimes the editor runs at 15 fps without anything going on... even on empty scenes.

[stone osprey]

Can the ECB buffer component object operations ?

Cant find any method to buffer a object assignment

[coarse turtle]

wdym by object assignment?

[stone osprey]

Doesnt matter anymore, solved it ^^

Besides that... can i run a "IJobEntityBatch" directly on the main ( RunWithoutJobs )

This was possible with IJobChunks

But the method is gone for IJobEntityBatches...

Oh and can i run jobs with passed delegates in it ? It worked in the past... now i get an error that job structs may only contain references 😦

I wanna run the jobs on the main so it actually doesnt matter

[coarse turtle]

IJobEntityBatchStruct { }.Run(someQuery) if you want to run it on the main thread.

[stone osprey]

Thanks 🙂 And what if i wanna pass a delegate to the job ( I use it as some sort of main thread callback )...

It currently throws the following exception :

Which is true for scheduled jobs and such... but it doesnt matter if it executes on the main normally

[coarse turtle]

I imagine BurstCompile isn't an attribute on the struct right?

[stone osprey]

Its not ^^ I already removed it

But it still throws that error

[coarse turtle]

I think there was an attribute you can put onto a parameter

one second let me test it out real quick...

[stone osprey]

Alright thanks ^^

[coarse turtle]

nevermind there wasn't an attribute

[north bay]

Doing RunWithoutJobs on jobs implementing IJobChunk didn't go through the job scheduler which is why it was allowed
If I remember correctly you can use GCHandle to pass managed types to jobs just fine

[stone osprey]

Does this work on delegates ? If so how ?

Pinning ?

Damn why did they removed that RunWithoutJobs...

[coarse turtle]

You can try GetFunctionPointerForDelegate

I've only used it to pass C# functions into C++

[stone osprey]

I just wonder if that works when the delegate was modified in between with "+=" and "-=" operations... or if it requires a new function pointer after each modification

[north bay]

You can also change members of pinned objects so I would think so, but never tried it myself

[stone osprey]

Alright that sounds good, i will just try it and see how it goes ^^

Still sad that they removed that feature

[coarse turtle]

Actually with this way, I guess there's no native c# way to invoke the IntPtr? 🤔

I think you have to convert it back to a delegate to invoke it

[stone osprey]

And i bet this will not work becauseeeee its a managed type inside a job again

Oh boy, i hate it

Taking bets if it works or not

[north bay]

Once you are in the execute method you can do whatever with managed types

As long as you aren't using burst

[mystic mountain]

Anyone else having issues with GenerateAuthoringComponent and IBufferElementData?

[stone osprey]

Great :> its not marged with brust so i guess it will work

[mystic mountain]

Seems like it works with anything but Entity field. 🤔

[eager pawn]

no? this works for me

    [GenerateAuthoringComponent]
    public struct UnitBufferElement : IBufferElementData
    {
        public Unit Value;
    }

this is illegal cuz Unit is a reference type?

    public struct TiersBlobAsset
    {
        public BlobArray<Unit> tierOne;
        public BlobArray<Unit> tierTwo;
        public BlobArray<Unit> tierThree;
        public BlobArray<Unit> tierFour;
        public BlobArray<Unit> tierFive;
    }```

instead, i should do BlobArray<int> and then "map" each unit to an id?

[misty wedge]

iirc it will work in the editor but fail to build for IL2CPP

[misty wedge]

No matter what you do you cannot have a managed type in a blob

Just store the readonly data you want to have available directly inside the blob

[eager pawn]

ok, ig ill just use the UnitBufferElement then, and not the blobarray

[worthy rampart]

What's the status of terrains in DOTs

[robust scaffold]

Not even mentioned on the roadmap. So dead as a doornail.

[valid haven]

So what is the current way to deal with gameobject based terrains. Render them as gameobjects , but manually extract their collider and convert to Unity Physics?

[worn valley]

yeah I think that is how you deal with terrain physics now

[shell berry]

May I amuse you with my latest article: https://coffeebraingames.wordpress.com/2022/03/27/why-job-structs-are-better-than-entities-foreach/

[dawn cargo]

Hi, I'm new to DOTS, but im looking in to using it for the physics of my game, and was wondering if there is an equivalent to the built in unity Physics.Simulate function that I can use to manually progress the simulation forward? I haven't been able to find much relating to this online

[half jay]

Hi, how can i get pointer of NativeHashMap? I saw special utility class NativeArrayUnsafeUtility, but it is for Native array

[karmic basin]

You can create an entire ecs World to host your physics clone entities, then call the update method of the FixedStepSimulationSystemGroup as often as you like. You could also mess with the fixed timestep in the RateManager component ( don't remember how it's called )

Not a perfect answer but hope that helps

Also check the official samples, they have a pool game where they predict the balls movements taking future collision into account and such. I guess that's exactly what you want

[dawn cargo]

perfect, thank you!

[stone osprey]

Can you schedule/parallelSchedule jobs which are NOT marked as burst compile ?

And can you acess managed stuff in there ?

[minor sapphire]

Entities.WithoutBurst().ForEach()

I think you need to be on main thread to access managed components though? It will quickly give you an error though so just try schedule first and watch the errors 😄

@stone osprey

[stone osprey]

Thanks ^^

Something different... im still trying to run my jobs on the main thread, looks like i cant make use of the job.Run method because i can not convert my delegate into a pointer ( its a generic delegate and c# dont really like them )...

So my next guess i could just call the .Execute method. But that one requires a ArcheTypeChunk. How do i get the ArcheTypeChunk of a certain query ?

[tame pelican]

I wonder how to implement a grid in ECS, I'm not sure how to put that in component , and does it even need to be a component. The point is to access the element with coordinate/index.

Also would it be faster to access to non changeable grid stored in blobasset , rather than accessing the grid using nativearray or dynamicbuffer or whatever it takes?

[worthy rampart]

What kind of grid

[north bay]

Did you try the GCHandle approach?

[north bay]

By the way, just found this while looking at some code JobEntityBatchExtensions.RunWithoutJobs
This should work like the IJobChunk alternative

[tame pelican]

Grid of structs with unmanaged types, which will have size almost never changed, but having data in it change every few seconds. Used for pathfinding.

[worthy rampart]

Gotcha

You can store them in a BVH and query by AABB

Unity physics exposes one

That's how I'm currently building out my grid system

[tame pelican]

I'm afraid I don't understand you, can you clarify it more?

[worthy rampart]

You can use the object produced by https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.physics@0.0/api/Unity.Physics.BoundingVolumeHierarchy.Builder.html

To query for blocks on a grid defined by AABBs

If all the blocks are the same size this is overkill and you can probably just use a map

[tame pelican]

Pretty sure that point of the grid is that the every block is the same size.

(I was referring to solution for game of bomber-man type)

[worthy rampart]

Some grids may have blocks that are all the same size

Sometimes you might want to have blocks that span multiple cells

[stone osprey]

You are my hero... again xD
Why do they hide those methods always ?

[north bay]

Dunno, found it while looking at some codegen lol

[stone osprey]

Thanks a lot ^^

[tame pelican]

@worthy rampart I was referring to grid where you access elements by coordinate directly.

[worthy rampart]

Array of arrays or a map

Depends on if it's fixed size

Or expandable/sparse

If it's fixed size you can also do a single array

With 2d indexing

[stone osprey]

Does entities 0.50 already work on android ?

I really, really hope so...

[eager pawn]

can i create a blob from a system's OnCreate and later get it's data from within another systems OnUpdate, but only after the data has been set?

[eager pawn]

nvm, 2 systems can communicate if you put both their components on the same entity :))

[stone osprey]

Is dots supposed to work on release ? I somehow get my app ( Entities 0.50 ) to run on my phone in development mode... but not in release.
And i actually only use dots, no other fancy frameworks or packages.

[tribal juniper]

why do the child gameobjects not get converted when I use convert and inject gameworld . i cannot use convert and destroy because i am using animator component to drive animation. Please help. using unity.entities 0.50

[stone osprey]

With working i mean, release crashes while development build does not

[stone osprey]

Anyone ever had a similar problem where their dots build crashes on release but ran fine on development mode ?

Crashes directly after the unity logo, Any help would be great

[haughty rampart]

maybe too much code stripping

[stone osprey]

Thanks :) thats possible... It said something about segmentation fault due to a dereferenced pointer

Is there a way to reduce the stripping ?

[haughty rampart]

in the project settings

[trim lotus]

I have a question since there is no answer I can find easily: Can you use DOTS Physics in Unity version 2021? or is it unavailable?

[karmic basin]

It is available, but not yet officially supported. So if you encounter compatibility issues between packages versions, you're on your own to fix them (I'm sure people tried already and the community shares a lot of fixes on the forums)
Support for entities 0.50 is supposed to come soon™️ though.

See this forum post for more details on what to expect and when https://forum.unity.com/threads/dots-development-status-and-next-milestones-march-2022.1253355/

In our previous forum post, we explained we need to go through 3 steps to get to 1.0:

1. Reach compatibility with 2020 LTS: this is what is achieved today with the release of experimental Entities 0.50 and its compatible packages. Entities 0.50 is a breaking change from Entities 0.17.
2. Reach compatibility with 2021 LTS: we are preparing a minor update to Entities, experimental Entities 0.51, that will make Entities and its compatible packages usable on both Unity 2020 LTS and Unity 2021 LTS projects. This update is currently scheduled for Q2 2022. More details will be shared as we approach its release.
3. Reach compatibility with 2022 Tech Stream: the version Entities 1.0 and its compatible packages represent the ECS foundation supported for production for the entirety of the 2022 release cycle. Entities 1.0 will be a breaking change from Entities 0.51.

If you stay on entities 0.17 and physics 0.6, it works for sure. Again if you encounter compatibility errors from packages, there's some fixes explained on the forums

[trim lotus]

Thanks so much for this! I will begin to look into it.

[karmic basin]

👌 have fun !

[ruby cedar]

Quick question about dots

My whole game is running without dots yet ( I’m building a RTS game similar to mount&blade )

But now I’m getting to the point to add AI and I’ll need a lot of them later on with good performance.

Can dots help me out with that? The AI would have animations and some logic for shooting and pathfinding.

Is dots capable for that? And is it different to normal unity system?

[worthy rampart]

are colliders in DOTS supposed to respect a NonUniformScale?

(I know some like Sphere can't)

[patent stag]

Hey any up-to-date tutorial for DOTS?

Most tutorials are from 2019 and I can't be sure if they're obsolete

[hot basin]

TurboMakesGames on YT

[worthy rampart]

the doc pages are your best bet for being up to date

I wouldn't say DOTS is particularly tutorial friendly

lots of good snippets on the forums

[patent stag]

Yeah over the past few years only a few things that were extremely well-document that I was able to learn from docs

Most of the time docs can only be used as a reference, not a getting-started guide or tutorial

[worthy rampart]

also good for getting started

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

lots of isolated examples of using various parts of DOTS

[safe lintel]

@worthy rampart only translation and rotation, no other transform components

[eager pawn]

when i do var blah = myNativeArray;

changes to blah will also change myNativeArray right cuz it references the same memory address

ig it would't have a Copy() method if it didn't

[stone osprey]

Lol... i just had a similar question or more like issue.

One component stores a "UnsafeList" inside of it... i modify that list, but dont set the component new. Did the list update or did it not ?

It did not, sadly... dont really understand why. I mean even if i only own a copy of that component with the list, the list still should reference the same memory adress like before. Somehow it did not, it required a ".Set" new operation

I assume nativelist behaves the same. However i still dont understand why. That behaviour doesnt make that much sense

[worthy rampart]

This is sad. Thank you

Ive done some more digging and it looks like at conversion time scale is respected

If you are converting from a gameobject

[eager pawn]

I dunno genar, but I hope you solved it.

Can I use ptr for unmanaged code? I mean I could try, but idk how to enable unsafe code, I already ticked the allow unsafe in unity settings

I need a mcs.rsp or something?

[haughty rampart]

no, should work already then. if you're inside an asmdef you need to tick it there as well

[eager pawn]

MAYBE its cuz im using vs code instead of vs hmm

the error pops up in the editor and not unity itself

[coarse turtle]

regenerate your csproj & sln files

[eager pawn]

aye! thanks! :DD

[dim moat]

Hey, I am not sure this is the right place to ask that question but... What is the burst compiler + job system place in the game architecture? Does it replace only the asynchronous code? Is it just 'better' and 'modern' replacement for coroutines or am I missing something?

[dense crypt]

Job System is primarily aimed at multithreading code. It's not a replacement to Async-code nor Coroutines.

Then Burst acts as an extra layer on top that optimizes your jobs very carefully for maximum performance

[worthy rampart]

Is game object conversion something that only happens in editor?

[dense crypt]

If you're using a Subscene yeah, there is also a runtime version but it's going to be phased out afaik

[worthy rampart]

Gotcha

So I can't make gameobjects at play time

For the purposes of conversion

[dense crypt]

You shouldn't want to, it's pretty slow and expensive compared to pre-converting them

If you're thinking abour Prefabs then the conversion process is smart enough to also convert Prefabs to "Entity Prefabs". Assuming you're referencing them in your conversion script.

[dim moat]

thanks 🙂

[eager pawn]

So pointers are not allowed in a unmanaged component, right? Then an entity couldn't hold a pointer? Hmm so why would I want to use something like an array of pointers with ecs?

[worthy rampart]

Entities can hold actual pointers

[eager pawn]

Oh.. How?

[worthy rampart]

Not object references

Literal unsafe pointers

But you need to know what you're doing

Or you're likely to mess up

[eager pawn]

But would the component not be considered as managed if I did that?

Kinda like putting a blobassetref on it also makes it managed

[worthy rampart]

My guess is whatever you're trying to do is possible without a pointer

Unless you are integrating unmanaged code

You've not given any info on what you're trying to do with the pointer so it's hard to suggest anything else

[eager pawn]

I was thinking of nested arrays/dictionaries and wondered if I should learn how to use pointers, maybe they will help me with making a datastructure.

I checked the docs and it said a buffer element is a native container which would make it managed, right? So references and pointers would be allowed? If so, couldn't the buffer element hold a pointer to an array or something, or maybe that'd be useless.. Idek dude sorry 😅😅

Nvm I must have misread, it's unmanaged

[worthy rampart]

It doesn't sound like you've got the experience to do pointers correctly. If I were you I'd save myself the headache and figure out a way to solve your problems without them

[eager pawn]

I made my first pointer today so yea

[worn valley]

Pretty much a pro now 😉

[eager pawn]

No matter how I look at it I get O(n) when it could have been like half the list, or O(n^2) cuz of a nested foreach, or some other jank I dislike. Or Its superhard to generalize it and I need to repeat myself or w/e sadge

[misty wharf]

Hi i have a question : Is there a way to model a Dictionary<key, List<value>> that can be used by the job system ? i tried implementing my own and working with NativeHashmap<key, NativeArray<Value>> but there he says it is not blittable. Is there a workaround or am i forced to use flattened 2d arrays

[dense crypt]

NativeMultiHashMap

[misty wharf]

thanks that works fine

[knotty linden]

Hey all, so I'm just checking out DOTS for the first time. I've installed 0.50 and it's now up and running.

Given 0.50 just came out - can anyone recommend a tutorial that isn't too outdated (0.17 I guess)? My plan is to have the changelog open so I can reference it when things don't work, and go from there.

Or have things changed so much that I should just read the unity docs straight away instead?

[misty wharf]

im quite new to dots aswell and this dude helped alot. https://www.youtube.com/c/TurboMakesGames/videos
since i am new i can not say a lot about changes but my feeling when learning was that i did not stumble across outdated stuff.

[knotty linden]

@misty wharf thanks for the tip. I'm using this one atm - it's working great for me so far. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWERX3S8tEGqNeLuQGCcJmw

[misty wharf]

Any one of you got a tip for me ?
My setup is this : I have multiple entities that move dependant on other entities on a graph. So i need to find and reference them inside of my system. Without dots (just with the jobsystem, threads or on main thread) i used a dictionary that maps the entity ids to a graph edge so i can look up where each is on my graph.
In dots i thought that i could use a shared component for this, but inside of the system logic i can only call it by value, not by reference. so if an entity updates its dictionary position the change just happens locally. Do you have an idea how to solve this ? Do i need to use reference types inside of the shared component or is there a good dots specific solution ?

[hot basin]

have someone good article/tutorial on unsafe/unmanaged?

I see that many answers talks about pointers and such but I have not work with them for a long time

[pulsar jay]

Did anyone else encounter this problem while updating to Entities 0.50?
(0,0): error Mono.Cecil.ResolutionException: Failed to resolve Tomlyn.Syntax.SyntaxList1<Tomlyn.Syntax.TableSyntaxBase>

[knotty linden]

I'm interested in this question too. I want to use graphs in dots ^-^

[pulsar jay]

If you want to reference entities, why not just store the entities?

[rotund token]

probably best to just find a really good C tutorial to get comfortable with the concept

[safe lintel]

ugh thanks unity for this extra helpful error
`Microsoft (R) Visual C# Compiler version 3.8.0-dev.20527.1 (53dc6556)
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

error SGJE0003: The parameter 'index' of type int will be ignored.`

[worthy rampart]

I've seen that before

in a thread

@safe lintel https://forum.unity.com/threads/experimental-entities-0-50-is-available.1253394/

I knew I had seen it recently

Chances are that you are missing an [EntityInQueryIndex] on an integer parameter to the Execute method of an IJobEntity.

Look at point 6 of "Replace IJobForEach with IJobEntity" in the upgrade guide:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.50/manual/upgrade-guide.html#ijobentity

^ quote from Unity Dev in the thread

[safe lintel]

yeah that was it thanks

hope they improve the error handling, I almost nuked the library when a few restarts didnt clear it up

[stone osprey]

All i get is a CRASH.
Im trying to build my game in the "release" mode... the development build works fine ( Platform is android, Unity 2020 lts )

When i build and start my "release" build... it crashes with this nice exception.

Does anyone have an idea what the heck this error means... what it might cause ? I assume its dots related... because thats all i use in my game :/

Using entities 0.50 with the jobs 0.50 and burst 1.7

Stripping is disabled...

Im out of ideas what this shit might cause

[haughty rampart]

how are you building your project? from the build settings?

[stone osprey]

Yes from the build settings, if you want i can screenshot them real quick, one moment ^^

The player settings will take one more sec

[coarse turtle]

is this the build configuration asset?

looks like the regular build settings 🤔

[haughty rampart]

you CANNOT use the build settings to build a DOTS game. you have to create a build configuration asset

[stone osprey]

Oh... since when ? 😮

[haughty rampart]

since 0.50 It tells you in the guide

[stone osprey]

Damn i guess i havent noticed that... that explains that issue ^^

Thanks, im gonna check the guide again real quick

[haughty rampart]

got it working?

[stone osprey]

Yep it works now, thanks ^^ Damn such a stupid mistake.
I just wonder that it worked in development build without such an build configuration file

[haughty rampart]

development builds are always compiled way differently than release builds

in any software project

[stone osprey]

That explains it, i wonder if the release version is also faster now 😮 sadly i dont have an inbuild fps widget

[haughty rampart]

it should be. but maybe not super noticible

it definitely won't run worse

[stone osprey]

It is faster ^^ atleast it feels way smoother now, the movement of my units, the map scrolling, spawning doesnt lag anymore. I guess it also makes full use of burst now ( i assume the dev build did not, atleast it feels like ).

I wonder if the rendering mode set to "multithreading" increases the performance even more

[rotund token]

we still build fine without build configuration

you only need it if you have subscenes (or no custom boostrap)

basically same rules as 0.17

and our project is too old for subscenes 😢

(but yeah you should definitely use build configurations anyway)

[safe lintel]

Anyone have any difficulty in creating rigidbodies from code since 0.50? I've already added the PhysicsWorldIndex, cant seem to get anything to actually interact though its supposedly part of the relevant entity queries

[worthy rampart]

I've been instantiating prefab ents without issue

I haven't tried building the full set of physics components by hand tho

Ive just been instantiating and adjusting some

[safe lintel]

turns out it was my use of adding a PhysicsGravityFactor, though I thought it would just get ignored

for a kinematic body

I dunno, still feels different, having to rework a lot of stuff that "just worked" prior

[rotund token]

why i've been advocating for a long time not to create runtime entities

they could completely rework components in a future version

[safe lintel]

cant avoid it if you want to integrate mecanim(shudder) and entities

basically rewriting my old mecanim with Unity.Physics ragdoll workflow which kinda broke with 0.50. was hoping to ditch it but I guess gotta embrace it

[worthy rampart]

What do you mean

Don't try creating new types of entities at run time?

I fail to see how you can possibly get away with never creating entities at runtime

[rotund token]

i never create entities at runtime (except if they have a single component of my own for very specific purposes)

i create entity prefabs via conversion

and instantiate them

so required components are setup via authoring

[worthy rampart]

Ok

I was reading create as instantiate

That's also the method I've been doing

There's too much logic baked into their conversion

[rotund token]

yeah sorry create could definitely be a confusing term, just basing it off the name of ecb/em

[worthy rampart]

That's very annoying to replicate

It's much easier to make some Game Objects to convert

[boreal forge]

Is there a way to "name" a lambda job (Job.WithCode or Entities.ForEach) inside of a system onUpdate? On the burst inspector or the profiler all it says is SystemName.SystemName_LamdaJob_#NUMBER_Job Which really isn't helpful...

[boreal forge]

Also is there a reason an Entitles.Foreach with ScheduleParallel() is only running on a single job thread?

//Lines is a Native array<int4>
lines.ResizeUninitialized(query.CalculateEntityCount());
lines.Clear();
var localLines = lines.AsParallelWriter();

Entities.WithAll<SharedTeamComponent>()
  .ForEach((in Translation translation) =>
  {
  //Do a bunch of work
    localLines.AddNoResize(new int4(eX, eZ, pos.x, pos.y));
  })
  .ScheduleParallel();

[safe lintel]

Afaik it’s ‘WithName(“name”)’ @boreal forge

[boreal forge]

Yes!!! perfect thank you 👍

[molten flame]

I can't find any documentation for hybrid components in the 0.50 docs, am I blind?

[rotund token]

what are you looking for in particular?

well i should say, hybrid components dont exist in 0.50 outside of internal unity use

[molten flame]

Ah ok, I was just wondering if there was a way to query for UnityEngine components without creating a wrapper IComponentData managed component.
In the entity inspector you can see that the UnityEngine components are converted to managed components automatically but it maybe this is purely internal?

[molten flame]

Ok, turns out you can access them, its just a little clunky since they are not IComponentData so you need to use EntityQuery a lot and miss out on a bunch of the nice build in query stuff like GetSingleton.

[tame pelican]

I wonder for DOTS physics when moving a physics body . can I just simple use Translation (inside the "FixedStepSimulationSystemGroup") or is there a different way?

[tame pelican]

Also is there a way to lock one movement axis, and disable velocity, i.e. to move bodies manually but still to prevent them going through obstacles?

[rotund token]

if you use AddComponentObject you can just query them in Entities.ForEach (WithoutBurst and Run of course)

[haughty rampart]

i've got a problem with upgrading some other code. since the animation package is not supported now, how can i store / evaluate an animation curve? i've used AnimationCurveBlob and AnimationCurveEvaluator until now

[devout prairie]

😭

[hot basin]

I have minimal knowledge about c/c++ but I don't know how to apply it in c# environment

[haughty rampart]

syntax is pretty much exactly the same. you just have to put unsafe in a few places

[dull copper]

https://twitter.com/SebAaltonen/status/1509137378111283206

Sebastian Aaltonen (@SebAaltonen)

This was my last day at Unity. 3 years and lots of fond memories :)

I will join a small Finnish company called HypeHype. They are developing a mobile game creation platform.

I will be building a brand new high performance Vulkan/Metal renderer for them.

https://t.co/jBH5X2V7O4

Likes

251

Twitter · Mar 30, 2022, 11:56 AM

(for those who don't know, he was lead of dots hybrid rendering team)

[eager pawn]

can i create a nativehashmap that holds another native container, like native array?

[river lake]

yes but the inner list has to be unsafe

[eager pawn]

so, no? it has to be NativeHashMap<int, UnsafeList<Unit>>

where unit is a uhh what do u call it, blittable struct? unmanaged struct

[pulsar jay]

With Entities 0.50 reading from a ComponentDataArray seems to create a dependency problem:

var translations = query.ToComponentDataArray<Translation>(Allocator.TempJob);

I thought using WithReadOnly(translations)would be the right way to declare reading dependency for automatic dependency management. If thats not the case how do I declare the read dependency on translations?

[safe lintel]

@dull copper hmm good for him to move on to what he wants to do but a bit worrying the lead of the still in progress hybrid renderer is leaving

[worthy rampart]

for the most part you just don't
it's mostly useful for interfacing with unmanaged code where everything is going through a C FFI

in an unsafe {} block you can pretty much do any pointer nonsense you'd want to

[pulsar jay]

Interestingly changing the ToComponentDataArray to be Async and manually adding the dependency of this call fixes the dependency problem. This can not be the only option though can it? 🤔

[winter depot]

I have switched to using RenderMeshDescriptions with URP/Hybrid renderer and I am using "Universal Render Pipeline/Unlit" shader since that is the only shader that I can get to run without SRP batcher errors popping up. I have everything rendering, but it appears as if its not recognizing Alpha at all. Like every single texture has streaks of color where it should be transparent. Anyone able to point me in the right direction? *This is 2D btw

[coarse turtle]

@safe lintel https://forum.unity.com/threads/released-nimgui-a-1-draw-call-immediate-mode-gui-for-unity.1171601/#post-8006861 I released my asset for a 1 drawcall ui with Entities 🥳

[worn valley]

Does it work with VR?

[coarse turtle]

no I haven't had the time to tune the shader to work with VR

[worn valley]

okay, fair enough 🙂

[coarse turtle]

I can probably put in my task queue

[worn valley]

I love me a one draw call thing

nah, don't worry about it. VR seems to be dying slowly anyways.

[safe lintel]

@haughty rampart yeah saw that earlier, still doesnt clear up the issue of can it be released as experimental 😅

[haughty rampart]

btw, with 1.0 it is actually possible to hold native containers inside other native containers since unity will get rid of dispose sentinel. but they said that it won't be allowed to schedule a job that has nested native containers. (hopefully that's temporary though)

[haughty rampart]

there's a post that states that they will release experimental packages of animation, etc... after entities 1.0 before a 1.0 release of the respective packages. but still.....no more experimental packages before 1.0

i've got an issue with 0.50 currently. some code of mine throws 'object reference not set to an instance of an object' errors from a burst job. the problem is, if i disable burst compilation (to get stacktraces) it does not throw any errors at all. any idea how to debug this?

[safe lintel]

can you comment it out line by line to find the offending statement? though dont think ive encountered that

[coarse turtle]

When that happened for me i pretty much just disabled systems until I nailed down the system that was handling it - it wasn't the most efficient. 🤔

[haughty rampart]

i only have one system, but i can't really comment out line by line because most lines are dependent on the line just before it

and it's also strange. when enabling synchronous compilation it does not throw an error either

but i'll see what i can do

[coarse turtle]

still not very familiar with hybrid renderer, but I imagine the shader is an unlit transparent shader right?

[winter depot]

Well its the default URP/Unlit that I was able to get to build without error, I assume I need a sprite shader for this to work, but none of them are compatible. I found a forum post that kind of mentions what to do from a unity team member. You need a subshader with #pragma target 4.5 The subshader needs to use #pragma multi_compile _ DOTS_INSTANCING_ON The shader needs to specify DOTS instanced property definitions for any properties that will be read from entity data, e.g. transform matrices. This is typically done by #including some shared headers. You can look at the example shader in the Hybrid Renderer package for a simple example, or URP/Lit and URP/Unlit for a full fledged example. I absolutely have no clue how to work with shaders so I guess its time to get my hands dirty and waste a week

Actually not sure its worth it though, may just go back to manually rendering with Graphics.Drawmesh

[coarse turtle]

from the post it sounds like adding in #pragma multi_compile _DOTS_INSTANCING_ON as a define in the .shader file. I haven't looked into exactly what DOTS_INSTANCING_ON requires for it to work properly but I imagine the URP shader source would have a struct that defines the data needed for everything to render

[winter depot]

I was able to sort it out by pre-creating a dummy material with the default unlit shader and switching from "Opaque" to "Transparent", then copying that instead of creating one in code. I am not sure how to tap into that property from code, so thats the solution for now.

[worthy rampart]

is there some way for me to get all buffers of a specific type

and do stuff on them in parallel

nvm

disable safety is my friend

[half jay]

Is it possible to use hybrid render V1 in ecs 0.50 version?

[winter depot]

I think only V2 now

[half jay]

And ECS 0.50 obligatorily require Hybrid render 0.50 too?

[rotund token]

you can only use the new 0.50 renderer which means no old rendering only SRPs

[winter depot]

btw tertle did you ever figure out a permanent solution to UIDocument or are we still "re-importing" every time?

[rotund token]

reimporting atm

i'm actually testing if i can run entities on 2021 atm with some modifications

2022 works fine if you don't use hybrid renderer

[winter depot]

I like the sound of that

Well I have switched all to hybrid so Im stuck for now

[rotund token]

(with Extrys modifications)

but 2022 has some giant graphic changes so that's expected

2021 doesn't have these changes so i think i'll be able to get that to run but we'll see

testing right atm

[drifting sun]

dots

[half jay]

it is very sad because we use Augmented Reality and as I know hybrid render v2 requare vulkan and it's not supported by AR

[rotund token]

nope no luck, 2021 hasn't backported the new jobsutility api from 2022 yet

so you can run entities on 2020.3.30+ or 2022 beta but not 2021
but you can only run hybrid rendering on 2020.3.30+

[winter depot]

I am stumped on what RenderMeshDescriptons "LayerMask" and "Layer" actually do at this moment. Have they not been implemented yet or is it a feature that doesn't work on 2d?

Back to using Z for depth

[safe lintel]

@rotund token you mentioned a short while ago you serialize everything to one nativearray, could you explain a little more how that works? trying to visualize this but Im failing

[rotund token]

for saving?

[safe lintel]

yeah

[rotund token]

can't share too much code because it was written for work, but basically each type of entity we want to save has it's own container type

        where T : unmanaged, ISave<T> {

        Entity GetEntity();
        void Serialize(StreamWriter writer);
        void Deserialize(ref StreamReader reader);
    }```
where StreamWriter just writes to a NativeList<byte>

these lists are then just combined together into a single nativearray

and written to disk

[safe lintel]

how do all the different container types fit into the one nativearray though?

thats the part that confuses me

[rotund token]

                var (result, count) = save.Value;

                var meta = new SaveMeta {
                    SaveType = save.Key,
                    SaveVersion = _saveSystems[save.Key].LatestVersion,
                    SaveCount = count.Value,
                    SaveLength = result.Length,
                };

                saveFile.AddRange(&meta, UnsafeUtility.SizeOf<SaveMeta>());
                saveFile.AddRange(result.GetUnsafeReadOnlyPtr(), result.Length);
                result.Dispose();
                count.Dispose();
            }```
where saving is just NativeList<byte> data and NativeReference<int> count

write a tiny amount of meta data about each chunk of memory, then write the data

save version is important so when we can deserialize we can migrate to new formats/etc when we add new stuff in future

but this is versioned per entity type

[safe lintel]

appreciate it, thanks. some new concepts I guess I gotta process 🧠

[rotund token]

i think saving has always been a troubling problem for game dev

that is really not discussed nearly enough

[safe lintel]

yeah, i was disappointed serializeworld being made internal/ streambinarywriter. would have traded inflexibility for ease of use and not have to muck about with yet another thing to work on

[rotund token]

the problem is you can't really use serializeworld for saving

unless you never want to update your game

you change 1 component in the future and all existing saves break

we tried this for a year+

writing auto migration with mock components etc and all sorts of memory hacks

it was a complete nightmare to maintain

while it took me a month to rewrite our saving it was definitely worth the time

it's saved so much time since and is very easy to maintain

[harsh onyx]

is there a faster way to convert a regular Transform array to a Transformaccessarray (unity dots) than looping trough each element.

edit: well I can just use the constructor for it... I am so stupid.....
= new TransformAccessArray(RegularArray[])

[harsh onyx]

like a memcopy or something like that

[worthy rampart]

definitely not a memcpy

but you can cache the transformaccessors

[harsh onyx]

I currently have a prepared (serialized) Transform array that then gets copied at the start of the game into a transformaccessarray and never disposed (because the game works like that)

[worthy rampart]

does anyone know the fastest way to process entities for all values of a shared component filter?

I'm currently doing a regular foreach over the all unique shared component data

and dispatching a job for each of them

[harsh onyx]

Are the shared compontents added dynamicly and change a lot during the game?

[worthy rampart]

I'm wondering if something like a parallelfor would be better

they'll get created and destroyed with some frequency

but once one gets created it's value never changes

[harsh onyx]

I have like a precalculated array that holds all possible shared stuff (hashset then converted to array) and all the entities and gameobjects get is the index of the array, in a Byte.
Maybe you could do something like that too?

So instead of iterrating over get component you can then iterate over the Byte, ushort or int number (or numbers if they have multiple).

[tribal juniper]

how to solve this issue? what s causing this problem. character is falling down on its own. iam using dots entities 0.50. i am using dynamic physicsbody. also how can i find out if the player is grounded. code snippet will be helpful.

[half jay]

Does new instanced RenderMesh component save reference to same parent mesh after instantiating from Prefab Entity ?

[tribal juniper]

As far as i know the RenderMesh component holds the data for the mesh, i.e the mesh and no the reference to the mesh renderer. if you use convert and inject gameobject the entity will also hold the reference to the mesh render along with a render mesh.

[pulsar jay]

Seems like the behaviour of ConvertGameObjectHierarchy changed with Entities 0.50. Converting a prefab pollutes the active scene with its Companion gameobjects. Instantiating these prefab entities does not but the ComponentObjects (VFX in this case) are only visible in Game view? 🤔 Anybody also encountered/resolved this? Conversion in subscenes works as expected. I guess it has sth to do with conversion flags

[devout prairie]

A common way to do isGrounded is just a simple raycast down from say the hip position, with ray length just longer than the distance to the feet, and if it returns a hit for your ground mask layer then golden.
Regards the character tipping over, with normal unity physics you'd typically lock the axis right, not sure if there's a constraint for Unity.Physics or a field inside the rigidbody component which does the same.

[safe lintel]

tbh not sure if that utility will be around in 1.0

[pulsar jay]

Thing is there is still no alternative for loading prefabs. Would be great to convert them during edit time like scenes but it does not seem possible

[safe lintel]

do you mean prefabs that contain hybrid components?

[pulsar jay]

Yes I have a custom tile map format that gets populated with entities from prefabs

I also found that the same VFX game objects will be created when pressing play while a subscene is in edit mode

Not sure if this is intended

[dull copper]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4ct4vHWYt0&list=PLX2vGYjWbI0TMJrYFmLi-inr7DiIkGO4W&index=6

[safe lintel]

unlisted, how did you find it?