archived-dots

[viral sonnet]

i just skimmed over your problem, I actually have no idea what you want to do. just read you want to set z to 0

[late mural]

ah no, that is not what i want lol

i have an entity with a desired z axis rotation, i have a gameobject that needs it

turns out that is a nightmare to do

i know im being an idiot and that there is a simple solution to my issue somewhere, but what the solution is has evaded me for 3 days now

im going a tad insane at this point

[viral sonnet]

you want to rotate to this z axis or just set?

[late mural]

just set

[viral sonnet]

and the xy from the entity doesn't matter?

[late mural]

it does not

the x y from the game object needs to stay the same though

[viral sonnet]

do you have a Rotation comp or just quat?

[late mural]

on the entity, i am using the rotation component yes

seems a lot more accurate than the rotation from any of the tranform components

[viral sonnet]

so that means you also have a LocalToWorld comp. (makes it easier to get the forward

[late mural]

yes i do

wait i think i have a potential idea for something, let me try

[viral sonnet]

the go rotation xy should stay the same?

[late mural]

yes

[viral sonnet]

                Transform goTransform;

                float3 forward = entityLTW.Forward;
                float3 goForward = goTransform.forward;

                var newRot = quaternion.LookRotationSafe(new float3(goForward.x, goForward.y, forward.z), new float3(0, 1, 0));```

you can apply the newRot to your go.transform.rotation then

[late mural]

there was something i want to try first, incase im a huge idiot, as i made an assumption that because transform rotation when converted to euler angles was broken, that rotation to euler angles would be aswell, but this may not be the case i realise, so let me try incase i am an idiot first

[viral sonnet]

don't calculate with euler angles. it will start to drift no matter what

quaternion exists for a reason

basically you can't go from quat to euler and then from euler to quat without float inaccuracy

[late mural]

float innaccuracy doesnt matter too much here, i think, as long as it is only within .01 inaccuracy it will be fine

[viral sonnet]

feel free to try 🙂

[late mural]

ill try, and if it doesnt work, ill come back and try your solution

[viral sonnet]

float is funny 😀

[late mural]

hmm that is inaccurate, im getting an accuracy that is randomly wrong by anywhere from 0.01 to literal hundreds of numbers wrong, i mean how do we go from 1 to 203, that is an insane floating point error to the point of stupidity

[robust scaffold]

float is pain

[late mural]

yup it appears they are, although i still dont get how they jump from 1 to 203...

[robust scaffold]

gotta love them floats

[late mural]

they are the worst, how do you floating point error with over a 100?

at that point even ints can have better precision!!!

[robust scaffold]

fixed point is good, and bad

[viral sonnet]

float absolute are fine but relative, over severl frames the inaccuracy quickly adds up

[late mural]

i guess, but i would assume them to reset

as im telling them the same value, so logicaly it should have the same innaccuracy each time?

[late mural]

anyway, guess ill now try this considering how it is my last option

[viral sonnet]

what am I looking at? this looks funky

[robust scaffold]

floating point error following a frac() visualized

it's jumping between 0.0001 and 0.9999 every other pixel

because frac causes a wrap around at 1, normally it's 1.0001 and 0.9999.

hitAngle = hitAngle > 0.99 ? 0 : hitAngle; I just clamp high enough values to 0 to prevent that visualization

it's also partially due to floating point error emerging from ddx() as well so it's floating point error^2.

[late mural]

how exactly would i go about this, guessing something like: ```csharp
go.transform.rotation = newRot;

[viral sonnet]

yeah

[late mural]

aha, didnt work

i mean it did something

not exactly what i had wanted though

it changed the x and y rotation, didnt change the z rotation

so kinda the opposite of what was wanted

oh it is way weirder though than just being the opposite though

[viral sonnet]

how can it change the xy rot of the go when the same xy rot is applied?

[late mural]

i dont know

but it is

and it is weirder than that though

i change the y value of the rotation of the game object in the inspector, it resets to 70 or 250, whichever is closest, and then changes the x angle to something random

[viral sonnet]

whats your code now?

[late mural]

var new_rot = quaternion.LookRotationSafe(new float3(sync_forward.x, sync_forward.y, ent_forward.z), new float3(0, 1, 0));
sync_objects[sync_comp.sync_id].transform.rotation = new_rot;

these are how the ent forward and sync forward are defined:```csharp
float3 ent_forward = pos_transform.Forward;
float3 sync_forward = sync_objects[sync_comp.sync_id].transform.forward;

dont worry about my weird naming schemes, they make sense to me, although probably no one else

[late mural]

any ideas on why it isnt working?

imma probably go make breakfast now, so ill read your answer afterwards, sorry lol

[viral sonnet]

hm, i'll have to think about it

wasn't thinking hard enough about it because when you want to get the z-axis(roll) the up vector is actually not 0,1,0. you can get the Up from the LTW too and use instead of the 0,1,0

another try: var new_rot = quaternion.LookRotationSafe(new float3(sync_forward.x, sync_forward.y, ent_forward.z), pos_transform.Up); assuming pos_transform is your LTW

[late mural]

yes pos_transform is my ltw, ill try that and report back, thank you!

[late mural]

OH MY IT WORKS!!!!!

Thank you so much!!!!!

you are the best!

[viral sonnet]

🥳

happy to help 🙂

[late mural]

thanks lol so much

im trying to create a water gun, to do this im instantiating some spheres with a lot of initial velocity in the z direction, this should cause them to go flying in the z direction as soon as they spawn right?

that is what i would assume, unfortunately this does not appear to be the case

[viral sonnet]

seems to be missing the rotation, isn't it? i'm actually not sure is this is in local or world space. i'd assume it's world space

[late mural]

good point, ill mess around with it some more!

[minor sapphire]

Does anyone know why Variable Rate Simulation System Group was added? Was there a problem they are solving with it? Just curious cause it's empty apart from the command buffers

perhaps just a bunch of people were asking for it or something..

[late mural]

wondering, to burst compile adding forces to rigidbodies is there anything special i need to do, or will burst auto do it?

also how do i add transforms to a component?

[minor sapphire]

if you're in a burst compiled job, then it will do it

[late mural]

oh nice!

now i just gotta figure out a way to have a transform in a component

[minor sapphire]

everything in a burst compiled job is run by burst (as long as burst is enabled)

[late mural]

unless it is a structural change that is

[minor sapphire]

if you're trying to do something burst can't do, it will complain at you 🙂

if you haven't specified (without burst) or anything, and burst is enabled, then you can assume burst is running

and if you want to know for sure you can check the burst debugger

if you want to make structural changes, you are probably using EntityManager directly. Burst will complain if you try to do that in a burst job

otherwise you are probably using an entity command buffer, which is burst compatible cause the structural change happens later

[late mural]

woah cool, thanks for the knowledge!

is there a primitive or bittible way of getting a game object or transform?

specifically for icomponentdata

[minor sapphire]

transforms and gameobjects are managed, that's monobehaviour land. You can work with these things in ECS if you REALLY want to but to work with burst you need to used unmanaged types

[late mural]

ah that is annoying

[minor sapphire]

So you can put them in an IComponentData, as long as it is a CLASS IComponentData, and you dont' try to access it with burst

[late mural]

welp, i need burst so that is unfortunate

[minor sapphire]

I can't remember if you can jobify class icomponentdata

[late mural]

cause my player is a game object, and i need the camera's tranform.forward, to use for aiming a water gun that is an entity

[minor sapphire]

ok wel

you want to get that data OUTSIDE of the job

and use it inside the job

[late mural]

oh that is clever!

[minor sapphire]

instead of trying to pass in the entire transform

[late mural]

ok, so how would i do that though?

[minor sapphire]

are you using systems, or just jobs in monobehaviour code?

[late mural]

systems unfortunately

[minor sapphire]

either way, in the 'update', before the actual job code, just get a float3 cameraDirection

[late mural]

how though?

[minor sapphire]

from, for example, Camera.main.transform.forward

[late mural]

you can just grab cameras like that?

didnt know lol

[minor sapphire]

camera has that property

which is nice

[late mural]

cool lol, i had no clue, this shall be a lot easier, thanks so much!

[minor sapphire]

No problem

[rustic rain]

Careful

Camera.main

Is just

Object.FindObectOfType Camera and then compare tag for MainCamera

[minor sapphire]

not anymore 🙂

that was improved ages ago

[rustic rain]

Hm

[minor sapphire]

lemme find evidence for you 😄

https://blog.unity.com/technology/new-performance-improvements-in-unity-2020-2

[rotund token]

In contrived test cases containing 50,000 objects, we saw speed increase by 21,000x to 51,000x.
only slightly improved

[late mural]

lol

how does main camera work now, as i want to make certain that i dont accidentally choose my main menu camera instead of my player camera

also what do i need to import with using to get Camera.main?

[minor sapphire]

It's efficient enough for your needs 😛

just write the line and if you need a using your ide will tell you, pretty sure it's UnityEngine though

[late mural]

my ide did not tell me, but thanks it is UnityEngine!

[late mural]

huh i always thought that on update ran automatically but apparrently it does not in system bases, how do you make something run every frame in a system base?

[rustic rain]

it runs only if there's required query (if it exist), which added automatically through code

but can be overriden through RequireForUpdate

also

there's attribute

AlwaysUpdateSystem

[late mural]

ooh how can i use that, cause i have a query and multiple debug logs, and it aint running any of them

[rustic rain]

which bypasses that

[late mural]

i just want to use a for entity loop

[rustic rain]

then it will run only if there are entities for loop

assuming

[late mural]

oh that is annoying, that means that i have no physics objects in my scene

[rustic rain]

you call it only through foreach lambda

[late mural]

hmmm, how do i add physics object, real ones, not rigidbodies which dont count as physics objects for some reason?

[rustic rain]

colliders?

PhysicsShape

[late mural]

physics shape aint real physics objects though

same with physic body

[rustic rain]

I'm not sure what you mean by that

[late mural]

i mean like how do you create a real physic object that can be detected by Unity.Physics

[rustic rain]

ahem

do you know that ECS Physics and Classic Physics exist in 2 different dimensions?

[late mural]

yes, and im using ecs physics, atleast i hope so

[rustic rain]

then I have no idea what is your problem

[late mural]

neither do i, but apparrently physics bodies are not physic objects

[rustic rain]

what defines physics objects?

[late mural]

anything with physics velocity and physics math

as components on it

[rustic rain]

then they are

[late mural]

?

[rustic rain]

physics shape and physics body

[late mural]

not according to my for each entity loop they aint

[rustic rain]

what is your loop?

[late mural]

            Entities
           .WithName("fluid_destroy_system")
           .ForEach((Entity particle, ref PhysicsVelocity physics_velocity, ref PhysicsMass physics_mass, ref shoot_particle_component shoot_comp) =>
           {
               if (!shoot_comp.has_fired)
               {
                   shoot_comp.has_fired = true;
                   var force_vector = direction * shoot_comp.force_amount; //* delta_time;
                   physics_velocity.ApplyLinearImpulse(physics_mass, force_vector);
                   Debug.Log("added force");
               }
           })
           .Run();

[rustic rain]

and how do you know

your particles have all that

[late mural]

exactly i have no way of knowing

[rustic rain]

hierarchy debugger

?

literally look at all comps it has

[late mural]

ooh ill try that

cause currently all i know is that they have the shoot particle component and a physics body and shape

i think i have bigger issues

over 999 likely leaks

[late mural]

although it came out correctly in the debugger, they have all the components

it just does not want to run the for each loop for some reason

weird

you got any ideas?

hmm it seems nothing i try has any different results, odd

although the whole leak thing appears to randomly happen sometimes, and not others

[rustic rain]

are you sure it's not running?

your log is under conditional

you can see whether system is running or not

in debugger

if system has time instead -

in profiler

that means OnUpdate is called

[late mural]

100% i know cause i have a log on the beginning of on update

and it never runs

[rustic rain]

still

take a look at

system

in debugger

[late mural]

ok i shall, where on earth is the debugger thing?

[rustic rain]

it will at least tell you all relationships with entities

[late mural]

sure

anyway, how?

[rustic rain]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.51/manual/editor-systems-window.html

[late mural]

thanks

now which one?

ok found it

here:

how does this help us?

[rustic rain]

relationships tab

[rustic rain]

now you know

there are no entities

with these components

[late mural]

nice, how do i give them those components

[rustic rain]

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.51/manual/conversion.html

[late mural]

that does not help

i know how to add i component data components, that is the 1 component they do have

it is the 2 physic's components they dont have

and i dont know how to give it to them

any ideas?

[rustic rain]

there are 2 built in authoring components for go

physics shape and physics body

[late mural]

yes, mine have both of those

[rustic rain]

just look at them in hierarchy then

and see what they actually have

[late mural]

sure

they have it all

all 3 components

[rustic rain]

can you show it?

[late mural]

ill try

and now suddenly it loses the 1 component i was certain there would be, let me recompile it, and restart unity, due to how annoying components are to make

wish components were easy, but they are nightmares to make

[rustic rain]

components are literally just structs with fields, hehe

[late mural]

yes, but it way more complex than that

[rustic rain]

it shouldn't be

[late mural]

half the time they compile incorrectly and you have to restart unity, and then change something in them so that it then attempts to recompile

they are nightmares

[rustic rain]

🤔

that is certainly not smth I ever encountered

[late mural]

lucky

example of a component that unity says it cant compile for seemingly no reason, cause there is no error: ```csharp
using Unity.Entities;

[GenerateAuthoringComponent]
public struct shoot_particle_component : IComponentData
{
public bool has_fired;
public float force_amount;
}

[rustic rain]

that is certainly not smth most people from here encounter either

[late mural]

welp guess im just bad then

i dont get it

[rustic rain]

are you using ctrl+R hotkey?

[late mural]

no?

[rustic rain]

it'll force recompile

no need to do restarts

[late mural]

oh, thank you so much!

i wish i had known of that hot key earlier

[rustic rain]

it's also reimport option through right click in folders

[late mural]

welp thank you!

and sometimes like now, i just cant seem to get the component to work

it just wont

[late mural]

it is refusing

[rustic rain]

File must be same name as component

or else MonoBehaviour

will not be created

or actually, it won't be seen by Editor

[late mural]

i think they are the same name

[late mural]

well it can be seen in the editor

i dont get how to make components

i just dont get it

they are nightmares

i avoid them when possible, but in cases like now, they are useful, even if they are a pain

that is one thing that ecs needs to fix fast

cause the longer components are a pain, the less i like using ecs

mono behaviours might be slow, but atleast they work first try, rather then the hours or days i have to spend getting a single component to work

[rustic rain]

🤔

they work first try for me, sir

[late mural]

welp they dont for me

never have

[rustic rain]

there's just smth wrong with your workflow

which I can't figure out what

[late mural]

exactly, hence why i hate components

they work randomly

never consistent

you get a game object, you tell it to conver to an entity, you attatch a component to it, what happens next can go 1 of 2 ways:

a: it works and the entity has a component

b (more likely): the entity has no component

it is pointless to try debugging, because there is no issue to solve, randomly removing and adding the component and changing the order of lines in the component code, and eventually it solves itself

problem is this takes hours, sometimes days

[rustic rain]

that is exactly what debugging is supposed to solve

[late mural]

yet is doesn't

[rustic rain]

debugging is tool

and it is user which defines how well it'll behave 🙂

[late mural]

and i dont get how to debug

caue the debugger tells me obvious stuff only, such as the component being or not being there

nothing else

if there is more to the debugger which i dont get, speak now, or forever hold your peace

[rustic rain]

are you familiar with breakpoints?

[late mural]

somewhat, i crashed my computer the first 3 times while attempting to use them, then never touched them since

[late mural]

you going to explain further?

[minor sapphire]

it is a somewhat essential tool for debugging 🙂

[rustic rain]

you should look it up on youtube or smth, I won't be able to explain it, as it's tutorials heavily depend on IDE you use

[late mural]

ok, welp im gonna have to set up a new ide then

cause my current ide when doing break points freezes my computer to the point where i have to power button it

[minor sapphire]

ok well that's not good lol

[late mural]

ye, my computer is a tad old

the only reason i even started using and learning dots was to try and get decent framerate

[minor sapphire]

motivated by your old hardware. interesting ^^;

[late mural]

yup lol

oh well if i can optimize my games on this computer, imagine how well it will run on normal and good computers

i suppose i better go now do some research into which ide uses the least proccessing power for break points

[minor sapphire]

oh god please don't pick your ide on this criteria 😆

[late mural]

i install multiple ides, each one optimized for a certain purpose in developing my game

it is a tad annoying sure, but required in my case

[minor sapphire]

terrifying

[late mural]

very, although imo not as bad as omnisharp in visual studio code

i hate omnisharp with a burning passion

[minor sapphire]

I get using different IDEs if you need a feature another doesn't have, but like "which one processes breakpoints the fastest*

T_T

[late mural]

yup lol

old computer goes brrr

[minor sapphire]

none of them should be freezing your computer something else is going on

dm me

[late mural]

sure

[muted star]

Yea that would be cool, don't know if it's possible though. You could create a script template in your IDE so you don't have to write as much boilerplate.

[rustic rain]

oh man

I just came up with a nice way for workflow, heh

Imagine creating world instance as GameObject, where you can define serialized System Instances that will direct references to assets/objects

[late mural]

that would be cool lol

[rustic rain]

            Assert.IsTrue(catalogData.IsCreated, "The scene catalog has not been loaded yet");
            return catalogData.Value.GetGUIDFromPath(scenePath);

hmm

why is it getting triggered?

android build

SceneSystem

also this
Failed to load native plugin: Unable to lookup library path for 'lib_burst_0_0'.

[misty wedge]

I have an abstract system that implements methods to automatically get an ECB and register dependencies, and then systems can inherit that system

[rustic rain]

put it in fixed update group

[solemn hollow]

i do this in my AI authoring. basically i have scriptable objects that create instances of systems with queries i can define in that scriptable object.

[rustic rain]

huh

[solemn hollow]

So i dont have to write any AI systems anymore. i just define a system in that SO and it works

[rustic rain]

yeah I kind of want to do that too.

Instead of creating world through custom bootstrap

[solemn hollow]

i never looked at DOTS scritping but id imagine it was kinda similar

[rustic rain]

use some Mono that will instantiate it in Awake

and add systems serialized

[devout prairie]

How many entities?

Hey folks, i'm destroying some child entities during Convert, but the parenting system is throwing an error about the entities not existing - is there a proper way to destroy during conversion?

Yeah one thing i noticed with havok is it has sleeping, which will give some gains where bodies aren't moving around

Only thing is the determinism thing if it's going to be networked

What kind of colliders are they and are there joints?

30k is quite a lot tbf

last test i did was around 12k i think with reasonable rates

haven't looked at optimizing though

that was literally just a quick, dump a bunch of objects in a scene and test

https://gyazo.com/acf4480d604e1f5d861d577f1481aa14

this is i think around 12k bricks and 800 ragdolls

[devout prairie]

with that particular test, the sleeping capability of havok definitely had an impact, over unity physics, but i've found unity physics to be quite decent and in some cases better

other thing is maybe tweak iterations, but beyond that i'm going to start looking into some optimizations myself pretty soon

i'm not exactly sure on that, but definitely by default unity will respawn the whole build world system etc multiple times per frame if things invalidate the world or need rebuilt

something interesting with the physics samples is they set the fixedrate manager to null, which i think kinda forces a single build world per frame

i think application target framerate might have some impact, but still not sure on this tbh

[viral sonnet]

how is it possible that the mere existence of entities can bring down the whole playerloop? (around 6ms) I thought that's not possible. There's no work done on these entities. (and they are a LOT 7.25 million) - still, should only be memory?

my ai job alone goes from 0.6 to 2.2ms - I don't get it, timeline looks very similar so it's not that some thread seems clogged up

[devout prairie]

are they maybe part of a query even if the work is not being done?

[viral sonnet]

good thinking, i removed the query. still the same. also closed the dots hierarchy window (wasn't focused) and also still the same

[devout prairie]

i cannot for the life of me find where i spotted this in the samples, but i'm sure that's where i seen it originally :shrugs:

[viral sonnet]

updating a system in FixedStepSimulation group

it's a sub group of Simulation system group

[pliant pike]

are burst safety checks on and jobs debugger

[rustic rain]

I wonder if entity journaling can be related

[devout prairie]

Anybody have any insight into this?

[rustic rain]

            RequireForUpdate(
                GetEntityQuery(new EntityQueryDesc
                {
                    All = new[] { ComponentType.ReadOnly<PlayerTag>() },
                    Options = EntityQueryOptions.FilterWriteGroup
                }));

hmmm

I wonder how that would work

[viral sonnet]

I have it disabled 😦

so? you can put as much as you want in there. Simulation System Group will always run on every frame.

what the? am I the only one having broken BuildConfiguration? If I want to Add Component the window doesn't update.

is this a 2021.3.5f1 thing?

[rustic rain]

yep

it's 2021 thing

[viral sonnet]

god damn

[rustic rain]

annoying

you can try create whatever assets you want in 2020

and then import them into your project

[viral sonnet]

yep, I see no other way 🤣

[rustic rain]

you can also use search

if you know exactly name of component

it'll just be on top

of hiearchy

and you can blindly pick it

[viral sonnet]

ah good thinking. I want to set the build to what was it called, smaller buildsize or smth. so the generics bug isn't happening

Have you tried select IL2CPP build type to Faster(Smaller) Build??
Where do I set this in a BuildConf?

[devout prairie]

is there a built in way to tag a child object to not be converted, say a child of a prefab

i'd like to use a child gameobject as a reference for position, store the value during Convert, but not have that dummy child object be converted to entity

tried destroying the entity with dst manager during Convert, throws an error because the parent system is expecting that entity, tried Object.Destroy but it doesn't like it much either.. final solution is tag it with a custom DestroyThis tag and have a LateDestroy system which runs after Transform and destroys the entities

final solution works but just wondering if theres, like, a way already for this

[rustic rain]

just destroy entity during conversion

converted subscene won't have it

[devout prairie]

it's not in a subscene as yet.. and as i say because the conversionSystem has already picked up the object and marked it for inclusion in the parenting system, destroying the primary entity during Convert causes an error when the parenting system then looks for that entity

so if there was some way to mark that child object to be ignored by the conversion system it'd save some work

so kinda like the opposite of applying a ConvertToEntity component to the gameobject

[viral sonnet]

screw it I'm going back to 2020.3. They have really botched this release

[rustic rain]

remember all 2020 bugs before you do it xD

[viral sonnet]

huh? 2020.3 was totally stable for me.

i like the snapiness and speed of 2021 but with those weird ui glitches and build problems I'll have to postpone it somewhat. Hopefully next Wednesday they have a fixed version.

but I doubt it. Probably too minor on their list and fixed in 1.0

[rustic rain]

can't wait for 2022

[viral sonnet]

with their rare updates I'm not too hopeful that it'll have the expected quality

it'll have a ton of new (untested) features

eh, I'm just salty right now. (and hungry) 😅

[safe lintel]

@devout prairie are you using GameObjectAfterConversionGroup? also tbh im not sure if destroying actually works, I recall having issues with it myself but need to test again

actually a quick test showed it worked

    public class DestroyDuringConversionAuthoring : MonoBehaviour { }

    [UpdateInGroup(typeof(GameObjectAfterConversionGroup))]
    public class DestroyDuringConversionSysten : GameObjectConversionSystem
    {
        protected override void OnUpdate()
        {
            Entities.ForEach((DestroyDuringConversionAuthoring authoring) =>
            {
                var entity     = GetPrimaryEntity(authoring);
                DstEntityManager.DestroyEntity(entity);
            });
        }
    }

[karmic basin]

IIRC it's in the legacy build menu

[viral sonnet]

I saw it there. Is this setting used in my buildconf?

I assumed those pipelines are split

[karmic basin]

Yeah the build config is just an override for the usual build

[viral sonnet]

ok, i see. thanks

[karmic basin]

Mainly to add subscene support as far as i'm aware

[devout prairie]

thanks that's an interesting approach, i'm currently just using a mono IConvertGameObjectToEntity.. the only issue i predict with either method is basically the same problem - if you try to destroy the entity of a child gameobject of that main authoring gameobject, it will throw an error later when the parenting system looks for that child entity..

[solemn hollow]

is it that big of a deal to delete it in first frame? i got some problems with the current conversion too but most of it is solved with systems just running once in first frame and afterwards removing some Tag to never handle them again

[viral sonnet]

is conversionSystem.CreateAdditionalEntity the only way to create an entity during conversion? dstManager.CreateEntity doesn't create one

if so, is it possible CreateAdditonalEntity adds performance baggage that's not directly visible in the Inspector?

[solemn hollow]

somewhere in the conversion docs it says that CreateAdditionalEntity should be the only way to create Entities in Conversion reliably

[solemn hollow]

i dont think there is any invisible stuff.

[viral sonnet]

hm, ok. quite puzzled because of this: #archived-dots message

and build has the same perf

so it's not just some editor thing

[solemn hollow]

i mean all that bookkeeping and filtering is iterating over chunks somehow. if you got too many of them maybe it scales bad at some point?

[devout prairie]

not a big deal no, it's destroyed before it hits the rendering pipeline.. would just be nice to have a simple way, like a component to add to GO's to just have them be ignored by conversionSystem

[solemn hollow]

do you use changefilters?

[solemn hollow]

they supposedly changed alot for 1.0 conversion (called baking atm) so i bet there will be at some point

for now i do it in first frame and as soon as you can have Systems running in conversion after EVERYTHING is done (LinkedEntityGroups) ill just plug it in there

[devout prairie]

possibly because CreateAdditionalEntity also creates an association with an object ( editor only i think ) it could possibly have some baggage if there's millions of them?

maybe it would be better for you to create one prefab of your object, and then in a later system instantiate them?

[solemn hollow]

@viral sonnet what does the profiler say? anything in particular got slower or just every single system?

[devout prairie]

yeah i have to do something like that with joints, because the Joint/ConnectedBody entities are created after conversion and there doesn't even seem to be a primary entity for them during conversion

[viral sonnet]

everything isl ike 15-20% slower

[devout prairie]

maybe clear entities cache and/or restart the editor?

[viral sonnet]

i've tested this now in 2021, 2020.3 and in build 🙂

[solemn hollow]

just with added entities? thats really weird. id expect it to actually have 0 impact aside from memory. my first guess is still that it has sth to do with queries getting slower

[viral sonnet]

that should be the characteristic. I've removed the system query too

[solemn hollow]

you removed all queries or just the one handling your additional entities?

[viral sonnet]

I only have 1 query that's using those entity comps and that was removed

[rotund token]

The more entities you have the slower your queries are

[viral sonnet]

even if those are not in the same archetype?

[rotund token]

Yes

[viral sonnet]

👌 design

[rotund token]

A query has to iterate all chunks to see what chunks match the query

[viral sonnet]

oh boy

well thanks for the answer, makes sense then. kind of fked though

[solemn hollow]

yes that was what i thought :S is there a way to make it faster? like grouping/sorting queries or chunks somehow before checking?

chunks beeing sorted into chunkchunks

[viral sonnet]

why are entityqueries not associated with archetypes and cached. i mean whoa I'm baffled how bad this is

[solemn hollow]

cause why check 1000 chunks if the first one of that archetype doesnt fit

[devout prairie]

that's kinda what i woulda thunk tbh

[rotund token]

99.9% of projects don't just have, your archetype and some random archetype

they have 8000 different archetypes

you're optimizing a benchmark not for real world conditions

[viral sonnet]

and how can you even make a proper game with this when you'd have millions of rendermeshes and all are affecting other system speed

[solemn hollow]

but to be fair all of unities demos had like 5 archetypes 😄

wait. breaking it up into a diffrent world could work?

[rotund token]

you shouldn't have millions of render meshes active

you open/close subscenes as required

and most large games implement some form of relevance

for the record

entity queries do cache their it does cache their ArchetypeChunk list now

[dreamy glade]

I was attempting to install the DOTS packages, first starting with Hybrid (as I've seen recommended online) and these errors occurred:

Library\PackageCache\com.unity.entities@0.51.0-preview.32\Unity.Scenes\Hybrid\CompanionSceneUtility.cs(62,37): error CS0103: The name 'PreviewSceneFlags' does not exist in the current context
Library\PackageCache\com.unity.entities@0.51.0-preview.32\Unity.Scenes\Hybrid\CompanionSceneUtility.cs(62,82): error CS0103: The name 'PreviewSceneFlags' does not exist in the current context
Library\PackageCache\com.unity.entities@0.51.0-preview.32\Unity.Scenes\Hybrid\CompanionSceneUtility.cs(62,82): error CS0103: The name 'PreviewSceneFlags' does not exist in the current context```
I hope someone may be able to help me or at the very least direct me in the right direction! I attempted to clear/delete my library folder and reinstall the packages, but neither worked. Thank you.

[solemn hollow]

hmm still this scales worse than i expected. they market it with render millions of the same stuff on screen and have 1000 fps and yet the more systems you have and the more entities you have it gets exponentially worse :S

[rotund token]

more entities you have it gets exponentially worse
a) pretty sure it's linear b) it's more to do with archetypes than entities

archetype changes invalidate the queries cache

[solemn hollow]

no its not archetype count for enzi (its chunkCount). he has a single archetype entity in the millions which he doesnt do anything with.

[rotund token]

as for why a job would be slower

it's probably just because the ai chunks are further away in memory than before or something

people have been complaining about job schedule performance for a long time, but really the big benefit of ISystem is query lookup + dependency handling

this all said, without seeing what enzi entire project is doing it's hard to speculate

i'm currently testing 10,000,000 entities and my simulation system group is 0.15ms

now my presentation is nearly 1ms without having a single renderer in the scene

[solemn hollow]

but you are testing with a low amount of queries running right?

[rotund token]

not really

[solemn hollow]

hmm ok

[rotund token]

probably 25 systems atm

but only 3 have valid queries atm

obviously that's small for a full application

[devout prairie]

i take it just having a query inside RequireForUpdate could potentially slow things down

in the above case of lots of archetypes and millions of entities

[rotund token]

actually using RequireForUpdate can speed up your systems

instead of checking potentially every query in your system to run

it only has to check 1

[devout prairie]

yeah that makes perfect sense

i wonder if, in the above example ( Enzi's case ) if he has say just one system and it uses RequireForUpdate, that single query could still cause the slowdown, even if the system doesn't run.. would it then be better to hypothetically just have say a bool flag that early exits the system rather than a query

[rotund token]

how would you update the flag

no amount of entities should require you to run at 2ms for a query

even on old consoles when we had an archetype explosion issues the worst case we were having was like 3ms for queries/frame

[devout prairie]

hehe good point.. just thinking hypothetically, would the flag be faster

[rotund token]

please don't misunderstand me, i'm not saying enzi's entire performance woes are from increased query lookup time. he simply asked

how is it possible that the mere existence of entities can bring down the whole playerloop?
and I pointed out a case

[devout prairie]

yeah

i think the issue is it seems millions of entities is kinda the whole point ( or to have that capability ), so what is actually causing his issue

just thinking out loud here

[karmic basin]

Which Unity version ?

[dreamy glade]

Yeah- updating it right now. I'll be sure to let you know if that was the cause! I finally saw in the docs the necessary versions. I had 2021.3.3.

[karmic basin]

Great 👌

[viral sonnet]

hm, interesting. i mean, this is kind of easy to test because I'm not doing anything different (that I'm aware of) just create 10 million entities of some archetype and the effects should be visible. from your testing you don't seem to have any apparent downsides?

[rotund token]

i have no structural changes in this, so if i was doing some per frame it could get worse

but just as a default systems executing with perfect caching etc the overhead is negligible on my small system set

oh except presentation where even though i have 0 presentation entities it just has this giant overhead ^_^'

hopefully goes way a bit in builds i haven't tested - though in reality any build would have actual rendering entities

it's just an interesting amount of overhead for 0 renderers

[viral sonnet]

what do you have without the millions of entities?

where it's getting strange I think is when a job struct takes longer. the system overhead of getting queries, etc... shouldn't affect the job itself, right? unless that's accounted for in the timeline

[rotund token]

1000 entities - exactly the same

[rotund token]

chunk memory might be a bit more split up

i wouldn't have expected that much of a difference though

[devout prairie]

How come NativeArray doesn't have AsParallelWriter? Whereas like NativeList etc do..

[viral sonnet]

Why would it need one?

[devout prairie]

i'm having this problem, when writing to a nativearray inside a parallel foreach job:

[viral sonnet]

what's your code here? you have it pre-allocated and are using valid indices, right?

[devout prairie]

previously as far as i can remember, where i've passed in NativeList or NativeHashMap i can pass them in AsParallelWriter and it circumvents this indexing problem

yeah

let me show the setup

[viral sonnet]

list and hashmap have a ParallelWriter for adding and because they can change their length

[devout prairie]

yeah in this case i'm literally just writing to existing indexs

[rotund token]

nativelist can't write to index in parallel

the safety system supports writing to native array in parallel to the same index as a ijobfor

[devout prairie]

yeah possibly used TryAdd with list

[rotund token]

apart from that you have to turn off safety

and promise that you aren't causing threading issues

[devout prairie]

yeah this is exactly the problem

it only allows the job index which is, a bit stupid given it's an external array using completely different indexing/length

[rotund token]

how can the safety system know what you're doing is safe?

you could be writing to anything

[devout prairie]

so if i turn off safety in the player settings it will allow this?

mm yeah seems a conflict of interest to me

[rotund token]

[NativeDisableParallelForRestriction]

is how you turn off the parallel safety

but then you're on your own to not fuck it up

[devout prairie]

i can understand it where it applies to indexing the entity query and it's related components, but not to an array that's passed in

[devout prairie]

ah yesss i forgot about this

thanks

[rotund token]

it's not safe to write to an array in parallel unless you can guarantee to never share indices

so of course it's blocked!

[devout prairie]

well yeah i can see the thinking there

so it restricts to the job's index range

even for arrays that are external to the query

[viral sonnet]

    //[ChunkSerializable]
    public unsafe struct StatReferenceBuffer : IBufferElementData
    {
        [NativeDisableUnsafePtrRestriction] 
        public AvatarStat* StatPtr;
    }``` one culprit down. uncommenting the tag costs me 4-5ms for 250k entities

[rotund token]

hmm wouldn't that just mean the component would no longer be serialized in a subscene and left out of the archetype stopping systems from updating?

[viral sonnet]

there's no system using it so 🤷

and yeah, I've added it because unity complained about serializing the pointer. I've done this before and builds were broken if I not use ChunkSerializable

[rotund token]

should just break in editor generally

[viral sonnet]

again it's a case of, what happens to my performance?

the buffer is empty on all entities and not used. how can 4-5ms get lost

[devout prairie]

kinda loosely wondering about this atm:

say you have a parallel job and it needs an array of say 13 slots to write to, and then read from

would it make more sense to make one bigger persistent array of 13 * threadcount, and pass that in

or have the job create its own little array of 13 on each thread when it runs and then discard

i would guess creating the arrays on the fly would be more time consuming

than just accessing an existing persistent array

[viral sonnet]

you'd be better off with a NativeStream

[devout prairie]

i haven't looked at that at all, what is the difference

[viral sonnet]

it's a great parallel writer out of the box. of course you could allocate 128 arrays with 13 elements. just takes more effort

you know what's great when doing performance timing tests. windows updating and failing all the time -.-

[safe lintel]

btw @devout prairie it shouldnt be the case because using GameObjectAfterConversionGroup the parenting should be completed

[devout prairie]

Ah yeah true, the key is in the name right 'AfterConversionGroup'

[devout prairie]

Well damn

[solemn hollow]

pretty sure at that point a job is nicer to read :S

[devout prairie]

hehe i refuse to accept that

[dreamy glade]

It was indeed the version! Thanks for the help.

[rotund token]

it's long past that point

ijobentity would be so much cleaner

[devout prairie]

i should have a look at using these tbh

for now, i'm converting a prototype into an ecs prototype

which i now have working, so i'm converting to parallel

as it is tbh i love ForEach it's just really simple and easy

but i'll definitely look at using struct jobs at some point

just seems more typing for the same thing

[late mural]

hey im quite new to the way adding forces works with dots physics, as such im watching a couple tutorials, most are old from 2020 or earlier, just checking, is the current method still the same as these old tutorials?

[safe lintel]

yeah sadly still the same

[late mural]

ok, thanks!

[late mural]

why sadly?

[safe lintel]

I think it was released in 2019, and hasnt really changed a whole lot since. the initial release and patches were really fast, but theres been nothing significant since 2020

[late mural]

oh unlucky

[safe lintel]

i just want faster development 🥲

[late mural]

ye it would be nice, oh well im sure they are doing their best

[devout prairie]

what kind of features and improvements are you looking for with physics?

[late mural]

one thing i am wondering, if you have a prefab (the fake kind), and you then tick convert to entity, would it become an entity?

[safe lintel]

well some core stuff would be official joints, I personally want the unification of shapes and body authoring because I find it tiresome to add both, better trigger/collision workflow and parallel processing would be nice. then my wishlist is some sort of destruction workflow, ala unreal(probably a pipedream though)

better debug systems(current is ass)

better api tbh, and modifying colliders at runtime isnt really supported

[late mural]

ye those could i nice i suppose

[safe lintel]

report a bug and post about it in the dots graphics forum, not sure what else you can do at the moment

[late mural]

i had something similier, although i had no error, but i have had the invisible entity bug before, for me i just kinda ignored it and one day it just stopped happening, but i wish you luck finding a solution in your case!

[late mural]

congratz!

[viral sonnet]

was just feeding the baby when windows was updating. now i came back and my pc is dead

[late mural]

unlucky, hopefully you had backups of everything important

[viral sonnet]

sure, it's just a veeery weird coincidence

[late mural]

perhaps try downgrading to the previous windows update?

[viral sonnet]

no the pc is dead. no lights, nothing 😅

[late mural]

oh, that is very unfortunate, and power button aint even attempting booting?

[viral sonnet]

nope, guess the power supply is fried or smth

[late mural]

unlucky, hope you manage to fix it!

[viral sonnet]

thanks :)

[late mural]

wish you luck!

[late mural]

im trying to implement a water gun, as such im trying to detect when a button is pressed inside a system base, im wondering is there any special method to do this, or do i just use the on update and just tell it to always run?

[safe lintel]

like a keyboard/mouse button?

simplest is to poll it in update just before schedule/run the job, i personally have an input system that takes all mouse/keyboard and stores that button press info in a component, and then query that component in jobs

[late mural]

ok, im not exactly sure how to do that, but with a bit of experimenting im sure ill figure it out

thanks so much!

first i have to figure out how to make the on update function run every time then in this system!

apparently there is something called AlwaysUpdateSystem, but i cant seem to figure out how it works

aha i think i got it working!

[late mural]

ok almost got it working, just tryna work out how i get something to run once at the start, something like a monobehaviour's start()

google says that OnCreate() would be what im looking for, although im pretty sure that is old outdated info, as it isnt working

hmm i really cant figure it out, anyone who knows what im looking for pls tell me, as i cant find any info

[coarse turtle]

im not sure if you're using the new input system package, but if you are OnCreate might be called before the keyboard/mouse are initialized - so OnStartRunning might be a better candidate to initialize (you can always have a flag to have it only initialize once)

[late mural]

i dont know which input system im using but dont worry the only think im trying to do in OnCreate would be grabbing a game object by tag

but i shall try OnStartRunning!!!

Thank you so much, it works!!!!

[rustic rain]

look at manuals

they have according syntax

which has changed a lot through versions

[rustic rain]

yeah, like these

entities also has it's own page

[rotund token]

why use pre-50 anyway

[rustic rain]

bruuuh, feels so bad I can't get query outside of foreach with filter group

            Entities.WithEntityQueryOptions(EntityQueryOptions.FilterWriteGroup)
                .ForEach((ref PlayerGravityTag pgt) =>
                {
                    _curMov.X -= 0.5f * Time.DeltaTime;
                    _curMov.Y -= 9.81f * Time.DeltaTime;
                    Debug.Log("keked");
                })
                .WithoutBurst()
                .Run();

hmmm

why is it running

    [WriteGroup(typeof(PlayerGravityTag))]
    [WriteGroup(typeof(PlayerRotationTag))]
    [Serializable]
    public struct PlayerFlyingUpTag : IComponentData
    {
    }

I have this

which should ensure it won't run

bruuuuuh

[rotund token]

What is player gravity tag

You're not writing to anything?

[rustic rain]

I only need it for filtering

causing writing is done to managed component

but seems like system failed me with it

[rotund token]

You can't write group a tag

[rustic rain]

I guess I can just add a field, kek

empty one

[rotund token]

Not sure what this means

[rustic rain]

GetEntityQuery (desc)

and desc will contain FilterWriteGroup

so entities in query will only contain entities without write group

[rotund token]

Yeah? I'm not getting problem

[rustic rain]

hmm

Could you show how it looks?

Even in codegen it transforms desc Options to Default

for some reason

[rotund token]

            {
                All = new[]
                {
                    ComponentType.ReadWrite<EffectActive>(),
                    ComponentType.ReadOnly<ConditionActive>(),
                },
                Options = EntityQueryOptions.FilterWriteGroup,
            });```

is this what you mean?

[rustic rain]

yeah

[rotund token]

(also ah, did they fix the bot)

[rustic rain]

so, this filters EffectActive?

[rotund token]

(i didn't get deleted from face of earth)

[rotund token]

yes because that's the write element

it'll filter on anything with write

[rustic rain]

so if there's any component with writegroup typeof EffectActive entities are filtered?

why it doesn't work for me

bruuuh

lemme check again

[rotund token]

Because it was a tag component

Or managed component

Or something like that

[rustic rain]

managed components work with write group though

I did check

they can't contain attribute

but they can be affected

[rustic rain]

ahem

HR2 should work fine on mobiles

[rotund token]

pretty sure it supports mobile

but android only supports Vulkan

Currently, Hybrid Renderer does not support desktop OpenGL or GLES. For Android and Linux, you should use Vulkan. However, be aware that the Vulkan drivers on many older Android devices are in a bad shape and will never be upgraded. This limits the platform coverage Hybrid Renderer can currently offer on Android devices. OpenGL and GLES3.1 support are planned for a future version of Hybrid Renderer.

depends how old your phone is

hmm thought s7 was first to support it

[rotund token]

i don't do mobile development anymore

i just know devs making games for mobile

[frosty siren]

Did anyone solve the problem with state machine design in ECS? I have seen few approaches

• use tag component per state + component with ComponentType field which stores current added state tag type to be able to remove it without knowing actual state: the problem with data copying still exist when state changes are frequent. (also using ComponentType in components may break deserialization process if type set in assembly was changed, but experienced devs recommend to write simple save system and don't try to use ecs serialization)
• use shared state component, so you can change it. Writing to this component by itself moving entity to another chunk: the problem is data copying + filtration by shared component in every system which handle state
• 1 component for state and a god system which handles all possible states
• other solutions which leads to breaking a rule that system have only logic and entities have only data.

[rustic rain]

I use it like this

    public struct GameState : ISystemStateComponentData
    {
        public interface IGameState
        {
        }

        public struct Idle : IComponentData, IGameState
        {
        }

        public struct Play : IComponentData, IGameState
        {
        }

        public struct Cannon : IComponentData, IGameState
        {
        }

        public struct Dead : IComponentData, IGameState
        {
        }
    }

then I have helper method for EntityManager/ECB which lets me remove all IGameState ComponentTypes from state entity

and add whataver is picked

    public static class GameStateUtility
    {
        static GameStateUtility()
        {
            GameStates = new ComponentTypes(TypeUtility.GetAllAssignableFromComponentTypesArray());
        }

        public static readonly ComponentTypes GameStates;

        public static void SetGameState<T>(this EntityManager em, in Entity stateEntity)
            where T : GameState.IGameState, IComponentData
        {
            em.RemoveComponent(stateEntity, GameStates);
            em.AddComponent<T>(stateEntity);
        }
    }

Kind of like this

[frosty siren]

so you just gather all your state tags and remove it brutally

have you tested this with lots entities?

[rustic rain]

nope

I don't have too much states

[rustic rain]

it's not really brutally, kek

it's native way of removing ComponentTypes

a lot of iterations for the cost of 1

[frosty siren]

i mean for N state there would be N-1 unnecessary checks if component exists on entity

also AFAIK ComponentTypes may contain only ~6 types

[rustic rain]

it does it through queries though

[frosty siren]

yes, but i'm about removing component em.RemoveComponent(stateEntity, GameStates);

[rustic rain]

There are no checks

it literally just switches archetype

[frosty siren]

Hmm, ok. But still can't store lots of components inside one ComponentTypes struct

[rustic rain]

that's true

allthough

I just figured

why even use components switching

when you can just change archetype

@frosty siren

just store archetypes somewhere

and change state entity archetype

that's it

no need for component types switching or smth

I only wonder how to access those archetypes statically

[rotund token]

what if you have another component added/removed at runtime?

i have pretty clean state machines

but that auto register components in the state

but it's a bit hard to explain

    {
        byte Value { get; }
    }
    
    public interface IStateFlagComponent<T> : IComponentData
        where T : unmanaged, IBitArray<T>
    {
        T Value { get; }
    }```
can either be unique or flag based (up to any size flags you want)

[rustic rain]

if there are different states, why not just use different entitites?

[rotund token]

because an entity can change state?

• flee
• follow
• avoid
  etc are all movement states an entity might have

but you can use states for a lot of other things

current UI, input, etc

[rustic rain]

hmm, I actually meant states for game

on which systems rely

not what's inside system, hehe

[rotund token]

oh that's fair

i actually use the same underlying system for this

but i use systems for each state

and OnStartRunning

[rustic rain]

yeah

[rotund token]

as like, state enter

think i've shown that off before

it's an, interesting approach

[rustic rain]

I copied it from you, kek

[devout prairie]

Curious about this.. Just changing system/ecb order, the second is about twice as fast as the first:

[rotund token]

the timings on this window are close to useless

if you have 234123423 systems before your system, and then your system causes a sync point
all the timing data goes tot hat 1 system instead of the million before it

[devout prairie]

So i've selected my main system, and highlighted in green the ecb it's targeting.. The version which delays ecb until the next frame seems to be doubly fast than the one which plays back in the end sim ecb

[rotund token]

that's not surprising at all

you've let your jobs run while rendering

the frame doesn't end at endsimulation

it then has the entire rendering part to do

if you use end simulation you are just triggering a sync point then

[devout prairie]

hmm 🤔

[rotund token]

and then during rendering threads are empty

at work endsimulation is banned

we use begin presentation - though this is because we slice like
client int, server int, client update, server update, client presentation, server networking

this way server/client can execute jobs while the other is updating

[devout prairie]

ok so i figured, each ecb is basically a sync point anyway, so it's not going to make a difference which one i choose per say

[rotund token]

the later the sync point the better

[devout prairie]

well end sim is the latest right

you mean earlier?

[rotund token]

it's not hte latest

as your own diagram above shows you

using the ecb on the next frame is later

[devout prairie]

ah right i get you

[rotund token]

than using the ecb at the end of current frame (and it's only the end of simulation, not end of frame)

[devout prairie]

yeah that's interesting, thanks

hmm

something to think about

good point re doing some work while rendering

rather than trying to do it all inbetween all of the other system work

not trying to over optimize at this point but was just wondering as the differences were really noticeable

worst case i'll get like 10fps compared to best case of 29fps just by changing job/ecb ordering

[rotund token]

you should never use endsimulation really

on server you should use begin init, on client begin presentation

the pain comes from them being different ecbs

which is a huge pet peeve of mine

[hot basin]

so isn't postponing new values to next frame best you can do and you should always target this behaviour?

I was wondering about this a while ago

why we don't render previous frame while calculationg next one

[devout prairie]

how do you mean, what is the problem?

[hot basin]

I read this as same as I wrote

[rotund token]

if i have the same system on client and server
i need to use different ecbs since presentation doesn't exist on a server

[hot basin]

you should have presentation at the beginning of the frame, and then calculations

and you should use on init/presetnation one whichever is first

in this way you can calculate next frame why rendering so both CPU and GPU have something to do

schedule is on ONE thread and scheduleparallel is on many threads

[rotund token]

you realize it makes no different right if you just move rendering to the front of the next frame

[hot basin]

yeah, I mean it from perspective of using ECB not actually moving systems

[rotund token]

you can't

what do you mean?

hmm, if you have to ask that question i'm going to stick with you can't

dots time can only be pushed in a system

[hot basin]

all I can add is that you probably want to pause game between frames not actually in random point

[hot basin]

I wonder if it's doable as there should be some dependencies between LtW and rendering?

[rustic rain]

transform group is in simulation

rendering is in Presentation

between them there's ecb which causes sync

so

if you want to manually cause Update on system : .Update(); method

[devout prairie]

there is a DisableAutoCreation flag i think, so you can then manually create the system ( which will then start it running )

'[DisableAutoCreation]' attribute

[hot basin]

yeah, and we can't easily change that

[rustic rain]

why would you?

Presentation is mostly managed anyway

[hot basin]

to move calculations of next frame after presentation

so you would calculate things while rendering

[rustic rain]

isn't rendering is controlled only on main thread?

that would mean

it's impossible

[hot basin]

why?

you can schedule calculations for next frame

and then do rendering

[rustic rain]

what's the point?

you are still scheduling and rendering on main thread

[hot basin]

but you are calculating next frame in background

if you are using end simulation ECB the current frame needs to be calculated before actual rendering

so you will get more of: SCHEDULE -> RENDER -> SCHEDULE -> RENDER

instead of: SCHEDULE -> WAIT -> RENDER -> SCHEDULE -> WAIT -> RENDER

[rustic rain]

ahem

but wait before render is literally calculation of jobs

if you don't wait - data will be corrpu

you can't calculate components while rendering

[rustic rain]

when running all on single thread becomes not worthy

scheduling into parallel is costly

so either do it when there's too much entities or when processing chunks is super expensive

[solemn hollow]

is it? does it cost more on mainthread to schedule parallel? never tested

for me default is ScheduleParallel. only if i have some algorithm i need to run singlethreaded i go with Schedule

throughput vs speed i guess. scheduleparallel will complete the work faster for heavy loads than a single thread even though schedule will take less overall time summed over all threads. so if you want short delays between when the job is scheduled vs when its finished scheduleparallel should be better after some workload threshold

[devout prairie]

Yeah i think basically if you're doing a lot of work, parallel will be faster, but if you're not, it might not be any quicker

[rustic rain]

at very least it'll require syncing between threads

which is probably not free

[devout prairie]

Like if the work to do already takes less than the time to schedule etc, you're not going to gain anything

[solemn hollow]

well at that point youd probably use Run() though

[rustic rain]

Adds an IJobChunk instance to the Job scheduler queue for parallel execution. Note: This method is being replaced with use of ScheduleParallel to make non-sequential execution explicit.

hmm

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.51/api/Unity.Entities.JobChunkExtensions.Schedule.html

[devout prairie]

Yeah i guess the problem with Run is it's blocking the main thread and more importantly isn't part of the dependency chain of scheduled jobs.. So i think that needs to be considered ie order of what you're changing/updating with a Run and how it slots in to other stuff that is being Schedule'd

[solemn hollow]

yes the dependency issue is why i never use Run if i dont have to even if i lose performance. But Scheduling is also blocking mainthread in that sense right? if Scheduling blocks it longer than the actual work does then why schedule.

[rustic rain]

cause stacked scheduled jobs allow for multithreading?

kind of odd comparison

[solemn hollow]

not sure i understand what you think im comparing. i am talking about mainthread here. if you want to do a very simple operation like 1 sum why would you schedule it. schedule would be way more expensive for the mainthread. the job does the same work as the mainthread would (the 1 sum) but you got all that scheduling overhead on mainthread too.

[devout prairie]

i take it there's no guarantee of the order that Run will execute in comparison to scheduled jobs

or does it always run before or always run after scheduled work, no idea

[rustic rain]

Run runs now

exactly the moment you do run

kek

[solemn hollow]

AFAIK when there are Dependencies to be resolved before Run can execute you'll get a Dependency.Complete call. basically a syncpoint for the components involved

[north bay]

The problem with that approach is that once you run your work on the main thread all other work writing to the components you are processing has to be completed
Therefor you either need clear grouped intervals where you do your work on the main-thread, double buffer your data or just don't schedule anything

[rustic rain]

I wonder

why double buffer is not a native thing

[north bay]

Sorry, what do you mean?

[rustic rain]

I mean, why wouldn't Unity add second buffer in vanilla

[north bay]

Well, how would it know what data you want?
The one that you are writing to in the previous system or the one from the last frame

[rustic rain]

that's the point

you pick it yourself

[solemn hollow]

yep

[rotund token]

Buy new hardware

[rustic rain]

better PC?

xD

[solemn hollow]

Disable Physics

[safe lintel]

it was meant only for project tiny(rip) so expect headaches trying to use it at this point

[rustic rain]

you can't even install it anymore

0.17 only

[tired glade]

Is there any trick to getting Entity collision working?
I have a Sub Scene with 2 GameObjects. Each has a nested object containing the Physics Shape. When I run it, they pass right through each other. Is there something else needed to have them not do that? or does it just not work with nested game objects?

[rotund token]

Colliders are always root objects

If you put a collider on a child it will unparent the child during conversion

[solemn hollow]

oh i thought thats only for bodies not for shapes

[rotund token]

Hmm potentially

But I'm pretty sure it's anything non static

[tired glade]

ok, I just moved the Physics Shapes to the top level objects, but they still aren't preventing a passthrough

[solemn hollow]

shapes dont collide when none of them is also a body i think

[tired glade]

I'm not quite sure what that means

[solemn hollow]

i really fucked up writing a coherent sentence there^^. atleast one of the two colliders involved in the collision must also have a physicsbody component

[tired glade]

Ahh - ok, that partially worked. I have my player now set up with a static body, and the wall set up with a Dynamic body. It seems if I switch the wall away from Dynamic the collision no longer happens. I was hoping for the wall not to move, lol

[solemn hollow]

xD should be the other way around. why is the player static

[tired glade]

I switched it to static to stop him from falling over with dynamic, lol

even Kinematic does nothing either

[solemn hollow]

kinematic triggers collisions but doesnt force the collider out of the collision.

well mabye if you move with forces it works. idk didnt test the phyiscs alot

but to avoid falling over people used joints i think

[tired glade]

I'm just using a capsule for testing

a capsule and a cube, lol

[worn kindle]

@surreal pagoda you should probably ask about DOTS here

[surreal pagoda]

yeap

[rotund token]

you kind of need to explain why it doesn't work well

[robust scaffold]

Restart? As in reset all variables to initial?

[robust scaffold]

That process is identical to restarting in mono / game objects. Have a storage containing an initial game world state then regenerate all variables using initial values

how else do you first start up the world then?

[devout prairie]

if you mark the objects rb with IsKinematic=true, basically the entity's Mass will be set to zero so will be unaffected by normal gravity and not fall over etc

but it should still react to collision ie if you move it towards a wall the wall should block it

( actually need to double check that last statement ie blocking )

[robust scaffold]

Ideally, your systems are stateless and thus doesnt care if there's a restart or not. As for your entities, you can use the SerializeWorld function to save the current entities existing at round start (saving the binary to a file somewhere) then clear all entities and then Deserialize the world to completely restart.

Systems can have cached component handles and entity queries but should not have any variables as private properties that rely on the state of the entity world. That should be the role of singletons and entities.

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.51/api/Unity.Entities.Serialization.SerializeUtility.SerializeWorld.html

[rotund token]

you are disposing world, have you recreated it?

[devout prairie]

Just realised that JobsUtility.MaxJobThreadCount returns the thread limit (128) whereas JobsUtility.JobWorkerCount returns the actual available threads for scheduling.. Which on a 6 core machine is of course 11 ( (cores*2) - main thread )

[rotund token]

yes

but just not, annoyingly your thread indexes might not be 0-11

(you can actually set JobsUtility.JobWorkerCount to limit workers etc)

[devout prairie]

there are circumstances where they could be given alternative index numbers?

[rotund token]

99% of the time

just go debug our your indices it's sometimes weird

like if you got 24 cores

gives you 0-14, 16-24

or something weird like that

it's consistent, you'll only get the same thread indices

but thread index behaviour i would say should currently be considered undefined

[devout prairie]

ahh

was just thinking, it used to be possible in task manager to set affinity i think of cores to specific processes

maybe beyond certain core counts the OS or application might allocate a different main thread other than zero

[full epoch]

i have subscene(dots 0.51, latest 2021lts unity) and use ss for prefab=>entity conversion (empty game object on ss with authoring component (field is Entity where i put simple cube prefab)) - this works when ss is open - when i close ss i get weird err : AssertionException: Assertion failure. Values are not equal. Expected: 0 == 1 - is this some bug or what i am doing wrong here?(code i used is similar to this : https://forum.unity.com/threads/prefab-workflow-and-managing.968299/#post-6675886 )

[rotund token]

Do you have the full error?

Where is the assert failing?

What's the authoring component

[half jay]

What a best practice to add entity to array after syncpoint happens ? if i do it directly in system its add entity with id = -1

[rustic rain]

Can you elaborate? It's not clear what you are trying to achieve

[half jay]

 protected override void OnUpdate()
  {
            var ecb = _syncSystem.CreateCommandBuffer();
         
            var blockStorage = ObjectStorage.BlockStorage;
            
            Entities
                .ForEach((Entity currentStateEntity) =>
                {
                   
                    var blockEntity = ecb.CreateEntity();                
                    blockStorage.Add(blockEntity);

                }).Run();
}

blockEntity EntityId = -1

[rotund token]

best practice would generally be don't

[half jay]

ok, but i really need use this storage so only way to create another system with filling storage after sync

[rotund token]

What happens if another systems deletes an entity

[half jay]

its clearing storage

[rotund token]

There's no way to do it outside if using entity manager or a multiple jobs with some type of tag component or hashmap

It's just not designed to be done

But if you're already creating a sync point why not just use entity manager

[half jay]

but this system can be burstable

[rustic rain]

Some EntityManager methods are also burstable

but ngl, if it's that simple

you will lose more trying to burst that

[half jay]

my system more complex and have SetComponents/AppnedBuffers and so on. Ok, so if im writing Entities.WithStructuralChanges.Foreach().Run() so some methods calling by EntityManager will be call burstable?

[rustic rain]

no

WithStructuralChanges = no burst

[hot basin]

which versions of Vulcan API does DOTS support?

[full epoch]

I changed in Convert To Entity conversion mode to ConvertAndInjectGameObject and now it works without error

[rotund token]

In a subscene?

You shouldn't use that script at all in a subscene

[full epoch]

for GameObject which holds prefab

yes seems you you right i removed it and it works now - thanks

[surreal pagoda]

hey guys I got some problems installing dots, any one can help me?, I made a new project with urp, and installed the dots package with all the components

but now I am getthing a few erros

unity version 2022.1

[solemn hollow]

Entities 0.51 only works for 2021.3

[surreal pagoda]

humm was following htis page

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.dots.editor@0.9/manual/index.html

2019.3.0f1 and later (recommended)

[solemn hollow]

@surreal pagoda well thats the wrong one to follow
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@0.51/manual/install_setup.html

the easiest way to get everything going is to install the hybrid renderer package. it pulls in all other necassary packages through its dependencies

[surreal pagoda]

yeah was doing that

guess the problem was the editor version

thanks man

[solemn hollow]

So i got this pattern i often have to use. I wonder how you guys handle it.
I need to do work on a Prefab that i just spawned but that work only has to be done to setup certain aspects of that prefab. So lets say i have a Component that holds a RandomSeed on a Prefab. I cannot initialize that randomseed in the conversion since then my prefab has the seed and everything spawned from that prefab has the same seed. So what i do is having an InitializeTag Component that is removed in the first frame an entity exists. so all systems with WithAll<InitializeTag> will only run once and setup specific components (in the example i initialize the RandomSeed with the EntityIndex to guarantee a unique seed).
Are there better pattern that are equally as easy to implement?

It is very similar to the SystemStateComponents usecase of cleaning up after EntityDestruction. Of course i could also do it the other way around and add a tag once the entity is initialized but that would mean an extra useless permanent tagcomponent on every entity.

[rustic rain]

I don't really get, why conversion is not an option?

you can always init random from entity index

which will most probably be unpredicted

[solemn hollow]

if you do it in conversion you do it for the prefabentity.

and when you then spawn an instance of it and not again initialize then the seed will of course be copied

[rustic rain]

oh

[solemn hollow]

so you need to initialize the randomseed after you spawned the prefab

[rustic rain]

why not manually init random?

during instantiation I mean

[solemn hollow]

thats exactly what i do. the question is what is the best pattern to do something in the first frame only

oh when spawning i dont want to have a system i have to touch everytime i add some new component

[rustic rain]

I'd just make some static helper method that does it for EntityManager and ECB

[left kindle]

Is the prefab instantiated from being in a (sub-)scene or are you spawning it manually? I'd probably have different approaches for each.

[rustic rain]

ooor, tbh it's way simpler than it needs to be, heh

[solemn hollow]

its by calling EntityManager.Instantiate

[rustic rain]

well, if you know for sure

[solemn hollow]

like spawning abilities

[rustic rain]

what is getting instantiated

then just

AddComponent with inited random

[solemn hollow]

well my AbilitySpawnSystem doesnt know about the actual ability that is spawned. it only knows that it needs to spawn whatevery is queued next

so it would be a huge pain to add all initialization logic for every possible component into that system and check if that spawned ability needs the setup for certain components

[rustic rain]

when you spawn

do you have any sort of component along that spawned prefab?

[left kindle]

Right. Personally I'd say then it is the responsibility of the system that creates those entities to make sure those seeds are set immediately.

[solemn hollow]

But what if that system can spawn all kinds of diffrent entities and is mainly there to spawn at the right locations? not every entity will have a randomseed component on them but still will be spawned by that system.

[solemn hollow]

not sure what you mean

[rustic rain]

I mean you could potentially give additional data to whatever is holding your prefab entity

wrap Entity around struct of AbilityPrefab

which will contain all data about what needs to be setup during instantiation

[solemn hollow]

the ability is comprised of alot of diffrent authoring components all working together to create the wanted ability behaviour. so its hard to create one struct that contains all setup logic but might be possible

[rustic rain]

no I mean

you keep entity prefab reference

but along with it you will have bool

hasRandom

so if it exists - you add inited random

[solemn hollow]

well thats the same as checking HasComponent<Randomseed>

[rustic rain]

yeah

but cheaper

as it will be done in conversion

[solemn hollow]

still that would be so much overhead to setup and not very modular

but i guess faster

[left kindle]

Ok, I think I get what is going on. I think you split up your components much more than I do. In your approach I'd probably make it so the prefab has a NeedsRandomSeed component that gets replaced with a RandomSeed component first (or same) frame after spawn. That way only "valid" entities get picked up by other systems groups.

[rustic rain]

it's pretty powerful pattern in case you require a lot of setup things around instantiation

[left kindle]

Or that, I like that approach too

[solemn hollow]

thats exactly what im doing atm

[rustic rain]

basically Def, hehe

[solemn hollow]

yes i figured others would do the same. i was just wondering if there are some things you learned that improved that pattern somehow

[left kindle]

Yeah. When I started learning ECS I tended to make to many teensy, tiny components. But often, packing the data as a bool in an other component leads to way simpler systems

[solemn hollow]

hm yes i agree. not everything should be split up. however in case of the ability example i do need alot of small components because the combination of them defines the ability itself.

Projectile + Heading + TargetNotStatic -> homingmissile

i just have a lot of very small building blocks that stack additively to create any ability i need

and of course i cannot have a dedicated spawner system for every single combination of those that handles setup. i need to somehow distribute that setup over multiple systems (one system can setup more than one component if it makes sense of course)

[solemn hollow]

i am too stupid to figure out how to HasBuffer<LinkedEntityGroup>(entity) in a Systembase without needing to go through entitymanager

do i need to just use getbuffer?

if (HasComponent<LinkedEntityGroup>(entity)) does not work

[rustic rain]

HasComponent should work though

[solemn hollow]

well it doesnt work with Buffers

The type 'Unity.Entities.LinkedEntityGroup' must be convertible to 'Unity.Entities.IComponentData' in order to use it as parameter 'T' in the generic method 'bool Unity.Entities.SystemBase.HasComponent<T>(Entity)'

i feel stupid now. how did i never stumble upon this until now :S guess i need to write it as a job and use the BufferTypeHandle to check

[rustic rain]

Wait

[rustic rain]

Why are you using systembase method?

[solemn hollow]

i was using a small Entities.ForEach and needed it to run in parallel. so cannot do EntityManager.HasComponent which would work fine with buffers...

[rotund token]

Yes has component doesn't have a buffer method yet

You need to just pass in the get buffer from entity