i m not sure i have the capacity to | Official Unity Discord | Page 1

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 1:34 AM

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Can you show the type definition for TileType?

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 1:35 AM

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one sec

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so i'm trying to use T as my switch conditional

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essentially

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in general i need a way to be able to say "if <T>"

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and i don't now

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 1:39 AM

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T needs to be a concrete type

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 1:40 AM

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it should be though, they're assigned by the palette as one of my tile types like grass, etc

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 1:40 AM

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What is one of those types you are trying to check for?

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 1:40 AM

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flowWater

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grass

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dirt

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 1:40 AM

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Yeah but what are those? Classes? Part of an enum?

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 1:40 AM

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the names of sprites before i dragged them to the palette. they're then converted into TileBase T

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i just don't know how to supply another T to compare the tilebase's T to

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 1:41 AM

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Can you show the inspector of one of your tiles?

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 1:41 AM

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sure anything you need

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 1:41 AM

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Unity cannot create a new concrete implementation for a generic type from you just dragging something in the inspector, that would require code generation

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 1:42 AM

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are you familiar with the tilebase tilemaps thing? i'm not very, but it's part of the functionality. idk how it works behind the scenes, i'm just saying that you create the template by dragging the sprites, which creates an asset. unity then references each of those as having a Type <T>

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 1:42 AM

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Yes, I use them a lot myself.

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The asset you create is usually just a Tile, which inherits TileBase

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Select a tile in the inspector, it will tell you the type at the top

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 1:44 AM

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ok, hang on

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 1:44 AM

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warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 1:45 AM

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\

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 1:45 AM

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As you can see, it says dirt (Tile)

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Meaning the dirt asset is an instance of the Tile class

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 1:46 AM

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ok. so then how would i create a reference to compare a given tile to

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 1:46 AM

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There's a few options. It kind of depends on what you want to do gameplay wise

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You can either get a reference to all the different tiles, or you can implement your functionality on top of a custom tile type

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 1:46 AM

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simply put: terraria with other stuff

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 1:47 AM

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In this case you basically want to add, "additional" information to each tile, correct?

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 1:48 AM

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i'm in the middle of trying to make a process to make water work. first is looking at extant tiles and making a dictionary of vector3ints with their data, then is to look over that and start making changes. the issue i'm running into is in the first part. i'm hoping to be able to grab the actual tile as i do a foreach (bounds etc) and then use that information as the conditional for a switch to add other info depending on which type it is

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yeah exactly

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 1:50 AM

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The two options are roughly as follows:

Store a reference to the tile types you want to check.
For example, set the tiles you have in the inspector, e.g.

[SerializeField] private TileBase _waterTile;
...
TileBase tile = TileMap.GetTile(position);
if (tileBase == _waterTile) 
{
  //do something relating to water here
}

The other option is to write a custom tile type that has the information you need, and then read that in your code

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 1:51 AM

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i started w/ strategy 2 and it just seemed less useful. but the first seems good. let me try #1 out again but i thought i tried that once

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 1:51 AM

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I would recommend the second option, as you will eventually need to write custom tiles in a tile based game

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Especially if gameplay data is tied to those tiles

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It's very useful

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 1:52 AM

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ok so the way i was doing it was basically to associate scriptable objects. can't remember the exact method off the top of my head but is that more or less what you're talking about?

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when i painted them they had the SOs already on them

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or are you saying you can create a whole tile with custom fields

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 1:53 AM

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TileBase is a ScriptableObject

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I'll write you some code as an example for a custom tile

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 1:53 AM

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ah man we're getting above my head here. i've only been doing unity a couple months total and half of that was 3d MLAgents stuff, totally different

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didn't use SOs

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thank you

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 1:54 AM

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warm vapor didn't use SOs

I would get familiar with them, they are very useful, and you are already using them. As I mentioned, the tiles you currently have are scriptable objects

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 1:55 AM

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i'll take a few hours to go over some docs and videos. anything you suggest in particular?

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 1:56 AM

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I think you will understand it a lot more from this example I will show you in a second

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 1:56 AM

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ok no rush, ty 🙂

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 1:57 AM

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[CreateAssetMenu(menuName = "Tiles/TerrariaTile")]
public class TerrariaTile : Tile
{
    public enum TileType
    {
        Water,
        Dirt,
        Rock
    }

    [SerializeField] private TileType _tileType;

    public TileType Type => _tileType;
}

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This gives you the option to create a new asset type:

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And on these tiles, you can now set the defined data:

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This data can be checked in your code

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e.g.

var tile = TileMap.GetTile(position) as TerrariaTile; //Assume all tiles are of type TerrariaTile
if (tile.Type == TerrariaTile.TileType.Water)
{
  //do something here
}

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You can then also use a switch case here:

switch (tile.Type):
  case TerrariaTile.TileType.Water:
    //...
    break

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To use the tile in the tile palette, you just need to drag the TerrariaTile asset you create (e.g. dirt) onto a square in the pallette, then you can draw it on the tilemap

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 2:01 AM

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what does => do?

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 2:02 AM

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It's C# shorthand for a Get only property

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 2:02 AM

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ah

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 2:02 AM

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It's the same as:

public TileType Type
{
  get => _tileType;
}

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(since you probably don't want outside code being able to change the tile's type)

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 2:03 AM

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ah so i put in the custom tiles on the palette instead of the other ones

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 2:03 AM

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Exactly

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 2:03 AM

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that's amazing

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 2:03 AM

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Anything that inherits TileBase can be put on the canvas iirc

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 2:03 AM

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yes, this is extremely useful

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 2:03 AM

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You can store any data you want here, e.g. drop tables, max health, etc

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 2:03 AM

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sick

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 2:04 AM

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Just note that this data is not unique per tile

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For example, you cannot use this to store the current health of a tile

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All tiles of the same type share the instance of the scriptable object

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 2:04 AM

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ok that's fine bc i already have a process started to keep track of all that. being able to set specific info like that is definitely going to solve the issue and do a lot more though, from the looks of it

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 2:05 AM

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A better example for a use-case would be a game object that is created when the tile is destroyed

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 2:05 AM

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i actually would like to get you to look at this, but it's in the middle of major construction so would be too confusing. will you be around in like an hour you think?

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 2:06 AM

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It's 4am here so I was just planning to go to bed, but I'm here every day. Just write in this thread if you have any questions and I'll try to answer when I see it

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 2:06 AM

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thank you very much that would be really appreciated. this thread won't close on its own?

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 2:07 AM

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I actually have no idea 😅

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 2:07 AM

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lol io should at least screenshot what you wrote then.

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 2:07 AM

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It seems to stay open for 24 hours, after which point it is archived, meaning you can still access it by going to the original message where it was created

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That would be this message: <#💻┃code-beginner message>

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 2:08 AM

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you mind if i message you later if it does close then?

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 2:08 AM

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Sure, go ahead

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 2:08 AM

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alright thanks again. have a nice night!

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 2:09 AM

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Ping me in one of the code channels (or probably #🖼️┃2d-tools ) since I have DMs disabled by default), and I'll see it

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 2:33 AM

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are you still here? i'm wondering if i'm better off actually filling empty tiles, at least ones that i encounter, with a custom 'empty' tile or if i'm better off just leaving them null. in your experience. as i said it's terraria-esque so there will be tiles coming and going all the time

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 2:36 AM

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Why would you want to fill them with empty tiles?

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Since null is essentially just that

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 2:55 AM

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idk

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no actual reason at the moment just wondered if other ppl had found one

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er, you had

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sorry i had assumed you went to bad my bad

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i got all my tiles set up though

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 3:07 AM

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It's now 5am ☠️ ill check back tommorrow

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 3:17 AM

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lmao, sleep well

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sorry for missing you 🙂

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 10:33 PM

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looks like you're still away, but here's my very updated code. http://pastie.org/p/3ASnba1f7DMXzI08m49fbI it's working fine for Start() but errors out on update at 49 (our old friend) for tile 3,0,0. most of the script seems to be working right, but 3,0,0 shouldn't be still on the active tiles list, and i'm wondering if maybe there's some issues going on with my not timing these reads/write correctly for unity so it gets confused. any help would be very appreciated!

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the other lists seem to be working (although i haven't gone through and checked grid coordinates, but there's the right # of them given the context)

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actually i take that back, the 3,0,0 is erroneous with just start(). it flows correctly and is deleted correctly, but still is on activeList...hmm

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 10:45 PM

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Hard for me to say, but I don't see anything wrong in relation to unity, so it is probably just a logic error somewhere. I recommend you use an enum instead of integers for tiletypes though

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 10:54 PM

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stark shore Hard for me to say, but I don't see anything wrong in relation to unity, so it i...

i think you're right, it's a logic issue. i'm going back through. i am using both. it's just easier for me to conceptualize when i'm writing. i use the enum to convert the actual tiletype in the custom tile script to an integer of the same number.

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 10:54 PM

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an enum is just a number, so you can do both with the enum if you really want to

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 10:55 PM

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for some reason when the context to use the enum comes up, it gives the name instead of the integer, which is why i named them things like zeroEmpty oneGrass fiveStone etc

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 10:55 PM

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Although I don't really see the point, it's just more error prone

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 10:56 PM

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are you saying i can just replace fiveStone with 5 and it will work?

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when i use the enum i mean

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 10:56 PM

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Why are you trying to use numbers for this in the first place?

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I feel like Stone is easier to remember and gives more intention than 5

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 10:56 PM

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easier to convert across types

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basically

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 10:56 PM

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How is it easier?

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 10:57 PM

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so i can just say if this.5 == this.5 instead of trying to use all the enum logic that i barely understand

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it's just easier for me to do all that IN the enum

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er that.5

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 10:58 PM

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You can check enum type just like anything else.
e.g. if (tile.Type == TileType.Stone) //do something if it is a stone

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 10:58 PM

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i'm just saying it's a lot easier for me to conceptualize a tiletypeint than enums, idk

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 10:58 PM

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I certainly recommend you read up on them, they are very useful 😅

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 10:59 PM

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i can always convert once i understand it better.. it seems clunks idk

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 10:59 PM

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c-style "enums" (basically constants) is something that isn't really used a lot anymore, with good reason

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 10:59 PM

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clunky.. but yeah it's probably just my ignorance

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 10:59 PM

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Enums also specifically let you set the numbers per value, and even let you have a single value be "multiple" types

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e.g.

[System.Flags]
enum MultiTileType
{
  None = 0,
  Stone = 1,
  Water = 2,
  StoneAndWater = Stone | Water
}

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:00 PM

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i actually did do that. it's in CreateTileEntry or whatever... i guess i just never tried to use the numbers instead of the names

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to call

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does the approach i'm using seem reasonable though? i was hoping to get an overall opinion on my process if you have one

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:01 PM

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I don't really know what you are trying to do

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😅

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:02 PM

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well it's a tilemap game where i want some tiles to be active (like water) and updated on their own. this process is basically the backbone of that

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:02 PM

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So you want the water to flow in a similar fashion to terraria?

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:02 PM

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for now i'm just trying to get them to make a tile below them and delete the tile if it no longer has enough water

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yeah exactly

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:02 PM

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Then you are basically writing this: https://smashwaredotcom.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/falling-sand-algorithm/

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It's the same algorithm games like noita use

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:03 PM

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yeah and i've looked at a bunch of them, and am more or less modeling after. just curious about my actual usage of C# to accomplish

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if i'm missing anything obvious

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or if i should take a different strategy in places

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:04 PM

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It kind of depends on your map size and how performant this needs to be

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:05 PM

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i would like it to be relatively performant i guess, but it's a game like terraria. idk if that's considered performant for what it does or not tbh. if i could reach something along those lines that would be def fine.

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:05 PM

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Terraria has a relatively large world, so you will at least need to do some kind of chunking system that can detect what chunks needs update. You won't want to iterate over the entire map each frame

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:05 PM

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i don't think the map size will be nearly as big as that. i would rather make stages

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:05 PM

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e.g. a chunk that doesn't have any flowing water doesn't need to do anything

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:06 PM

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kind of like a largish puzzle game area

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ok...where would i start looking into chunking?

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:07 PM

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There's no real definition of it. Basically you would need to subdivide your world into some partition (e.g. 16x16 tiles), and then only update the tiles required.

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If your map isn't very large you probably don't need to do it though

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:07 PM

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what about if i can keep it to like 200x200

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that's still pretty big

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:08 PM

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I think that should be fine, but it's hard to say

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:08 PM

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ok... well that gives me an idea at least

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i'll just try and get it working and go back over it after if it's too slow i guess

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:08 PM

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One thing to note about the tilemap system in unity, is when you are setting a large amount of tiles use the batch update methods, setting individual tiles is very slow

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https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Tilemaps.Tilemap.SetTiles.html

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:10 PM

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What is considered a large amount? I would think maybe at the VERY most it would be 500ish tiles? i'm just trying to think what a large 'lake' would be. 50x100 seems about as big as i'd go

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:11 PM

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I can check how large my player view is in tiles, give me a second

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:36 PM

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awesome i fixed it by checking for a list entry before adding. i forgot they can take double values.

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where would be a good place to put a delay in between tile 'updates' if i were to do that? the water flows at warp speed at the moment lol

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and would the best method be yield delay? i'm gonna have to look that up but i've heard some methods can suspend threads or something so i'm just making sure

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:41 PM

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I would probably add a "flow speed" to tiles, which is the required amount of update ticks a tile needs to move

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:44 PM

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stark shore I would probably add a "flow speed" to tiles, which is the required amount of up...

would implementing this require me to do the iteration interface (idk really what this means)? i'm getting an error when i try to add yield return new WaitForSeconds(0.5f); to anything

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:44 PM

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yield only works inside an IEnumerator if you are attempting to write a coroutine

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:45 PM

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is there a way to add a delay to a regular method?

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:45 PM

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You can write an asynchronous method

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Which achieves something similar to a Unity coroutine

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:46 PM

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hm.. would i be better trying to learn how to convert my EvaluateTiles method to coroutine? not really sure what that would look like...

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it's basically iterating anyway

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:46 PM

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It depends on how you want to implement your waiting

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e.g. do you want to just not run your simulation every frame, do different tiles need different update speeds, etc

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For example, sand falls slower than water

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:46 PM

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i just don't want the tiles to flow at warpspeed. the less fuss the better, but obviously i want to set the architecture up smartly now that the project is still smallish

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yeah, i could see some things needing different flow speeds

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:47 PM

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Then I would just set a static simulation speed, e.g. 60 times per second, and then add a flow speed to tiles, incrementing a counter per tile instance, and only if that counter exceeds the flow speed, update the tile and reset the counter

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So if you set the flow speed of water to 60, it would "flow" once per second

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:48 PM

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ok that sounds good. can you point me to a doc on that or maybe give me an example? or both xD

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:49 PM

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If you replace your Update method with FixedUpdate, the simulation will run at a fixed time step, the default is 50 times per second

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You can set this in Edit -> Settings -> Time -> Fixed Timestep

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https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/MonoBehaviour.FixedUpdate.html

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:49 PM

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oh nice. is using a divisible number like 64 a good idea or no?

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:50 PM

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It doesn't make a difference

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:51 PM

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not even to having some kind of matching with fps?

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:51 PM

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You can't really predict your FPS

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:51 PM

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oh good point.

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alright sounds good thank you. so once i've got a fixed update, what's the syntax for waiting a portion of that time?

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:52 PM

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Just watch out that this update value is also the update speed of the physics system, if you are using it

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:52 PM

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is it bad to use both update and fixedupdate? my understanding was "fixedupdate is for physics" and "update is for other things" more or less

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:53 PM

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It doesn't matter. It just depends on if you want your logic to run at a fixed timestep, or if you want it to run when the game refreshes (which can be limited by things like VSync)

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The fixed time step will always be the same, while the update speed will vary vastly from machine to machine

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:54 PM

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alright, i'm not even close to that fussy in this game. just as long as unity doesn't get confused i'm good

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so what is the command to wait during the fixedupdate? sorry for repeat xD

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er i mean alongside

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:55 PM

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warm vapor alright sounds good thank you. so once i've got a fixed update, what's the synt...

You wouldn't wait, you would just update all tiles in that fixed timestep.
for example

[2, 3, 1, 3, 2, 4] <- frame update array

The above array is incremented each update, and if the number exceeds the "flow speed" set on the CustomTile object, then you actually update the tile (make it flow)

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The positions in the array correspond to the tiles on the tilemap

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:57 PM

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so each fixedupdate i increment each counter until it exceeds whatever i set

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:57 PM

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For example. There are multiple ways to achieve this, but that's how I would do it

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:58 PM

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i believe i'm following.. please continue 🙂

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oh

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nvmd lol i misread

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ok yeah that seems like it should work

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just put that array in the main class with my other lists?

stark shore Oct 2, 2022, 11:59 PM

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My game runs at 100+ FPS at 368x160 tiles, and these aren't static, so you should be fine

warm vapor Oct 2, 2022, 11:59 PM

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nice, yeah that's more than performant enough

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:00 AM

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I also use the Z axis on the tilemap so it's actually more than that

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I recommend you do use chunk rendering on the tilemap, since that significantly improves performance

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:00 AM

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your project does?

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:01 AM

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Yes

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It changes the internal rendering to use a lot less draw calls, instead of 1 draw call per tile

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You can set it on the tilemap renderer component:

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warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:02 AM

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so let me resummarize. i'm making an array of values that correspond to each tile that is 'active', and on each fixedUpdate, i iterate the value ++. then when the value exceeds the 'flowspeed' of the custom tile type, i tell my code to actually move the tile and whatnot

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?

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:02 AM

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Like I mentioned, there's a million ways to do this, that's how I would do it

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:03 AM

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cool, just making sure i understand

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:03 AM

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You will probably need an array that contains information per tile anyways, so you can just write your current counter value there

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:03 AM

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i'm storing them in a dictionary. is it slow to iterate the dictionary that often?

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i mean the stuff in the dict

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:05 AM

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An array is a lot faster

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:06 AM

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ok i'll figure something out with an array then. thank you so much for all the help (again). i definitely have plenty to go on here i think.

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oh one question: the chunk rendering you showed me. does that require a change in the code as well or is it really just changing it in inspector?

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:13 AM

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warm vapor oh one question: the chunk rendering you showed me. does that require a change ...

You need to set it on the tilemap and make sure that all tiles you are rendering are on the same texture. To easily achieve this, you can use a sprite atlas

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:13 AM

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warm vapor ok i'll figure something out with an array then. thank you so much for all the ...

If I were to implement a prototype for this, I would start with a much simpler version than what you have done:
Basically a struct that contains the instance information for each tile:

public struct TileData
{
  public int FlowCounter;
  //other stuff
  public void Tick()
  {
    FlowCounter++;
  }
}

public TileData[] _tileData = new TileData[TileMapWidth * TileMapHeight];

Then I would iterate that each fixed update:

for (int i = 0; i < _tileData.Length; i++)
  _tileData[i].Tick();

Then grab all tiles from the tilemap:

public TileBase[] _tiles = new TileBase[TileMapWidth * TileMapHeight];
...
TileMap.GetTilesBlockNonAlloc(new BoundsInt(0, 0, TileMapWidth, TileMapHeight), _tiles);

for (int i = 0; i < _tileData.Length; i++)
{
  //decide how to update the visuals of the tilemap according to its data here
}

TileMap.SetTilesBlock(new BoundsInt(0, 0, TileMapWidth, TileMapHeigh), _tiles);

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:15 AM

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hm i think i'm understanding

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sorta

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and you think doing that is more performant than just keeping track of tiles of a certain type?

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:19 AM

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It depends a lot on the setup, it's hard to say

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The easiest thing to optimize here is storing tile data as a struct in an array

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And using SetTilesBlock instead of SetTile

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:20 AM

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hmm... how would i go about in the bottom part updating the visuals as you suggested? is that using setTile or some other method? sorry i'm pretty new to tilemaps so it's all a bit confusing

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:20 AM

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My example is lazy and sets the entire tilemap each frame, you can only set a subsection of it to improve performance even more

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:21 AM

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the irony is i started with a struct and converted it all to class

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:22 AM

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this TileMap.GetTilesBlockNonAlloc(new BoundsInt(0, 0, TileMapWidth, TileMapHeight), _tiles); copies each tile in the tilemap into the array

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You can then modify all enties in the array

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and write them back with TileMap.SetTilesBlock(new BoundsInt(0, 0, TileMapWidth, TileMapHeigh), _tiles);

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:22 AM

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so i can do a foreach with that? i guess i'm not sure how i would go about actually setting the new tile w/ the data

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once i grab the tilemap data

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:23 AM

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It's not super straightforward since a part of the falling sands algorithm is deciding what to do when two tiles "merge"

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e.g. in a single update two water tiles fall to the same position

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:23 AM

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yeah, i've already sort of run into that. just decided to cheat with arbitrary cutoff points basically lol

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until it's more built at least

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:24 AM

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There's different ways to work with it, e.g. store a byte per water tile that indicates how "filled" that tile is with water, and if two water tiles collide, they fill, and if they overfill, they split their overflow value to the tiles left and right for example

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:25 AM

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so if i replace my cellData class with a nearly identical cellData struct...is there going to be issues? what might i not be anticipating? i just don't really understand structs which is why i switched to class

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obviously i need to declare my variables and dicts differently... but beyond that...?

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:27 AM

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It's complicated to explain easily since it requires a good grasp of computer science knowledge, but the gist of it is this:

structs are allocated on the stack, classes are allocated on the heap
this makes structs faster for simple data storage since they are layed out linearly in memory, which helps cache coherency immensely
this makes structs better for video game development since they are not managed by the garbage collector, meaning less garbage collector stalls
structs are much more limited in what they can do compared to classes
structs are copied entirely when passing the variable, while a class copies the reference to the memory location on the heap (meaning you modify the same instance, instead of copying it)

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This is the reason why unity math types are all structs, e.g. Vector2, Vector3, etc

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:29 AM

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i actually watched a few hours on structs and the heap/stack thing so i sorta know what you mean. i am just mainly asking in practical terms as far as my script and what i'm trying to accomplish here. i make regular backups so i can def experiment...

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like as far as breaking my script more or less

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:29 AM

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As long as you don't try to store the struct anywhere (e.g. by adding it to different collections) then you should be fine

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Basically store all your tile data in one array and update that array

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:30 AM

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Can I use a list? why array?

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:30 AM

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You have a fixed world size, why do you want to use a list

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:30 AM

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out of range exceptions scare me lol idk i just found them slightly easier to manage i guess

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:31 AM

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You can get out of range exceptions with a list 😅

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:31 AM

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hmm.. why was it

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oh, adding to the size!

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:31 AM

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You cannot expand the capacity of an array

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:32 AM

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exactly... but you need to be adding tiles to it all the time so why would you choose that? i just don't quite understand

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:32 AM

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Why do you need to "add" tiles when you have a fixed world size?

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The array already has a "spot" in it for each tile you could add

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That's why the size is set to new TileData[TileMapWidth * TileMapHeight]

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:33 AM

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ah. the strategy i was using only had data for tiles that actually had been drawn

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and deleted them after they were moved

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:33 AM

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That will be a lot slower than just having all of your possible data in an array

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:33 AM

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hm, ok

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:33 AM

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With your dimensions it probably won't matter though, I doubt you need to optimize much for a tilemap of size 200x200

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That's 40000 tiles, arrays can easily be multiple million entries long

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This really only becomes an issue if you world is exceedingly large

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My game world is 134217728 "tiles" large (1024*512*16*16), which I cannot put into an array without running out of memory

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:35 AM

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out of curiosity, just how much slower are dicts than arrays? would it, for example, be a bad idea to index all 40,000 of the tiles in a dictionary (just hypothetical)

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:36 AM

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For your sizes it's not an issue. Access to a specific key is slower, because GetHashCode needs to be run on your key. You are basically trading performance for memory. The dictionary uses less memory, but is slower to access and slower to read

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:37 AM

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ok... i will definitely experiment with arrays, but i find the key value pairing really useful. that other strategy seems interesting as well but almost like it should be a different project or just an overhaul version. i'm still using this to learn too so i don't mind trying one thing and seeing then fiddling later...

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:38 AM

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The way you write your code for an array or dictionary is very similar. You just write a helper function to convert your 2D coordinate to the 1D index in the array
e.g. int Index2Dto1D(int x, int y, int size) => y * size + x;

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And then do _tileData[Index2DTo1D(xPosition, yPosition, _tileData.Length)]

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:39 AM

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helper function i'm gonna have to write that down lol

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that sounds basic xD

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wait, is that a formula to create an index for a coordinate? i'm not quite following

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i tried to figure that out for like 5 hours lol

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:41 AM

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warm vapor wait, is that a formula to create an index for a coordinate? i'm not quite foll...

Yes

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https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1730961/convert-a-2d-array-index-into-a-1d-index

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:41 AM

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damn i even looked on google and math ppl were saying it is impossible so i gave up

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:42 AM

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If you want it even more easy to use, you can write an extension function
e.g. static T From2D<T>(this T[] arr, int x, int y) => arr[y * arr.Length + x];

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Then you can do _tileData.From2D(xPosition, yPosition);

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And your set function would be static T Set2D<T>(this T[] arr, int x, int y, T value) => arr[y * arr.Length + x] = value;

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:43 AM

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well that's awesome. yeah i distinctly remember running into this roadblock now. i think that's why i went dicts actually.

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:43 AM

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warm vapor well that's awesome. yeah i distinctly remember running into this roadblock now...

You can use dictionaries if you want to, like I mentioned, for your tilemap size you don't really need to optimize heavily

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(again it's a tradeoff between memory and speed)

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:44 AM

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this is really nice to know though.

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:44 AM

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If you tried to store only a single integer at the tilemap size I mentioned earlier, it would require 536 megabytes of memory, so not really feasible

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:45 AM

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what is the int size in your conversion formula?

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:45 AM

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The length of the array

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:45 AM

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oh, right

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:45 AM

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Oh wait, my bad

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This won't actually work for you

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It needs to be one dimension of your tilemap

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The width ideally

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:46 AM

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oh, yeah... i think that's what they were saying on the math forum lol

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:46 AM

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The extension function won't work then, since it needs to be passed the width in addition to that

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:47 AM

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the way i did it was literally just counting each tile i make, they don't even really need an index number though with the dict

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:47 AM

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You could wrap your struct in this case if you wanted to, but there are many ways to go about this

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:47 AM

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warm vapor the way i did it was literally just counting each tile i make, they don't even r...

The index is the coordinate

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:47 AM

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the key. right, i just mean i gave each tile a never-repeated number (for reasons lol)

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:48 AM

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You can do that, but it's more complicated to upkeep

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:48 AM

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it's pointless. i'm probably going to just remove it

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i figured might as well put it in now and remove it later if i don't use it lol. probably a few SE jokes about that exact mentality...

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anyway thanks again i'm gonna try and get that delay system working. cheers!

stark shore Oct 3, 2022, 12:50 AM

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Since you asked this earlier, this is how coroutines work (although I personally wouldn't use them in this case): https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Coroutines.html

warm vapor Oct 3, 2022, 12:52 AM

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i'll give that a read. thank you.

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that worked like a charm. one bug left but other than that it's looking really good. so exciting, thank you! gonna take a break for a bit

#i m not sure i have the capacity to