#Stability and long term support for DOTS and Entities

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

dense heart
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Since I'm planning on use DOTS and more specifically the Entities framework, and there's a history of Unity closing features and not maintaining them anymore, I'd like to know if it's ok to suppose that the framework is going to last long in time and if it's going to be supported forever or at least a big amount of time.

Of course it's not possible to know this 100% but I'd like to know if it's stable enough and if there's many chances that it will be supported for the rest of time, but maybe someone has contact with Unity company and can shed a bit of light to this.

Basically I'm worried of starting to use it and see the support dropped after a while.

Thank you!

copper bison
dense heart
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ah no problem with the AAA title, mine will be a C title 😂

hexed turtle
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Is not v-rising AAA? it is using DOTs

pastel thorn
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Getting a bit off topic but AAA generally refers to the Last of us/COD scope & budget titles.
I think you could generally expect a LTS level of support with DOTS as they are treating it as such with their experimental to preview to release monikers for the packages. 3-5 years is what I’d expect but a plus is that you have source access to all the packages sans Burst.

Unity originally seemed to be betting the farm on DOTS & ECS being the future of the company but as a close follower, the outward enthusiasm seems to have been tamped down significantly since the original announcements so who knows what the long term future holds.

hexed turtle
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What is wrong with dots? it works and has good performance

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The CPUs are not getting faster every year like some time ago. Bloatware is not viable anymore, at least for games

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It is just really harder than MB, at least for me. Doing simple things became harder and hard things easier ..

copper bison
hexed turtle
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That is why they want hybrid

copper bison
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Oh no no, no hybrid pls 😅

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atrocious approach

hexed turtle
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You can do your code on ecs but still use asset store things

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this is what i`m doing

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Actually my game is multiplayer and i`m using ECS (pure) on server and MB on client (hybrid)

dense heart
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I've been thinking on creating my own ECS just in case that Unity Technologies decide to drop support on their own

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I've been working with ECS in C++ but now I'm switching to unity because of easiness in lots of things like having 3D (my framework only has 2D right now and I'm using a 2D only lib so I'd have to implement opengl backend and android support, etc, so it's a mess)

dense heart
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by the way, I read in the terms that it's bad to have a topic in the forum to last very long and revive it, I hope what I'm doing here doesn't contradict the rules, I think this is being a very fruitful conversation for me

dense heart
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you mean ready to go assets that use the ECS approach, right? like a platformer example that use DOTS?

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my idea is to use an ECS approach for my game, I have already the basics implemented in C++, it's matter of porting

copper bison
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if you want to make a game - you'll have to write a ton of low level stuff

dense heart
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Hmmm my thought was to use entities just for logic stuff but I was thinking that rendering and animation could be done outside entities

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I was assuming that you can access the components from normal monobehaviours, isn't this correct @copper bison ?

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So for example I set a variable in a component of an entity that later is read by a monobehaviour and sets an animation depending on this variable for example

normal scaffold
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At that point I'd be worried about unity existing as a company if entities is canned

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Because that's the only reasonable reason I could see for it now

dense heart
normal scaffold
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Is canned *

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Slang for cancelled

dense heart
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Aaah okk I didn't know canned was canceled, I thought of it as put in a can lol

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Ok ok

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Ok so I guess it's safe to suppose that entities framework will live hehe

normal scaffold
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Might be an Australian thing

dense heart
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Have a couple Australian friends, I'll ask em 😄

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I'm still worried about what issue said

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Of no native animations and no native 2d as my intention is to use entities only for logic

normal scaffold
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He is mr negative because he cares about 2d which had no support

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But yeah if your focus is 2d it's a bit rough

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Though nsprite is a pretty good community package

dense heart
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But can I use entities just for logic and delegate rendering and etc for everything else?

normal scaffold
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Just a reference of someone else using it

normal scaffold
dense heart
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Ok ok I'll check that link when at home

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Thanks tertle!!

normal scaffold
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Not much there, just a random article

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Was just making sure I wasn't crazy and making up sayings

pastel thorn
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pretty sure canned is a very western expression 🙂

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i agree, making your own ecs solution is probably a bad idea if the only underlying reason is fear of unity closing down, (but making something as a learning experience would be a good reason).
i think evaluate unity ecs with what it has available right now and only right now, and dont expect certain unreleased features to be on any reasonable timeline(cough cough animation, sound cough)

rose rapids
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animation looks more reasonable to me at the moment than sound fwiw

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although some of the underlying machinery for animation (like dfg) might help with sound

normal scaffold
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while I would love a replacement, fmod and wwise are industry standards and both work well enough with dots using their native plugins anyway

dense heart
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thanks @pastel thorn and @rose rapids for your contributions!

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just to give a bit of context, I've been working with pure ECS for a few years, we even use it at the company where I work on with unreal engine, so I'm very used to this way of working, and as I'm wanting to move my C++ allegro projects to unity to have more support of everything, I wanted to have some ECS support and entities framework seem like the way to go!

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I could create my own ECS system and it would be fun as heck but I want to move on and port as fast as possible the personal project I have in my hands so I think it's much faster using something that it's already done and probably much better supported (like unity entities framework) than start working on my own thing that even if it's going to be funny as hell, I prefer to move on