Remote content management

[woven kernel]

I have a custom content build script, and everything seems to be built and loaded well, but for some reason the content loading is distributed to all subscenes, and I need to select all the scenes where there are subscenes and build content for them, but I don’t need this, how do I choose for content one specific scene?

[latent latch]

dependeing whether it's build or content archive you get to choose it:
for build - you just include normal scene, which has subscene (or use special interface for that)
for content archive - it's part of method itself where you specify all included subscenes

[woven kernel]

I can select a specific scene with a subscene for a content archive, but when loading via ContentDeliveryGlobalState.Initialize(remoteUrlRootAssets, Application.persistentDataPath + "/content-cache", initialContentSet) the data for this scene is pulled up, but for another scene with a subscene it does not exist for it , which is why the second scene cannot load.
The question is rather how can I force one scene to load from streaming assets, and another from archive content?

[latent latch]

You need to load all content together

easiest way I found to manage it

is to make only one main subscene

which will contain databases for all other subscenes (entity prefabs)

so this subscene will practically implicitly include all other subscenes that it references

such nested references only work for EntitySceneReference and EntityPrefabReference structs inside IComponentData or IBufferElementData

[woven kernel]

It doesn’t look very convenient, it would be better if it were possible to choose where this or that scene should be loaded from, but it turns out that the content includes unnecessary scenes that should be loaded by default

[latent latch]

content management itself does not have this implemented, but it's not complicated to do on your own

just bake some singleton component in this main subscene that says whether content is locally there or supposed to be loaded from remote

and then runtime logic can just act accordingly

just to clarify: all remote loading is about - is just copying content archives into folder that Unity can access and load into RAM when you actually get to load things in runtime.

It's not actually loading anything into RAM yet when you download remote content

[woven kernel]

but it turns out that this is copying without replacing or adding files, but simply replacing them completely))

[latent latch]

well ofc, if you have loaded content that has same GUID as something you have already - it'll act as Update

what else is it supposed to do?

[woven kernel]

hmm I thought the archive content is just a storage of binary objects in the form of hashes, and with some changing objects it is clear that replacement should occur, but if some new objects are added, then the files should be supplemented, but it turns out that the content is simply replaced with a completely new one

[latent latch]

not sure if that's the way it works tbh

[woven kernel]

and it’s not very clear why the initialcontentset is needed, I thought it was somehow connected with the selection of what will end up in a specific download directory, and the rest will be loaded by default from the cache or streaming assets

[woven kernel]

but, anyway, i should include every scene with subscene, which loading in the game, in content archive?

[latent latch]

no, content archive only needs subscenes

it's build itself that works by including all subscenes that were included in all scenes that were included in build

but that's not necessary

with latest version when they added special interface where you can specify subscenes to include into build manually

via code