Jobbifying an intensive behaviour for a Game (2021.3.33) | Official Unity Discord | Page 1

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 12:17 AM

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Hello, i'm currently working on an enemy for my game, this enemy leaves "Splotches" of slowing goo while it moves, these splotches of slowing goo not only slow the player, but also damages them.

For the purposes of focusing exclusively on the behaviour, i've made a setup where i have only said component in a project, to isolate it from the other behaviours in the game for testing purposes.

Ideally i'd like for these enemies to have large trails, however, When i've placed some of them in a stage i noticed the large amount of performance intensive calls done in a single thread, thus, i'm looking to jobify it.

There's a picture attached to the beginning of this post that contains the basic information on a SpreadSheet, alongside the MS values i'm looking to improve by using Jobs.

Here's a link to the repo: https://github.com/Nebby1999/BarebonesMongerTrail

Any help is greatly appreciated

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Jobbifying an intensive behaviour for a Game (2021.3.33)

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So, a total of three places where i need to improve performance, the main thing i think i'm supposed to do is find a good way to keep a single NativeList of a struct that represents a tar point

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so i'd probably add that to the jobbified manager class i have in the repo

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i think probably the biggest issue i'm going to face is the fact that the "splotches" are eventually "Created and Destroyed", in reality they're pooled to avoid the overhead from creating and destroying them. but i think the biggest thing i dont know how to handle is how to make a "TarPoint" struct have a consistent index that i can use to reference it's Transform for the scaling purposes.

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is there a good way i can have a struct that i can use to reference a transform in the scene?

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i know unity objects have an internal pointer but afaik that pointer is exclusively private and not easy to access.

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 12:49 AM

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i've decided to use a NativeArray of TarPoint instead of a NativeList, that way i can pre-compute the total amount of points required and i dont have to worry about the index of a point changing. I've made a "Invalid" tar point that has a manager index of -1 and when the array is first created all tar points in the array are set to this invalid value, that way i think i can use the IndexOf to find a free index

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 2:01 AM

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i'm finding very poor performance on the scaling job i've implemented

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 2:05 AM

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you don't seem to have burst enabled on the job

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 2:06 AM

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was not expecting someone to actually show up

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burstifying it should improve the performance then?

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 2:06 AM

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can be magnitudes, can be only a tiny bit

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depending on the logic

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my best increase is 3min to 1second

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 2:06 AM

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damn

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 2:06 AM

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that is not the norm though

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 2:06 AM

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fair nuff, have the code updated on the github if you want to take a look at it

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 2:07 AM

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at work, in quick response only mode

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 2:07 AM

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fair nuff

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i'll try it out regardless

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do you know what the jobCount in the constructor for the TransformAccessARray does? is it the amount of transforms each job does or the total jobs that will iterate thru the transforms?

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 2:09 AM

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i suspect max number of worker threads

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and -1 is just all

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 2:09 AM

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i see

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 2:09 AM

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i really only work with pure entities though so been a long time since i've looked at this

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 2:09 AM

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Also, this is fast now, very nice

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fair nuff, i've been meaning to start using only entities but since there's no 2DEntity system official doing that is a bit difficult.

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 2:10 AM

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yeah i was expecting a 10x speedup but that's better

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are you using IJobParallelForTransform?

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btw thread splitting on IJobParallelForTransform is based off root gameobjects

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so if you have all your gameobjects under a single root, it'll run on a single thread only

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 2:10 AM

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OH

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i see

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yeah thats basically what i have then

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the transform access array is referencing all those tar splotches game objects

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i'm talking about potentially 7500 game objects on the highest setting (100 mongers)

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 2:12 AM

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yeah for thread safety they can't share a hierarchy

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 2:12 AM

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which is why i just parented them all to a single object to avoid having the scene hierarchy impossible to navigate

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 2:12 AM

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so if you want go wide you'll need to remove that hierarchy or at least break it up

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 2:12 AM

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i could make each point have a sub container of the total amount of splotches each monger uses

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 2:13 AM

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yeah it makes your hierarchy a bit gross, might even be worth just hiding them in hierarchy

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or yeah just manually grouping is fine

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you can do whatever solution you want

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 2:13 AM

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which is around... Mathf.CeilToInt(lifetimeOfSplotch) * 5

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 2:13 AM

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just thought i'd let you know as it's overlooked by most people

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 2:13 AM

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yeah, i dont recall seeing that mentioned anywhere

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 2:14 AM

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rose cedar which is around... ``Mathf.CeilToInt(lifetimeOfSplotch) * 5``

i'll just group them in batches of the small code block here

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 2:14 AM

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rose cedar Also, this is fast now, very nice

also your ohter job isn't burst compiled

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that'll probably go away to nearly nothing

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 2:15 AM

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i am aware, i need to do that too

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seems like the splotch container system has a slight issue that i'm now confused at how it even happens.

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The third error is related to the other two not running properly

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 2:20 AM

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show us the scheduling code?

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 2:20 AM

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the "do" bits are actualy there purely for this project, the final result wont have those bools

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 2:21 AM

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if you don't have dopointscaling enabled

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you never complete the trailpointlifetimejob

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 2:21 AM

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ohh... ok i see

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maybe i could just combine the dependencies and call complete on that?

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 2:21 AM

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just pass the same dependency through the whole way

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JobHandle dependency = default;

dependency = new job1().schedule(dependency)
dependency = new job2().schedule(dependency)

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 2:22 AM

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ohhh

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 2:22 AM

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dependency.complete()

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just easier

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 2:22 AM

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yeah, easier to read too actually

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i like that

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 2:22 AM

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less prone to break in future if you add more jobs etc as well

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 2:22 AM

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aight, quick leak then test

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its... still happening actually

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oh wait

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this gives me more context actually

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i'll try something else instead

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i'll explain it in a bit

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aight i fixed it

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i just declare the dependency handle at the beginning and complete it always when i need the monger instances to update their points from the manager

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that oddity is mainly due to the fact that i'm jobbifying it in steps, currently the doLifetimeReduction and doPointScaling sub-behaviours are jobbified, while doTrailUpdates and doPhysicsChecks are not

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need to remind myself to always burst if possible.

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Pre burst and post burst values

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i'm gonna burstify the other sub-behaviours tomorrow

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thank you for the help, appreciate it

acoustic harbor Oct 18, 2024, 3:46 AM

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rose cedar which is why i just parented them all to a single object to avoid having the sce...

you can break them down into scenes instead

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you can have the hierarchy at start, but when fully loaded, you create a new scene and move the hierarchy into that scene then break it down

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 2:54 PM

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i assume the best moment to utilize the persistent allocator is when i have native collections that get iterated thru every Update/FixedUpdate

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right?

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considering that at that point the amount of creation and disposal ends up being a problem

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i'm asking because atm all my native collections are persistent, _allTarPoints and _allPointTransforms get called every fixed update while _physicsBoxCastCommands would be called every N seconds (atm 0.25)

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ergo, i was wondering if for the commands it'd be better to just, create and dispose when needed instead of having it persistent

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 3:16 PM

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well it doesnt matter now since there is no OverlapBox command in 2021.3

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 8:45 PM

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Aight, i'm about to finish one of the other sub-behaviours, albeit i'm having this issue on this particular job:

IndexOutOfRangeException: Index 250 is out of restricted IJobParallelFor range [0...74] in ReadWriteBuffer.
ReadWriteBuffers are restricted to only read & write the element at the job index. You can use double buffering strategies to avoid race conditions due to reading & writing in parallel to the same elements from a job.

This is the job thats throwing the exception.
https://github.com/Nebby1999/BarebonesMongerTrail/blob/main/Assets/Mockup/Jobbified OOP/Jobs/ProcessHitBufferJob.cs

This is how i'm scheduling the job.
https://github.com/Nebby1999/BarebonesMongerTrail/blob/d1c91c408e965719685d535023ec9773b6274262/Assets/Mockup/Jobbified OOP/MongerManager_Jobbified.cs#L224-L259

Basically i'm raycasting at leas 5 colliders from each tar point, storing the results in a hit buffer thats 5 times the length of the total points i'm checking (since its 5 for each point).

Scheduling the raycast command has no issues, so the issue has to be on the PRocessHitBufferJob

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something in there i'm doing wrong

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 8:47 PM

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output[raycastIndex] != index

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 8:47 PM

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cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 8:47 PM

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the safety system ensures you are writing only to the index in your parallel for to ensure you aren't writing to same index from multiple threads

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 8:47 PM

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oh

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 8:47 PM

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if you can promise you aren't doing that

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and you are writing to a unique/safe index

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you can turn parallel safety off

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 8:47 PM

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its an attribute i imagine?

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 8:47 PM

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[NativeDisableParallelForRestriction]

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 8:48 PM

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on the job or the execute method?

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 8:48 PM

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on the container

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output

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 8:48 PM

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on the output, got it

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yes i'm 99.9% sure i'm writing to a unique safe index

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the "Index" in execute is the index of the point that was doing teh raycasts.

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and output has the same length as the raycast hits

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 8:48 PM

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alternatively you might want to considering using
IJobParallelForBatch

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 8:49 PM

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doesnt seem to be available on 2021.3.33

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oh well

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 8:49 PM

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it's in the collections package

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 8:49 PM

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hwuh

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 8:49 PM

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https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.collections@2.5/api/Unity.Jobs.IJobParallelForBatch.html

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 8:50 PM

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the version i was able to download on 2021.3 was 1.2.4. that was directly from the package manager fyi

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i dont think its a good idea to go past that

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 8:51 PM

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on that old version of unity

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it's probably in the jobs package

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 8:51 PM

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no such thing

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 8:51 PM

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https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.jobs@0.51/api/Unity.Jobs.IJobParallelForBatch.html

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 8:52 PM

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cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 8:52 PM

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jobs package was deprecated in 2022 and merged into collections

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 8:52 PM

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this is funny

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yes i see

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 8:52 PM

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but if you're using an older version, that's where it exists

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 8:53 PM

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thing is, i do have the collections package, cant find the interface anywhere, not there nor in the default available job interfaces

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 8:53 PM

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yeah because your collection package is old

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we're up to 2.5

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 8:54 PM

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i dont know why unity 2021.3.33 downloaded the old version

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 8:54 PM

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but 2.2+ is only supported on 2022.3+

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2.1.4 is supported on 2021 though

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and has it

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https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.collections@2.1/api/Unity.Jobs.IJobParallelForBatch.html

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 8:55 PM

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how can i update my package to that version?

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 8:55 PM

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oh wait no it's not supported

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not sure what i'm seeing

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1.5.1 is though

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https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.collections@1.5/api/Unity.Jobs.IJobParallelForBatch.html

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 8:55 PM

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rose cedar how can i update my package to that version?

it just means it never got the validation tick

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package manager is weird in old versions

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but you can just manually add it

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via the top + button

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com.unity.collections
1.5.1

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 8:56 PM

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yes i did see that the interface exists in 1.5

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adding 1.5, thanks

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there we go

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thanks

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gut tells me this should just work fine

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 9:05 PM

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i think that's right

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shouldn't need to disable safety here either i don't think anymore

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 9:05 PM

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only one way to figure it out

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 9:05 PM

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as you've effectively told safety system the range of values you can write to per thread

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 9:05 PM

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noice

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yup, no more exceptions

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thanks

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Am i supposed to use a different attribute or does it already get burst compiled since its from the collections package?

cedar tartan Oct 18, 2024, 9:14 PM

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should work fine

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 9:15 PM

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so what do i do about the warning...? nothing?

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hmmm

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 9:45 PM

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performance is slow in part due to this nested loop in particular.

I was thinking on filtering these by getting rid of the tarPointPhysicsChecks that have no actual raycasthit successes (colliderID being 0). so i made a IJobParallelForFilter, i'm a bit confused on how to schedule it tho

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was thinking on using ScheduleFilter, since this is the structure of my job to be precise

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i'm doing something backwards gimmie a bit

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 11:21 PM

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ok, i've decided to scratch most of what i had because it was too complex for my brain

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decided to go for a simple BoxCast instead to check

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however, my boxcasts arent colliding with anything, which is odd

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made a little debug utility that draws the box on the scene view, its there and its technically overlapping the capsules but there's no hit being registered

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the colliders are in the correct layer btw,

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dunno what i did exactly but i got it to work

rose cedar Oct 18, 2024, 11:55 PM

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good enough, lets see how fast this initial part is and how fast the post job part is.

rose cedar Oct 19, 2024, 12:20 AM

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got stuff to work now

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all thats left is burstifying the update behaviour

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stuff wasnt running well til i noticed you can just, write the commands in parallel as well

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i forgot how awesome this stuff is

rose cedar Oct 20, 2024, 6:43 PM

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i'm getting quite close to a performance i deem acceptable, altho this is something i'm greatly struggling on currently.

This is currently the most performance intensive part of the code as a matter of fact, so much so that at 100 mongers the main MS source is from this single marker. i know you cant have a native array of a native collection (which is what i thought of roiginally, something like NativeArray<NativeList<TarPoint>> where the index of teh array corresponds to the index of a monger

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problem is, i'm unsure how to jobify this properly

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would it be too bad to just, schedule a single for job for each monger instance? will the jobs run in parallel as well or not?

#Jobbifying an intensive behaviour for a Game (2021.3.33)