Failing at building and then loading a simple Content Archive

[heady cloak]

I'm trying to build and then load a simple Content Archive subscene containing one single entity. However I am a complete loss, as when I try to load its subscene, I get a NRE at a extremely low level, and Play Mode hangs which makes me kill the Unity process to reboot. This only happens if I have the debugger attached, otherwise I'd never see this and it doesn't appear in the Editor log.
https://hastebin.ianhon.com/6255

However if I go a little bit earlier in the ContentDeliveryGlobalState, I find the following log. I also can find this if I launch without the debugger attached as the last logged message:
https://hastebin.ianhon.com/561b

I have absolutely no idea why it is packing and trying to load a ContentArchive with all 0s, and rebuilding it still gives me the same result. No such thing appears in the DebugCatalog, which seems fine:
https://hastebin.ianhon.com/9b54

The code that bakes the Content Archive is the following:
https://hastebin.ianhon.com/55e9

Then I load the subscene, given the guid, using a manifest file generated at build time, using SceneSystem.LoadSceneAsync.
https://hastebin.ianhon.com/5519

I'm been poking at this for a couple of days and I simply do not know what to do and what could be making this happen. Apparently, the all 0s archive might be a reference to a Editor only Catalog/Archive, but I'm doing the same build steps as per documentation.

[heady cloak]

Am I NOT expected to use SceneSystem to load content? it's the only thing that I can think of, but I'd have to change approach from loading scenes through GUIDs to WeakAssetReferenceIDs

[limpid hazel]

I think you should really get this working in a normal way first on a default world instead of your custom one etc using the steps provided in the content sample

it'll help a lot in indentifying if there is an issue with the actual content code or your use of it

also are you testing this in editor or builds

because content archives work very different around this

[heady cloak]

Editor in PlayMode

I have kinda messy classes because at first I was directly loading the subscene directly, not the content archive

I plan to be able to do both at the same time so anytime I have to test something I can just load the subscene directly without having to rebake all the time

Like, just a toggle

I am aware that the system do not update in edit mode because application isn't running

I don't think its a World issue given that that's mostly the lack of systems, which I managed to load in into the custom World, but if it still doesn't work after changing the loading from SceneSystem to the Runtime Content i'll also try changing that

What is strange to me is when the NRE happens it has a WeakAssetReferenceID of the subscene trying to get loaded assigned to some variable in some step

So loading through that might work.... but then it might fail because its dependencies aren't loaded in

its weird and complicated

You'd figure Unity would have some kind of example of loading into a custom staging World given that loading is one of those things that you'd want fully complete and done before actually moving to the actual game, which is what I am doing here, but there's nothing about that

[heady cloak]

Actually, there's no scene loading example in the manual? https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@6.5/manual/content-management-delivery.html

https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/EntityComponentSystemSamples/blob/master/Dots101/ContentManagement101/Assets/2. WeakSceneLoading/WeakSceneAuthoring.cs

        public WeakSceneListScriptableObject Settings;
        public UnityEditor.SceneAsset HighFidelityScene;
        // We use WeakObjectSceneReference here instead of UntypedWeakReferenceId because
        // UntypedWeakReferenceId does not take a scene as input in the inspector.
        // Alternatively, we could use SceneAsset and then create a WeakObjectSceneReference in the baker with this code:
        // new WeakObjectSceneReference { Id = UntypedWeakReferenceId.CreateFromObjectInstance(authoring.LowFidelityScene) };
        public WeakObjectSceneReference LowFidelityScene;

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@6.5/api/Unity.Entities.Serialization.EntitySceneReference.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.entities@6.5/api/Unity.Entities.Content.WeakObjectSceneReference.html

I really don't know if changing from loading from the guid to a WeakObjectSceneReference will do, but I hope it does

[limpid hazel]

Once content is loaded, you can just load your subscene normally with SceneSystem.LoadSceneAsync Hash128 or EntitySceneReference

WeakObjectSceneReference is for normal scenes, not subscenes

[heady cloak]

Then what I am doing with the GUID should totally be working?

Thats how I am loading it right now, with a Hash128 of the GUID

I have no idea what's wrong then

[heady cloak]

I just had an idea, maybe its failing because the Scene contains the default cube model asset?

[heady cloak]

nvm

Still freaking out at this part

[heady cloak]

Have the debugger attached while im loading / unloading / opening / closing the scene and I wasn't aware that the runtime content manager was also used in the Editor. In my tests I do a Cleanup() of it because I thought it wouldn't be used (was trying to simulate a clean Player I guess?) So it's probably that

Seems like that was it

tl;dr if you do tests with RuntimeContentManager, follow what Unity tests do: https://github.com/needle-mirror/com.unity.entities/blob/1317c288453bea278b02b156610474bb8ec2f20f/Unity.Scenes.Hybrid.Tests/Editmode/Content/RuntimeContentManagerTests.cs#L407

After a cleanup ALWAYS reinitialize

And that the runtime content manager state is a globalstate, including the editor and all worlds, so if you do something wrong everything will die