BLAST - Performance Runtime Scripting in Unity (Bursted)

Disclaimer: THIS IS NOT MY WORK!

Hello!

I discovered some very cool project, and I don't think author has posted it on these forums yet. Just wanted to raise awareness.

Basically, it is scripting language & engine, that runs in burst and is vectorized (via SIMD).
It is very simple language and has limitations.

I hope some of you may find it useful or maybe appreciate it for its niche.

Links:

Reddit (where author claims he got job and released it for free)
GitHub Release: BLAST 1.0.4e - a ssmd script engine for unity : Unity3D (reddit.com)

Reddit (where I saw it originally)
Scripting with burst in unity with blast : Unity3D (reddit.com)

Github Repo
GitHub - nijnstein/Blast: Blast Script Engine

Github Docs
GitHub - nijnstein/BLAST-Documentation: https://blast-script.com/

Asset Store (free at time of thread creation)
BLAST - High performance runtime script interpretor, Burst and DOTS compatible | Visual Scripting | Unity Asset Store

 

I wish they would explain what use cases this is preferred over using HPC and burst.

 

The same advantages as any run-time scripting, I guess, like being able to test code changes without recompilation and domain reloading, mod support, and the possibility for hot reloading, but with a focus on SIMD/vectorization.

Unreal's Niagara particle system work somewhat like this too: CPU particle systems are actually script bytecode running on a SIMD-based VM.

 

I'll just leave a link here to another thread made by the author of BLAST:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/runtime-ai-scripting-in-burst.1158443/

The thread has a somewhat obscure name, so it might be hard to find by itself.

 

Unfortunately the author did not update the package for quite a while, and did not follow up the roadmap that's outlined on the Asset Store page. So I have an impression that while BLAST is already quite usable -- the demos work fine, it now has only a fraction of its full capacity.

There are issues in the BLAST Github repo, and they have funding goals, so probably it's now in that goal-oriented paymode, rather than having a price tag on the asset itself.

I wish the author created a Discord server so that we could form some community and maybe see into funding the goals.