Question is it possible to reference a ghost entity across the network?

Hello Everyone,

im trying to build a Gamplay Ability System using Entities and Netode.
in some cases the player can cast a spell on a ghost by entity reference, it could be a simple AI or an opposing player, but the big problem here is that the entity references are different for every player.
so is there a way to identify and access a ghost by some unique id across the network?


[EDIT]
i just found out about GhostComponent.GhostId.

Thanks

 

As far as I know you should be able to put [GhostField] on an Ghost Entity and it will sync.

 

thanks @Jawsarn,
but i am not trying to sync components or fields through server and clients,
I am trying to synchronize the ghost entities.
EG: Let's say my ability system has an ability that should have a Player / NPC entity as a target. sending the entity will lead to a bad referral for the server and clients as it only exists in the current world.

 

I am using GhostComponent.GhostId as a unique reference in the Server/Clients worlds.

 

Aha, so you're sending the information over some other means than component serialization as RPC or Command stream I assume? Such case ghostID seems simplest. Good luck with the system, I'm working on a GAS as well^^

 

Thats interesting!
I'm still working on something else at the moment, but I'll definitely implement it using DOTS very soon.
just out of curiosity, have you already a design for it's implementation ?
how are you going to implement the ability and its Actions, Effects and Clues ?

 

Not really. This is my side project and I started out something similar of the DOTSSample, but did some research and are now trying to get a similar interface of how UE uses it, but with DOTS as backbone. Also very bruteforcy at first to get all components in there and then to optimize it more.

Abilities & Effects are entity prefabs. If you're familiar with UE terms, I have Attributes and Tags as ScriptableObjects. Attributes are generated into code & systems. I have not arrived at Cues yet, so we'll see about that. I guess it's a bit hard to explain in detail of all the systems involved here ^^

 

Thank you very much!
how does the netcode systems resolve those entities by their ghostIds, are they stored in some collection ?

[edit]
using the entity as a direct weak reference will meet my needs as in most cases the target entities are Ai / Players spawned at the start of the game.

but i am really interested to see how do you sync an entity reference between server / clients worlds.

 

I just tried an example and ghost entities ids are not synchronized across servers and clients worlds, but the GhostComponent.ghostid is properly synced.

 

@timjohansson can you please confirm that

I tested it and only GhostComponent.ghostIds are synchronized, but Ghost entity indexes aren’t, which makes sense to me.
this is very interesting if the netcode package really syncs the ghost entity references, because I a not aware of any API in the Entities package that allows creating entities with a specific ID and how would you do if an entity index is already used on the server but required as predicted by the client.

also, can you please give any reference/comment on how the netcode package resolves ghostIds ? like are you storing them in some collection NativeHashMap<GhostId, Entity> ?

Thanks

 

@CMarastoni I see. Tat's why client side there get Entity.Null and error spamming. Then the whole game not working anymore.