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Material for DOTS

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Deleted User, Jan 13, 2020.

  1. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    Hiya all,


    With Unity slowly moving into DOTS I am getting very anxious whether to stay with Unity or not. Apart from the custom, fan-made, videos found on YouTube I haven't been able to find hardly any official Unity learning material that can teach the beginning of DOTS. Also, with it improving and changing its API it is annoying, especially when it doesn't feel like a complete product.

    Does anyone know of any official Unity tutorials on DOTS and also whether and, if so, when Unity is going to leave the use of Monobehaviours behind.

    Thank you.
     
  2. Murgilod

    Murgilod

    Joined:
    Nov 12, 2013
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    10,084
    DOTS isn't even out of preview yet, so there's a reason there's not a lot of material on it. Also there's no telling when monobehaviour will be deprecated but the answer is "not within the next half decade, so don't stress."
     
    Joe-Censored and Ryiah like this.
  3. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    Check out Code Monkey's tutorials on YT or Brackey's YT tutorials. Both great resources. Once you've got the basics you can glean the rest from API documentation.
     
    Ryiah and Amon like this.
  4. neginfinity

    neginfinity

    Joined:
    Jan 27, 2013
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    13,554
    Simply don't use DOTS until it is officially released and until MonoBehavior is actually REMOVED. This isn't going to happen any time soon.
     
  5. Voronoi

    Voronoi

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    Jul 2, 2012
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    I agree, DOTS is not released and it's likely 6 or more years away that MonoBehaviours would no longer be relevant.

    However, I did get a chilling deja vu from the OP. Does anyone remember when Flash went from ActionScript 2 to ActionScript 3? A whole generation of designers were lost in the transition!

    True – there were serious problems and limitations with the implementation/ideas found in AS2 . AS3 was much more like a 'real' programming language. Nonetheless, everyone had already learned to code the AS2 way and could not make the leap. We're mainly talking designers here, not programmers. For designers, it was quite an effort to learn to use anything close to programming and the thought of throwing that all away and re-learning was too much.

    I think Unity is smarter than that though, they are developing node-based tools alongside DOTS, not as an afterthought. I believe they understand that people who've learned OOP are going to need help and tools to make any transition.
     
    RecursiveFrog likes this.
  6. Kiwasi

    Kiwasi

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    Dec 5, 2013
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    Look at it this way, you can learn DOTS, which works well with the Unity editor and engine you know. Or you can learn a new programming paradigm, a new editor and a new engine all at once. Either way you are learning a new way of programming.

    But from a practical perspective, MonoBehaviour is still here for a long, long time. Plenty of time to worry about DOTS later when there actually is Unity learn material for it.
     
    angrypenguin and Ryiah like this.
  7. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    15,617
    And potentially a new language, depending on what you go to.

    Honestly, though, all of those are good things to do. It's not about "sticking" with a particular tool, it's about learning the underlying fundamentals and knowing how to apply them. It'll be different in different tools, and changing tools will slow you down while you get familiar, but understanding more ways to solve problems is usually a good thing.
     
    SunnySunshine likes this.
  8. Deleted User

    Deleted User

    Guest

    Thanks all for the replies. Each one is a major help.

    I didn't realize that DOTS was still in preview and an official release was so far off into the distance. That has cleared up a small worry for me.

    Thank you again.
     
    SLASH24 and angrypenguin like this.
  9. Joe-Censored

    Joe-Censored

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    Mar 26, 2013
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    Like other major somewhat duplicate features, I'd expect Unity to maintain both until its use by developers drops close to the single digits. We saw the same thing with the 32 bit editor and UnityScript, where both were maintained along with 64 bit and C# until their used was below around 5-10% of users/projects.

    But contrary to those two, I'd also expect MonoBehaviour usage to remain very high for the foreseeable future, where even after the full DOTS release we see 50%+ of projects exclusively using MonoBehaviours, and even most DOTS projects still implementing some MonoBehaviours. Making MonoBehaviours here to stay. My opinion.
     
    RecursiveFrog, Kiwasi and neginfinity like this.
  10. RecursiveFrog

    RecursiveFrog

    Joined:
    Mar 7, 2011
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    Heh, I remember that quite well. The problem extended further than merely the language being too far a leap for designers to grasp.

    The entire architecture regarding how one could even safely work with MovieClip objects turned on its head. Designers who used to use frames as states and as state transitions suddenly discovered that this wasn’t safe anymore in AS3 movie clips. The engine became literally unusable for the tasks and workflows they’d spent years learning, made worse by the veneer of familiarity that the editor provided.

    At the very least, DOTS is so vastly different that those same issues probably won’t be a concern.
     
    Voronoi likes this.