[RELEASED] Flock Box DOTS 2.0 - Flocking simulator

@XyrisKenn Go to FlockBox > Import DOTS Packages to open this window for the most up to date packages
Also note that as previously mentioned in this thread, Entities 0.51 is only supported by 2021.3.4+

 

Hi @check_marc

Are you planning to update FlockBox to the newly released com.unity.entities version 1.0.0? (currently -exp.12)

If(so)
{

I'll wait and stop struggling trying to do it myself
Do you have a rough guess of a release date?​

}

Thanks and kind regards

Mark

 

@CodeWiesel I am planning to keep supporting new versions of com.unity.entities into the future, but 1.0.0 is still experimental and currently only compatible with beta versions of Unity (2022.2.0b8+) so I'm holding off until it becomes more stable.

 

I'm considering purchasing Flock Box, but I'm unsure if it will work in my situation. I'm using the recast graph from the A* Pathfinding Project asset on a terrain that is converted to an entity with a mesh via a script (like the scripts here: https://forum.unity.com/threads/using-unity-terrain-with-dots-workflow.755105/ ). The idea is that there are lots of enemies spawning and I want them to follow an A* generated path to get to a particular destination. The player can place buildings, which performs a navmesh cut so that enemies try to go around the buildings. This works right now, but I would also like the enemies to have local avoidance without adding physics bodies, which is where I was hoping Flock Box might help.

So my question is... do I have any hope of getting Flock Box to work in this scenario, considering that I'm using A* Pathfinding Project's navmesh (with navmesh cutting) and a mesh-entity terrain?

 

@lclemens It could potentially work. You would need to modify the systems that apply the calculated velocity directly to the LocalToWorld and instead weight it in combination with the desired pathfinding direction.

 

Hi, thanks for this amazing package first of all When can we expect compatibility with Entities 1.0?

 

@Onat-H It's currently in development but I don't have a release estimate yet

 

Thanks for the Info!

 

hi, I have some doubts.Why is there a difference between DOTS mode and general mode performance.
For example, BOID in DOST mode reacts more slowly, and they collide with the player while normal mode does not

 

hello, I have a problem where I used sharks for flocks, its works well apart from when they hit the edge the flock (shark) snaps into 360 turn fast without smoothness or whatever. How it this fixed? Thank you!

 

Just recently purchased the asset. I am going to spend some time poking around with it. I am trying to create a game about herding sheep. I am curious what the developers recommendations would be for setting up such a project. What would be the best way to go about having the agents move away from the player as he gets closer to them and possible be able to steer them left or right?

 

Hi, I only get 1 unit when using DOTS. Without DOTS I get the number I put in the population field

 

Is it possible to make the flock move along a spline?

 

Hi @check_marc, thanks for a great asset.

I was confused why the Twitch Dampening was causing the agents to freeze in place until I realised that the script should be attached to a child game object of the agent, and the mesh attached to a child of the Twitch Dampening game object (i think).

Leaving this here in case others run into the same confusion.

Daniel

 

Does this package work with Unity's built-in NavMesh system?

 

@check_marc Thank you for your great asset. I was wondering if you have a rough estimate for DOTs 1.0. Depending on the timeline i have to include your package at a later point in my project. Thanks in advance.

 

Increase the buffer zone of the FlockBox and the weight of the Containment behavior until they don't collide with the sides.

 

Look at the Player Control Demo as a starting point. Use the Flee behavior to get the sheep to run away from the player.

 

No but you could theoretically implement a Steering Behavior that does this.

 

Not explicitly, but you could have an invisible nav mesh agent acting as a target for the Seek Position behavior.

 

They're different implementations. They should behave similarly but may not be 1:1. Also some Steering Behaviors haven't been implemented for DOTS.

 

I'll need more info to diagnose this.

 

I see. Can I ask the reason as to why the target should be an invisible nav mesh agent?

Also, I have just one last question, does this package support mobile?

 

@meeth_ That's just a strategy for bridging the two systems. If you wanted your agent to perfectly follow the Nav Mesh you would just use a Nav Mesh Agent. It seems like what you want is for the Nav Mesh system to provide one the the influencing forces affecting the agent's steering. That's what Seek Position would do. The Nav Mesh Agent would be invisible because it's just a target for the Steering Agent to follow.

Yes it will work on mobile.

 

@cg_will No estimate. The primary hurdle at the moment is figuring out how to maintain the DOTS workflow now that IConvertGameObjectToEntity has been deprecated and replaced with Baking.

 

Hi @check_mark

I wanted to render boids with this fish shader from Unity.

The vertex animation works if I preview a single boid in the scene, but it doesn't work when boids are rendered in a flock.

This is true for both normal and DOTS mode.

Is there a way to make vertex animations work with Flock Box? I couldn't find info about this in the manual.

Thank you

 

@check_mark

When I use World Space Flocking + Wrap Edges in DOTS mode I get these errors, and on Flockbox changing position all the agents align in this way. All is fine in normal mode. I'm on Unity 2021.3.20f1

 

Hi @check_marc , can we have upgraded version to latest Unity's ECS.
Since it's out of preview, I can't use these old recommended package versions.

 

I have some more questions regarding gameplay scripting:
-How to handle Leader die or leave the flockbox?
-I know boids can detect Leader to follow by tag, but can I forcefully assign Leader via script?
-Api for an Agent to join a FlockBox is kinda confusing: agent.Spawn(box)
Can it be like box.Add(agent)
And how to remove agent? Like when agent controlled by player that leave the box, I'd need an api call to box.Remove(agent) for this.
I found out that we have public LeaveFlockBox function, but why is it private?

 

hi,

DOTS version not works in Unity 2023,

can we expect any update?

 

DOTS itself isn't supported in Unity 2023, so a lot of DOTS things won't work in 2023 until unity officially release a version of 2023 that is DOTS compatible. For official DOTS support the latest you can use is 2022.3.5.

 

Almost all DOTS developers are using DOTS 1.0 now. Is it correct that Flock Box DOTS does not have DOTS 1.0 support?

 

+1 Towards requesting support for Unity.Entities 1.0

 

guys when the dev is not providing new updates, reminder that the non-ecs feature of this asset is also very performant.
My game is currently using it. Just remember to cull the flock boxes far from your character, the game can still have great performance with some flock boxes near you.

 

Yeah it looks really awesome for game-object based games, but there a lot of us who built entire games around entities so game-objects are not an option for us. Turbo Makes Games, which focuses on DOTS, recently highlighted this asset in a video, but if it's still using DOTS 0.51 then a lot of us DOTS junkies won't be able to use it, so I'm trying to get clarification on the version number.

 

Yea it's unfortunate that we don't have updates recently. but regarding the asset is very cheap I guess there're not much we can ask. Have to upgrade the asset ourselves maybe, but the doc of ECS is not as friendly as the doc I've used to when I first start learning Unity a few years back.
Side note, same as Turbo Makes Games~ If I make video about assets I would highlight this one too, good one, easy to use. Just not very up to date haha.

 

Package is already built with DOTS. Applying movement to Entities could not be too complicated.

Moreover, each project has specific restrictions, so having a capable flocking library could be better than bloaty packaged solution.

 

I haven't bought the asset so I can't say for sure, but my understanding is that it used to work in ECS projects, but now it won't work for most projects because it hasn't been updated to DOTS 1.0 and most of us have upgraded. I don't know if Flock Box uses a plugin or if the source code is available to upgrade. There were a ton of breaking changes between 0.51 to 1.0, so it might not be a trivial upgrade.

 

Hi @Iclemens

You're correct. It was developed for the Entities 0.51.

Just purchased the package. It implements it's own solution to bridge between GameObjects and Entities seamlessly using outdated Conversion workflow.

To keep it would mean to completely rewrite huge part of the package.

Without it the update is fairly straightforward. I've managed to spend 30 minutes to update outdated API's.

The package has an excellent implementation of flocking behaviours.

It wouldn't work out of the box even with after updating API's. It would require you to manually review the code and use parts of implementation within your own project.

 

General question: does installing the DOT relevant packages cause in general crashing of Unity projects, in case it isn't installed already - especially if other assets are installed? in which cases is installing it critical?

 

is there any plan to support entities 1.0.14?

 

An update would be great! Got really excited when I purchased it from Humble Bundle but later saw that's it's been abandoned, unfortunately. Has great potential!

 

I had wishlisted this asset for the moment I need it. I saw the Humble Bundle so I grabbed it earlier.
I gave a try to fix the code myslef due to the lack of update but really this drove me crazy for 1h+, I gave up on using DOTS for it. I hope someone can make it work again with DOTS 1.2...

 

It's been a while since I've been able to publish an update so I've decided to stop selling the asset and make the project open source. Here's a link to the repo.

https://github.com/mbhuet/FlockBox

The 2022 branch has a lot of work done to upgrade to 1.0 but it's not all the way there. The scene DOTS_Boid_Demo works as a proof of concept.

 

Does this means you stopped developing the asset and we have deal with 2022 branch from now on? At least someone can try to make it compatible with recent version of DOTS.