Showcase Unity DOTS case study in production

Old one. Previously we tried UI toolkit, for a couple of milestones we developed UI on it but eventually dropped (it was in 2020) because at a time we tried that it was without support for important features for us (like custom shaders, more than one layer masking, rich text, SDF text etc.)

 

Absolutely. Thank you @eizenhorn for everything you have shared with this community so far!

 

Hi @eizenhorn, I got just a question regarding alpha Steam release date (less about the game release itself).
As you estimated for 2021 release, what would happen, if you would like push release for 2022 for example?
Can you change it without an issue?
Or what is the latest date, you could push the release date, if ever need to?

 

Depends on our investors, they've decided to move EA release to autumn, as summer is a silent time in the industry. But we have more time for polishing the EA game version, fix bugs, add some smaller improvements. Full release already moved to 2022 (all depends on EA results and feedback).

 

Hello, my friends and enemies
We moved the release to January 2022, because so many BIG games will be released at the end of this year

BUT there is good news - our game is approved to Steam Next Fest 1-7 October! As result - we'll release the demo on September 20, and If you were interested in our game - you'll finally touch it! (of course with limited functionality, the full version will be allowed only for press)

Until that, take a look at what we have now As before - the game is still full DOTS based!
WIP

Town growth

See you in the demo!

 

Announcement trailer

Chicken

Demo available right now!

 

I played the tutorial. The game feel is great. Really smooth.

 

Cool thanks! Any crashes?

EDIT: Diagnostics successfully gather your crash dumps, no need to send me in PM, thanks to everyone who did that, really appreciate it!

 

Didn't crash on mine but I haven't played the actual demo yet. Just gone through the tutorial mode.

 

Played it on Linux for 2h until I lost :-/ no crashes! Great work!

 

It's been on my wishlist for an eternity. Oooooolala I didn't know there was a demo --- Installing it now!!!

 

Hey eizenhorn. May I ask what you used for rendering and animation? I'm quite sure you rolled up your own instead of using the vanilla, but I'm curious what animation handling are you using?

 

My own On page 4

 

Survived 21 days on my first attempt. Not bad I guess
Congrats on the job well done, really cool to see a fun game like this using DOTS!

 

Damn! That looks awesome.

 

Looks epic. What kind of computer is running that battle?

 

This scene we’ve tested on Ryzen 9/RTX2070 and Ryzen 5/GTX970x2

 

Hi, this looks amazing, congratulations

It this done in URP pipeline or standard ? Also uses the Hybrid renderer ?

Did you base it on some example that can be accessed on the net also ? And is it something that can run in Unity 2021.2 ?

Thanks in advance for any insight on this

 

Built-in, Modified HR.

 

Happy New Year to all! See you in January where we will start open beta at the beginning of the month! And EA release on January 26! And in 2022 we'll definitely prepare our game development process postmortem! How we started with DOTS in far 2018 and how we reached an early access stage! Stay healthy!

 

"Where are our presents!!!" warriors shout, raiding after Santa.

 

Thanks for the info

 

Hi all! We just published our first teaser remake! This is our final teaser for early access!

 

Nice start for 2022. But I really worry about the chicken ...

 

Salute, friends! Meet our final gameplay teaser before EA. https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1272320/view/3103543624633843841

 

Really rally cool and pleasant to watch. I got nothing more to add

 

Love so much about the look of your game. Always the type of thing I've wanted to develop as it just seems like a fun concept to build.
Look forward to giving it a play.

 

Nice

 

Played the demo and it's addicting! Multiplayer/PvP would make it even more fun good job!

 

I'm really excited for this game to come out! With the demo I've had it crash several times now on my Intel based gaming laptop (rtx 2060 mobile) that is about 2 years old. The app just exits with no error message. Is this a known issue, or am I just unlucky? The reason I ask is because I've given people my DOTS "demo" and they are reporting the same thing - random crashes with no error message, yet I've never once had my game crash while testing it on my rig.

Here is the error info:

Spoiler: event viewer error

Faulting application name: Diplomacy is Not an Option (Demo).exe, version: 2020.3.16.40302, time stamp: 0x610b1731
Faulting module name: lib_burst_generated.dll, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x6166d0d6
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000005e4e65
Faulting process id: 0x1254
Faulting application start time: 0x01d8179799e2292a
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Diplomacy is Not an Option Demo\Diplomacy is Not an Option (Demo).exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Diplomacy is Not an Option Demo\Diplomacy is Not an Option (Demo)_Data\Plugins\x86_64\lib_burst_generated.dll
Report Id: 72e387df-a400-4694-8166-028ff99f52c4
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID:

Spoiler: event viewer info

Fault bucket 2066679557319352390, type 4
Event Name: APPCRASH
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0
Problem signature:
P1: Diplomacy is Not an Option (Demo).exe
P2: 2020.3.16.40302
P3: 610b1731
P4: lib_burst_generated.dll
P5: 0.0.0.0
P6: 6166d0d6
P7: c0000005
P8: 00000000005e4e65
P9:
P10:
Attached files:
\\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WER93E2.tmp.dmp
\\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WER9683.tmp.WERInternalMetadata.xml
\\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WER9694.tmp.xml
\\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WER9692.tmp.csv
\\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\Temp\WER96B2.tmp.txt
These files may be available here:
\\?\C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportArchive\AppCrash_Diplomacy is Not_1281a79e233fece22839facc2775c3e475101796_0033b7fa_14658792-7ef3-4b75-929d-9d53508abbc2
Analysis symbol:
Rechecking for solution: 0
Report Id: 72e387df-a400-4694-8166-028ff99f52c4
Report Status: 268435456
Hashed bucket: 22e3c8fc3b3f0bd1bcae521b8e94e046
Cab Guid: 0

Spoiler: Report.wer

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Looks like something in the burst dll?

 

The current demo is VERY old and has many bugs. We started the Beta Test today, and we have a completely new demo ready for release, and EA release soon on Feb 9, and tbh we rewrote a lot of game code since this first demo was released All the crashes were only because of our code bugs here and there, which appeared on wider testing.

 

Excited for the release.

 

Hi all! Long time since Steam Next Fest We've pushed yesterday new demo! (and started beta test)
Check it out! Many changes in comparison to the old demo!



And remind you that Feb 9 is our EA release!

 

That day has come. We finally did it! We've just released our game in Early Access!
Folks, without further ado, would you please welcome Diplomacy is Not an Option. The game is now in Early Access and available for purchase on Steam!

 

@eizenhorn Will you post any post mortem?

 

What are you talking about??

 

There is many definishions of postmortem. Here is one of them from the internet.

Code (CSharp):

1. A post-mortem is a process
2. that helps improve projects by identifying
3. what did and didn't work, and changing
4. organizational processes to incorporate
5. lessons learned.

Many projects, not only game dev, writes post morem.

 

Best wishes guys your project looks very impressive.

 

Yeah, that's what I meant. Especially in the context of development with DOTS.

Sorry about the confusion I was assuming that was a common phrase in the game dev community.

 

It is - I knew what you were talking about!

 

Yep, after we solve all the funny (not) stuff

 

Took me 17 good hours to finish. I chose the peasants and took the challenge difficulty.
The game reminded me of all the good rts games I have played.

Multiplayer is probably too much asked.
Is multiplayer even possible with battles this massive?

I had one crash during this time and not sure, if it was caused by the game itself. Its more stable than some of the games I have played and a lot more stable than most AAA games(electronic arse and bugisoft).

 

Yes, with lockstep protocol. If your game is fully deterministic.

 

Interesting. I'm not that deep in to programming multiplayer games. I did a small demo several years a go.

How does lock step protocol do this? Wouldn't it just limit the game according to the player with slowest connection.
I mean the issue would be the bandwidth right?
You would have to send millions of actions and new locations for the troops every second.
In addition to the cities ai and all else.

 

It is basically simulating the same game on both ends, given the same input is provided.
And yes slow connection slows down game for both players.
But it actually don't need a lot of bandwidth.
What you send are the commands only.

So there is a kind of "handshake" where units exchange commands, and then simulation proceeds on both ends.

 

ok se lets say that commands can be simulated 1 to 1 on every machine.
You would have have tools for like positioning armies. For example. position, size, movement speed of units and rotation of the army for starters.

It could be possible, but would take a long time to implement. Would require a big budget for sure.

Unless there is a plugin or package that allows you do these kind of things.
Looking quickly at the the assetstore there is one good looking plugin for rts, but I don't think it could handle battles this detailed.

 

I so hope the final version will have levels like this.
And air units. This would be the game of the century. No joke.
There is only one game(rift breaker, scifi) that I have played that where close to the feeling I got from this game. The sad thing about the game was that it couldn't handle battles this large and there was only one unit for player + base and towers.

 

Wow, I did not know that.

Mortem - in Latin is death, so it literally means "after death"... In crypto post-mortem write-ups happen after a platform completely fails and people lose a bunch of money. That seems like an odd term to use after a game launches successfully.

 

Well, post mortem is a project management term, it does not tightly coupled with game development, although I think it is more popular in gamedev circles than others (I don't have a proof of that, just my personal feeling/experience). It is vary when a project produces the post mortem. It is important that a project does not equal with the game. Back, when a project was the process producing the game, release meant the project ended, so summary could be written after that. Nowadays, when games are maintained (even if it's just bugfix releases) it is more fluid when a particular project ends. But the important thing is that the project members decide when it considered done and post mortem should be produced to learn what went great and what went wrong during production. So the mortem regards the end/death of the project, not the game.