Unity DOTS Launch Schedule ANNOUNCED! Entities 0.50 Coming Soon!

all right everyone so we got some really exciting news coming out of the games industry yesterday and no i'm not talking about something that was announced at jeff keeley's game awards but rather some really exciting information as it pertains to unity's data oriented technology stack and the release schedule for unity's dots moving forward so let's not waste any more time let's just get right into it so this is actually a forum thread posted by this gentleman right here lauren giber who is actually the product manager for das so he basically oversees you know everything related to unity's data or the technology stack so he posted this you know fairly lengthy form post right here i will of course leave a link to this in the description so you can read the full thing and get all the details yourself um but yeah let's just get into it basically they start off by talking about you know what they've been up to lately they wanted to start off by saying that we are actively developing dots so this means you know over the past year that their teams have been working on ecs solutions and have been focusing on leveraging the lessons learned from early adopters productions to converge towards a stable first release so this is you know really exciting stuff and this just kind of confirms that they've been continuing working on it this whole time even if they haven't really been saying much they're going to talk a little bit about why they haven't been saying much lately it sounds like um you know dots might have been a little bit more um bigger of a thing than they initially thought it was going to be um here they said we also realized that it required a more comprehensive approach that touches almost every aspect of the unity development experience and so basically they say they ended up pausing the releases all together where they just you know kind of figured out the best direction to move forward so you know i think that's you know pretty smart of them to just you know take a step back for a second and just say you know hey okay where are we at you know this is something that um is clearly you know there are a lot of people that like it and you know they really believe in the technology you know how can we make this the best product moving forward so you know i kind of appreciate that you know it is kind of unfortunate that we basically had a year with no releases but anyways they do say that they are now confident that they have reached a point where we're able to restart releasing public patches package patches to our packages if i can say that correctly so that's really exciting that's where you know finally going to be getting some new releases for dots and i cannot wait to see that all the things they've been working on over this past year so how are they going to be rolling this out well they're actually going to be doing it in two milestones so the first is a set of experimental packages updated to version 0.50 and they're going to be targeting a first quarter of 2022 release for that so that's very exciting we're gonna be seeing it in just the next couple of months hopefully so you know this is kind of like i was saying in one of my previous videos about you know where is entity 0.18 at i didn't think that they were actually going to release entities 18 i was thinking you know maybe they're going to skip a few releases but it sounds like they actually skipped a few numbers and we're already up to entities 0.50 the way that they've you know kind of positioned this is it kind of seems to be you know like a halfway point basically between the initial releases as well as the you know full 1.0 version which we will be talking a little bit about later i mean that you know could have chosen any number basically 18 or above but they ended up choosing 50 and that just kind of seems like a good clean starting point to go off of and it seems like we'll be basically be building up from entities 50 and on so yeah let's you know talk a little bit about this 0.50 basically they say um it's initially just going to be compatible with the unity 2020 lts versions basically the same as it is right now and then later on in the year they're going to be moving up to compatibility with the unity 2021 lts so we're still going to be on unity 2020 lts for uh just a little bit but you know they do want to get the 2021 lts compatibility out pretty soon as well you know i think that's kind of smart for them to do there's been you know obviously a lot of people who have been developing with ecs on unity 2020 lts for some time now so you know it's really important for them that they you know bring the packages up to the version that's compatible with 2020 lts you know focus on getting that out the door first and then we can you know get the additional features and benefits from 2021 lts and they do go to say that you know this is still an experimental mode so this means they're still not recommended for production you know which is totally fine because um this is almost kind of like a relaunch of dots that it feels like so we're all almost kind of like um you know getting to see what the future of dots is going to look like in this is a 0.50 version so i think that we'll probably be seeing a fair bit of changes and you know probably some issues to work through towards the beginning but you know as those kind of get worked through towards a release of entities 1.0 you know things will start to get smoothed out so that kind of brings me to the next point which is the second milestone which is the actual transition away from experimental packages to a full released status which they're calling entities 1.0 so that is very exciting this is you know the first official confirmation of them basically saying that they're working towards a full official release of entities 1.0 they do say that they're going to be targeting the 2022 lts cycle for their preferred release so that means the earliest this would be able to come out is probably like spring of 2023 although you know the way that it's worded they kind of give themselves some leeway to you know basically be sometime in the 2023 calendar year of course that's what they're targeting and again you know we'll have to see how the 0.50 uh kind of soft launch goes you know if things go really well you know maybe we will see a release kind of on that earlier end of 2023 but you know maybe as version 0.50 is out in the wild and people are working with it um you know maybe they do need to take another step back and kind of you know rethink things a little bit but it seems like they really have kind of a clear direction going forward you can kind of get that vibe just by reading through this forum post here now one thing that they specifically call out here is that the entities 1.0 will not be compatible with earlier lts versions so basically what this means is if they release it for the 2022 lts then that means you won't be able to use entities 1.0 on 2021 lts or 2020 lts so just keep that in mind if you do plan on creating a production game with dots in the future just know that if you do want to upgrade to entities 1.0 when it is released you won't be able to use any existing versions of unity that are out right now so glad they're just kind of getting ahead of the ball on this one one of the really exciting things though that they're mentioning is when they actually release version 0.50 again that's hopefully happening in just the next couple of months here they're actually going to be much more public about kind of the road map that things look like going towards the actual full release of entities they do mention that they're going to be detailing this in their public roadmap space which of course they have you know kind of all their uh other sections kind of documented out about you know features that they're adding and all that so glad to see it included in that public roadmap and hopefully we'll see much more transparency about you know the features that they're prioritizing um with unity dots and kind of what the actual schedule for getting those released out into the wild are now this paragraph was a fairly important i think there's a couple good things to unpack here so i just highlighted the whole thing so they say the goal of entities 1.0 is to augment the unity engine with an opt-in way of writing game code that's compatible with the existing unity architecture entities 1.0 is focused on enabling specific scenarios and types of games that were previously challenging to build in unity this will be illustrated with new real production examples from some of the early adopters of dots and crystallized and updated versions of dots samples so a couple of things to unpack here so i think the biggest thing at the beginning is that they just want to say that you know dots is not going to be a replacement for developments in unity but it's really going to be an extension of it so you know if you want to opt into these high performance features for whatever reason you know you can do that and if you do choose to opt into these features the workflow is going to be very similar to the existing unity workflow and then finally the last thing that they mention here is that they're going to be talking about bringing real production examples from the early adopters of dots that are you know updated to basically the latest and greatest versions of dots so that's obviously really exciting it's you know going to be really important for everyone to you know kind of have some some samples to reference that really show us you know how to do things in unity dots and so you know basically these are the sample projects that they're going to be providing you know if you're you know super into dots and everything uh kind of like i am then you're going to be familiar with these already but basically the first one they have is the dots shooter and this is basically going to be a starting point for creating a network shooter game with simple main thread game code so really the focus of this is uh making a multiplayer game and they show you how to use the netcode to use uh you know client server architecture with what you'd expect from a complete solution with client-side prediction interpolation and lag compensation so you know obviously like you know really important stuff for making a you know very technical and competitive shooter type game and you know it doesn't really get into any of the crazy like multi-threading things like that um you know this sample project is really just focused on the networking stuff so if you want to you know really make a super high level networking game and you don't need to worry about any of the crazy you know burst and multi-threading stuff like that you know you can do that just by following along with this sample project if you do want to start getting a little bit more crazy they are going to have the mega city demo available which is going to show how to use entities and baking workflows to author content using sub scenes they're going to make the authoring experience in the editor much more integrated and robust as well as make the subscene workflows closer to the existing unity workflows so again this kind of goes back to i'm just really integrating unity dots with the existing unity workflow so anyone who's familiar with working in unity you're going to be able to add these you know kind of dots things to your game if you do want to take advantage of those workflows so that's obviously a major plus in my opinion and then finally the unite austin nordius will show large-scale simulations of entities and how to write high performance multi-threaded game code so you know this is obviously the stuff that i'm really super interested in you know just you know getting real crazy with it doing the the super high-end high-performance stuff so if you do want to get involved in that you know this is going to be the sample project that you're going to be following along with of course stay tuned to the channel i'm sure i'm going to be doing a breakdown of you know a bunch of different parts of these sample projects because you know why not so then they kind of close it out talking about you know what their main goal for entities 1.0 is you know talking about bringing entities to a release state so that means including the support documentation and learning content of a expected released workflow so you know that's really exciting it's good to know that um you know unity is going to be standing behind this with the support documentation and learning resources because that's really just going to be much more information for us to reference and you know be able to you know really understand the best practices and how to make the best games possible with unity dots so they don't really talk about much about what's going to be coming out in the 0.5 or 1.0 releases but we do get a small little glimpse here and then they basically say our current scope for the release this year covers apis authoring and debugging workflows for entities physics net code and rendering so obviously all those things are great if you read into it though there are a couple things missing um you know like they don't mention animation for instance so i don't know if that's an intentional omission or just something that they chose not to mention here but i think as we kind of continue there's another point that kind of relates to that so again they talking about making the authoring baking and visualization workflows integrated in the editor so that just basically goes to mean um you know things are just gonna be much more natural working with dots you know right now when things get converted to entities they kind of go into this like weird you know you can't click them in the editor kind of state so um i i would assume that that's going to be getting much better as we work towards the entities 1.0 release and they also mentioned that iterating and debugging burst for game code is a productive developer experience so i think that's fantastic if you did see the uh you know post-mortem video that i did on the recent game jam game that i created with unity dots called uh trash empire you know that i did kind of have some issues when it came to debugging some burst compiled code not necessarily some issues but it just wasn't the most you know pleasant development experience for that you know particular slice of development so i'm really glad this is something they're specifically mentioning in this forum post here now something really important to note here not all features of unity will complete entities compatibility so this is kind of another one of those things where they're just kind of getting ahead of it saying you know not everything is going to have like an ecs dots 100 equivalent and they say you know based on the successful experiences of early adopters we're fully embracing the hybrid nature of the 1.0 release which allows you to choose ecs for its value involving specific challenges while leveraging game objects for other aspects of your production our goal is to enable teams that are able to ship a game objects based production to leverage ecs for reaching goals beyond what unity used to be able to support so again a number of things that are interesting in this section here i think some people may be initially disappointed where they say that you know not everything is going to have complete entities compatibility i guess we'll really have to wait until the dots 1.0 or maybe even the 0.5 release to you know see exactly what that entails and kind of you know how they're going to smooth out those workflows to make this hybrid approach a little bit more seamless and again this just kind of goes back to the point where they're saying dots and ecs are not going to be a replacement for the way that you create games but they're going to be an extension for the way that you create games you know if you do need to leverage some of these extra features or you know if you do want to use them then you are able to do so so anyways they going to say to wrap this up we plan to share more information with you during the first quarter of 2022 with the 0.50 update to experimental packages that will enable us to ship patches again the full list of packages will be shared closer to release we also intend to present at the same time the scope of 1.0 and beyond to continuously validate our direction with you as we go so that's you know something that's i'm glad that they really called out is that they're you know really working with the community working with people who are actually developing these games to you know figure out the best way to you know structure dots and ecs that makes the most sense for developers so that's you know fantastic to hear and so yeah that's basically everything that was covered in this forum post from the dots project manager lauren g baer obviously lots of things to be really excited about and good to know um you know kind of some of the overall directions that unity's uh data or the technology stack and their entity component system is going to be heading over the coming months and years um obviously we don't know much of the very specifics right now but we will start to see more of those things soon you know obviously really glad to know that we're finally getting some more communication again from unity as far as their data or to technology stack goes and you know i know there's going to be a lot of really exciting things coming in the near future of course i will be covering all that stuff on this channel so definitely make sure you're subscribed to the channel and stay tuned for many more videos coming soon detailing more news that we see as well as working with these brand new workflows of unity dots so anyways if you guys enjoyed today's video i'd really appreciate it if you hit that like button also let me know what you think about this forum post here are you excited for the new releases of unity's dots so feel free to let me know down in the comment section below or join us over on discord over at tmg.dev discord i hope you all have a fantastic rest of your day and i'll see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: Turbo Makes Games

Views: 1,911

Keywords: unity dots, unity data ori, unity data oriented, unity data oriented design, data oriented tech stack, data oriented technology stack, unity ecs, unity esc, unity entities, unity entities 0.50, unity entities 1.0, unity ecs 1.0, when will unity ecs come out, when will unity ecs be ready, when will unity dots release, dots release, ecs release, unity burst, how to make a game with unity dots, unity data oriented programming, johnny turbo, unity entity component system

Id: iLpvWp1y23A

Length: 16min 18sec (978 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 10 2021