[JoeHegarty]

So, I'm the original lead developer of this project.

This was meant to be a followup to the original version of Orbit which now lives on as orbit-legacy on GitHub.

Unfortunately other priorities have meant this project hasn't proceeded in the past couple of years. I wouldn't really recommend anyone use either of them.

However, the ideas and implementation both for Orbit Legacy and the early version of Orbit 2 contain some ideas and concepts that may be useful to folks.

I still think there is immense value in virtual actors (Orleans from Microsoft is one great alternative for .NET, and Dapr also looks interesting) but I can't say if we'll ever get back to it.

[haolez]

I'm a Dapr early adopter. It's cool and the SDKs are improving a lot, but there are some quirks. I've found that some blocks (connectors) that are listed as general availability are unstable to the point of being useless, while some blocks listed as alpha work fine.

[shaunxcode]

Do you have an opinion about Project Loom?

[JoeHegarty]

I think the JVM and particularly Java are in desperate need of improvements to the concurrency model.

When I compare the concurrency model on the JVM (and especially Java itself) to the modern competition from the likes of GoLang and C# there are clear and obvious drawbacks. Even comparing just the Java language and some other JVM languages like Kotlin and Scala, it comes up well short.

Project Loom certainly looks to be a step in the right direction. I haven't looked at it in depth recently but Virtual Threads and Continuations will be a welcome addition and last time I did look it was promising in terms of implementation.

If I were creating a new project today I'd likely reach for GoLang or DotNet (now that Core and Framework are unified) before the JVM, and if I did decide on the JVM I'd choose Kotlin over Java.

I'm historically a huge fan of the JVM and Java, and I'd like to see it back on top, but right now I think the competition is better positioned and until the many initiatives going on (such as Loom) start to have a major impact on the ecosystem, it's no longer automatically my first choice.

[foob20220428]

> "It is heavily inspired by the Microsoft Orleans project."

It's always better to focus on delivering the game rather than trying to make an own engine...

[JoeHegarty]

While in general I agree with that philosophy, it doesn't really apply in this case.

When Orbit 1 was initially developed, Orleans was not open source, so the initial implementation was based off the Microsoft Research Whitepaper.

In our specific case, we had a lot of existing experience and services built on the JVM so adopting DotNet for Orleans (even if it had been available at the time) was not an option. The relative drop in priority for Orbit vs other projects was due to a need to dedicate more time to other parts of the platform.

As a large dev/publisher EA has a sizeable central technology group that develops everything from engines (Frostbite) to services (EA Digital Platform).

Ultimately I agree with the philosophy for smaller developers who are focused purely on making a game, but that's just not the reality at large companies and ultimately someone has to develop those services/engines.

[Shared404]

Did you really make a throwaway just to make a comment that you knew would be downvoted, for both objective reasons as in Joe's response, and because you were unnecessarily rude?

If there's something you want to say that will be downvoted, just say it and eat the downvotes.

I'm not saying I agree with "ThE DowNVoteS SaY Im RigHt", I'm saying own your actions.

Edit: And if you don't want to own it, think twice before posting.