[stephc_int13]

I've spent a few months working with ECS/DOTS with the Unity Game Engine, their implementation of this style of architecture end up being very complex in comparison to the old fashion GameObject workflow that made Unity popular in the first place.

Everything is MUCH more difficult to implement, I won't go into details but from my experience the time spent to achieve a similar result is about 5x-10x what it should be.

Weird APIs, poor documentation, limited collective experience, tons of restrictions and limits of the C# language are making the global experience quite nightmarish.

And I have had experience with ECS-like system in different engines in the past, and I am mostly experienced with low-level engine stuff, but the induced complexity there is something I did not expect.

[capableweb]

> GameObject workflow that made Unity popular in the first place.

It's a bit much of a over-simplication that just the GameObject architecture Unity uses is what made it popular. For example, if there wasn't a UI editor for Unity and only code, you still think it would be as popular? I'm 99% sure it wouldn't be.

I tried getting into DOTS as well, as ECS is an interesting architecture overall, but Unity kind of dropped the ball on it and made it way more complicated than it has to be, from every side of having to use it.

On the other hand, you have Bevy, which is built with ECS as a core part of the engine, and it makes using ECS a breeze. After getting to know Bevy and ECS outside of DOTS better, I'm not sure I could back to how I wrote my games before. ECS just makes it a lot easier to structure bigger projects than the basic introduction game like flappy bird. The modularity is on a different level and it gives you a much better view of the overall architecture than anything else I've tried before.

Simply put, I'm not sure I'd write the same amount of games if it wasn't ECS, because it makes it fun to make games again, for me.

[jbluepolarbear]

As a game dev that’s been using Unity ECS in production for over 2 years, it’s a very underwhelming implementation. Sure it’s fast if you design a game with Unitys intentions, but Unity has never made a game and what they made isn’t what game devs need.

[capableweb]

> but Unity has never made a game

This shocks me the most about how Unity operates. That they haven't figured out that dog-fooding their own main product is absolutely essential, especially since every single competitor of theirs does so very successfully as well.

How can you build something great for a specific group of people if you don't know what they are going through?

[ajmmertens]

Whether ECS is complex or not depends a lot on which one you use. I've heard the same thing from a lot of gamedevs that use DOTS, but people in general seem to be pretty happy using Entitas (also a C# ECS that can be used with Unity), Bevy (which is based entirely on ECS) or for that matter Flecs.