Learn Unity's Entity Component System to Optimise Your Games (Udemy.com)

The course serves as an introduction to the ECS system, although it is outdated since it uses Unity 2019.3.3. I'm currently working on a project using Unity 2020.3, and with the help of Copilot in Visual Studio, I was able to follow the course and understand how DOTS works. At the moment, this technology isn't viable for mobile devices that don't support Vulkan or OpenGL ES 3.1, as devices limited to OpenGL ES 2.0 or 3.0 aren't compatible with Hybrid Renderer. However, it's still possible to take advantage of parallel processing using Jobs and the Burst compiler. The raycasting section and the first part of the course show how to combine MonoBehaviours with ECS, so it's worth checking out or researching further on your own. For those who want to follow the course step by step, you’ll need to manually install the packages by editing the manifest.json file. These versions are hard to find now due to the release of the 1.0 version (the most stable one). In my case, I had to use version 0.52-preview due to the nature of my project. Thanks to the instructor. I hope the course content gets updated in the future to the latest version, including modules like animation and NavMesh navigation. El curso sirve como una introducción al sistema ECS, aunque está desactualizado, ya que utiliza Unity 2019.3.3. Debido a que estoy trabajando en un proyecto con Unity 2020.3, logré seguir el curso con la ayuda de Copilot en Visual Studio, lo cual me permitió comprender el funcionamiento de DOTS. Actualmente, la tecnología no es viable para dispositivos móviles que no utilicen Vulkan u OpenGL ES 3.1, ya que aquellos que solo soportan OpenGL ES 2.0 o 3.0 no son compatibles con el sistema de renderizado híbrido. Sin embargo, sí es posible aprovechar la paralelización mediante el uso de Jobs y el compilador Burst. La sección de raycasting y la primera parte del curso muestran cómo combinar MonoBehaviours con ECS, así que vale la pena explorarlo o investigar más al respecto por cuenta propia. Para quienes quieran seguir el curso al pie de la letra, es necesario instalar los paquetes manualmente editando el archivo manifest.json, ya que actualmente esas versiones son difíciles de encontrar debido a la salida de la versión 1.0 (más estable). En mi caso, tuve que usar la versión 0.52-preview, debido a la naturaleza de mi proyecto. Agradezco al instructor por el contenido. Ojalá en el futuro lo actualice a la versión más reciente, incluyendo módulos como animación y navegación con NavMesh.

Packed with lots of things to learn, tips and tricks ! On the downside, some scenes taught run slow (as also shown on the instructor's screen) and it would be unrelastic using these in an actual game. Also be aware sometimes all resources are not available, that can be frustrating and the instructor would not provide it when I asked for it e.g. project at the end of a lecture making it not possible to fully understand the differences between my code and the lecture's if they don't match.

The material is good and the explanations are very clear. Some of the example code has a minor bug or some obvious inefficiencies but nothing severe enough to interfere with the information being taught. I would have appreciated a bit of an overview about how the different components in the library interact but I was able to pick up what I needed as the instructor dived right into the code.

Starting from the misleading title, I would have expected a much more detailed / advanced lecture here. Instead what this lecture offers is a very rudementary attempt to teach only the very basics of ECS. It also feels very unstructured in that every section starts a new project from scratch, doing at least 50% of what was done in previous lecture again in full detail and length. It feels like the lectures do almost not teach anything new after a while and it also feels like a lot of the information is missing about why certain systems are used or done in the way displayed or why they have to be done in that particular way to get it working with ECS. The biggest disappointment for me was the lack of what the title would suggest - a way to actually use this in existing projects to replace things for optimization. Now i know it can't know of any persons project but I would have wished it would at least present a bigger project with a clear silverlining of what is going to be done. I think it might have been a lot better if it would be reduced to a single project that would actually aim at being a game in the end instead of only showcasing small examples for very basic things. This way it does not really present a way to make use of this in bigger projects or how to actually use it in a full extend. If I still could, I would refund this course.

Excellent course, have gone from no knowledge to a very solid understanding of the ECS with a raft of great code samples and reusable know-how to draw upon. Like many courses, the monummental workload to create them has the be based on the Unity versions available at that time. This course is based on specific resources that were current then. Fortunately there's plenty of commentary both in the course and online regarding the changes to the DOTS and Physics backend that sees (for example) the inheritance of SystemBase rather than the JobComponentSystem in the current release. If you do choose to work using HDRP and the latest versions of everything, be prepared for a little bit of tweaking here and there. So my only comment would be that ONLY work with non-specified versions (as specified in lecture 1) if you are confident and don't blame the author if you get stuck : )

I purchased this course because I was curious about ECS game development with unity and the possibilities it held for developing more complex and efficient game code versus the OOP method. I came into this course prior knowledge of the ECS system and a base understanding of how it functions and where it is more optimized versus the "old way" of coding. I will say that I learned very little additional information upon exiting this course, however what I gained through hands on exposure and development with the ECS system in a monitored environment went beyond my expectations. I would recommend this course to people that are curious about ECS development and have a working knowledge of Unity's OOP development. The only thing I think that could be beneficial to the course would be a pop quiz for each section that goes over the concepts covered.

So far so good. I'm not a unity expert and can still follow the explanation. I like the idea or concept of data oriented programming (or design), which might be something to think about as some kind of design pattern also to be used for other 'problems'. Though things get a bit complicated because of the difference between Gameobjects and Entities it's still good to follow, most of the exercises were doable though it's sometimes easy to make a mistake. Still a lot of fun!

Great course by a great instructor. The course does everything it advertises, i.e. teaching and familiarizing the student with DOTS and its features. I would love to see a course (preferably by Penny and her assistants) that goes more in-depth into data-oriented design (DOD) and related patterns, specifically data normalization and when/where DOD can be implemented in hybrid entity-/monobehavior-based games. Or, update this course with an extra section that shows how you can translate a traditionally-developed Unity game into one based on ECS. Additionally, I hope that this course updates relevant sections when the DOTS packages move out of preview. Finally, given Penny's expertise, it would be great to see a course integrating DOTS and ML-Agents.

Obviously this course is based on preview versions of ECS, but the structured approach to covering the principles was really helpful to me. I'm a professional software engineer in the real world, but a game development hobbyist for fun; I'm no stranger to complicated software systems, but ECS has been a hard slog to try and learn from snippets on YouTube and Unity docs. This course made it all click into place for me, and I'm confident that I'll be able to expand on what's taught here. Good job. :)

This course is a good match for me, an advanced beginner with Unity, but a moderately experienced programmer. I am REALLY enjoying this course now. The content is very timely and it is the best, perhaps ONLY, coverage of this topic that is comprehensive. I have finished the course and feel VERY comfortable with my ECS foundation. Obviously there is a lot more to learn about the matter, but it would have been impossible for me to slog through the subject without the leg up this course provided. I am concerned that the DOTS new releases are going to be substantially different than the DOTS versions used in the course, but I kinda hope so. There is a lot of DOTS that I would like to see simplified, if possible!