Code-Only / Minimal Stride API Project #1253
Replies: 6 comments 21 replies
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Would this allow the building of a headless stride server? If so I am very interested in this. |
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To be honest I have no idea it if would be possible and I am not sure how far from this it would be. Maybe @Aggror or @tebjan or @manio143 might answer your question here. |
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The current issue of headless Stride is that there's things related to input/graphics/audio integrated in the |
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Thank you @VaclavElias & @manio143 I've seen a few of the discussions before so I'll have another look, I was just a bit hopeful that this could provide a stripped down headless version of stride. |
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@VaclavElias - WOW! This is a great selling point for Stride, truly! I am very impressed with the ease of using Stride without it's editor. Here are the real-world applications I have in mind:
Just looking at the Stride references you made, this is only 5.5 MB of DLL's. That's slim, and can even be smaller if you exclude Audio/Physics/VR/etc. The vital thing here, to make Stride really take off, IMO, is to fill this .NET void for "3D Renderers" that fit (and retrofit) into more application spaces. Urho.NET even allows Avalonia to render into it's own UI.... so we now have Avalonia UI INSIDE Urho.NET. It's not a tough concept to implement, and could be done for Stride as well. .NET MAUI also has a "DrawnControls" project, which delivers pixel-perfect controls, renderable inside of a .NET Game window (as an image that is updated by Maui logic). Just as we've done with Avalonia + Urho.NET, we could do this with MAUI + Stride. How sweet of an offering would it be to have Stride3D offer:
Now an app written in either MAUI or Avalonia, can easily choose to use Stride3D for it's 2D/3D graphics presentation needs -- and can even use their UI of choice INSIDE Stride (Avalonia or MAUI). What I am describing here is what I believe to be the long-standing VOID for .NET developers, trying to find a good solution for 2D/3D graphics presentation. Our team is planning on pushing forward ONE solution -- it's either going to be:
Unity3D is appealing, but it's commercialized. And so it won't be open-source. Also it's C++, so when things don't work as you think they should -- you can't really debug it! However, Unity, by far, has the most momentum and biggest community with advanced plugins/techniques. Urho.NET is open-source, but is lacking momentum. Also it's C++ -- so when things don't work, debugging is an issue (at least here you can see their source code in C++ and might be able to discern what went wrong, even if you can't live debug it). Stride3D - is the only pure C#/.NET solution. Which might make it harder for AA games, but still should work just fine for most Indie games not requiring top-performance for large worlds/etc. I'm not sure about the community here, but seems fairly strong. Once it's integrated to MAUI + Avalonia -- the momentum will build even more. |
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@najak3d thanks for your feedback here. It is great to know that there are other possibilities/advantages of using code-only approach. I am taking it only to the first step as I am not that experienced in game development so any further input and help from others will be welcome to take it to the next level. |
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Review 2I have pushed a new version where there are now 2 approaches. I am going to use/test this now for a few weeks and see how this works. Namespace Stride.Engine.Builder
New Approach which I like more
public class MinimalGame : Game
{
public event EventHandler<EventArgs>? OnBeginRun;
protected override void BeginRun()
{
base.BeginRun();
Window.AllowUserResizing = true;
OnBeginRun?.Invoke(this, EventArgs.Empty);
}
}
The other (previous) approach
public class MinimalGame : Game
{
public List<Action> BeginRunActions { get; set; } = new();
protected override void BeginRun()
{
base.BeginRun();
Window.AllowUserResizing = true;
foreach (var action in BeginRunActions)
{
action.Invoke();
}
}
public void AddAction(Action? action)
{
if (action == null) return;
BeginRunActions.Add(action);
}
}Same as in the first case but uses AddAction
Let me know your comments :) |
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Nice job already @VaclavElias ! Right now our setup to run a game is to do using (var game = new Game())
{
game.Run();
}This is so much simpler to find and setup than yours right now, but yes, ours has a lot of issues that you dealt with, so would it be possible to use this pattern and layer all your fixes on top of it by creating a new game type deriving from using (var game = new Game{ /*Can change properties here*/ })
{
game.Run( /*Can specify requirements here*/, /*those two would be optional parameters*/start: Start, update: Update );
Entity entity = null;
void Start(Scene rootScene, ServiceRegistry services)
{
entity = new Entity(new Vector3(1f, 0.5f, 3f))
{
new ModelComponent(new CubeProceduralModel().Generate(services)),// needs overload which creates a model and returns it
};
entity.Scene = rootScene;
}
void Update(SceneInstance rootScene, ServiceRegistry services, GameTime time)
{
entity.Transform.Position = new Vector3((float)Math.Sin(time.Elapsed.TotalSeconds), 0f, 0f);
}
}Or like this to ease the access to refs generated inside start from update: using (var game = new Game{ /*Can change properties here*/ })
{
game.Run( /*Can specify requirements here*/, start: Start );
void Start(Scene rootScene, ServiceRegistry services, out Action<GameTime> update)
{
Entity entity = new Entity(new Vector3(1f, 0.5f, 3f))
{
new ModelComponent(new CubeProceduralModel().Generate(services)),
};
entity.Scene = rootScene;
update = time =>
{
entity.Transform.Position = new Vector3((float) Math.Sin(time.Elapsed.TotalSeconds), 0f, 0f);
};
}
}But that would be perhaps too obtuse to use or reason about for users ? |
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Thanks for the feedback @Eideren, I like your ideas even better, let me explore and play with it, I will reimplement my bits and come back here once I am done. |
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Review 3https://github.com/VaclavElias/Stride3DTutorials/tree/main/Other/Minimal Option 1 - Update in Game.csI made another working prototype with some above suggestions from @Eideren implemented. Any suggested naming convention can be changed of course. The reason that I didn't pass GameDefaults to Game/Run is because it can be actually separated in this prototype. You need to look into GameDefaults what it does and see if it makes sense to pass it to Game or Run, or keep it separately as it is. using (var game = new Game())
{
var _entity = new Entity(new Vector3(1f, 0.5f, 3f));
var _angle = 0f;
var initialPosition = _entity.Transform.Position;
// override for game.Run()
// start and update is optional, you can add any Update() through traditional script _entity.Components.Add(MyScript);
// it is using default engine Script Start and Update
game.Run(start: Start, update: Update);
void Start()
{
// adds default GraphicsCompositor, Scene, Skybox, CameraScript, Ground, Material
var defaults = new GameDefaults(game).Set3D();
// or pick up what you want
var defaults = new GameDefaults(game).Set().AddGround().AddSkybox().AddCameraScript().AddGameProfiler();
var model = new CubeProceduralModel().Generate(game.Services);
// I am getting DefaultMaterial here
model.Materials.Add(defaults.DefaultMaterial);
_entity.Components.Add(new ModelComponent(model));
_entity.Scene = game.SceneSystem.SceneInstance.RootScene;
}
void Update()
{
_angle += 5f * (float)game.UpdateTime.Elapsed.TotalSeconds;
var offset = new Vector3((float)Math.Sin(_angle), 0, (float)Math.Cos(_angle)) * 1f;
_entity.Transform.Position = initialPosition + offset;
}
}Engine Game.csAround 14 lines of code added public class Game : GameBase, ISceneRendererContext, IGameSettingsService
{
private RootScript rootScript;
protected override void Initialize()
{
...
// Add root script if exists
if (rootScript != null)
{
Script.Add(rootScript);
}
...
}
// this runs before Initialize() and we can't use Script.Add() here because Script doesn't exist yet
public void Run(Action start, Action update)
{
if (start != null || update != null)
{
rootScript = new RootScript(start, update);
}
base.Run();
}
}New class RootScript.cs public class RootScript : SyncScript
{
private readonly Action? startAction;
private readonly Action? updateAction;
public RootScript(Action? start = null, Action? update = null)
{
startAction = start;
updateAction = update;
}
public override void Start()
{
startAction?.Invoke();
}
public override void Update()
{
updateAction?.Invoke();
}
}Option 2 - Update in GameBase.csDepends where GameDefaults is (before Run() or inside Start()) affects the GameDefaults implementation. using (var game = new Game())
{
// adds default camera, camera script, skybox, ground, ..like through UI
var defaults = new GameDefaults(game).Set3D();
// only Start, which is called once the game is running
game.Run(start: Start);
void Start()
{
var model = new CubeProceduralModel().Generate(game.Services);
model.Materials.Add(defaults.DefaultMaterial);
// if you need Update(), just add your custom script, I added MotionComponentScript
var entity = new Entity(new Vector3(1f, 0.5f, -3f))
{
new ModelComponent(model),
new MotionComponentScript()
};
entity.Scene = game.SceneSystem.SceneInstance.RootScene;
}
}Engine GameBase.csAround 4 lines of code added public abstract class GameBase : ComponentBase, IGame
{
...
// maybe it can be private
public Action? StartAction;
...
// "Action? start = null" added
public void Run(GameContext gameContext = null, Action? start = null)
{
...
StartAction = start;
...
}
protected virtual void BeginRun()
{
// only this line added
StartAction?.Invoke();
}Let me know what you think. |
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Sorry I couldn't get to this sooner ! Now I had a couple of thoughts about your public static class GameDefaults
{
public static Entity AddGround(this Game game)
{
// Do it right away instead of buffered
var materialDescription = new MaterialDescriptor
{
Attributes =
{
Diffuse = new MaterialDiffuseMapFeature(new ComputeColor(Color.FromBgra(0xFF242424))),
DiffuseModel = new MaterialDiffuseLambertModelFeature(),
// Rest of the implementation ...
return groundEntity; // So that caller can move, rotate it or do other modification if need be
}
}At the top of your file: using static Stride.GameDefaults;Then implementation would look like so: using (var game = new Game())
{
var _entity = new Entity(new Vector3(1f, 0.5f, 3f));
var _angle = 0f;
var initialPosition = _entity.Transform.Position;
game.Run(start: Start, update: Update);
void Start(Scene rootScene, ServiceRegistry services)
{
game.SetupBase3DScene();
// or pick up what you want
game.AddSkybox();
var groundEntity = game.AddGround();
game.AddMouseLookCamera();
var model = new CubeProceduralModel().Generate(services);
model.Materials.Add(game.NewDefaultMaterial());
_entity.Components.Add(new ModelComponent(model));
_entity.Scene = rootScene;
}
void Update(SceneInstance rootScene, ServiceRegistry services, GameTime time)
{
_angle += 5f * (float)time.Elapsed.TotalSeconds;
var offset = new Vector3((float)Math.Sin(_angle), 0, (float)Math.Cos(_angle));
_entity.Transform.Position = initialPosition + offset;
}
}To me it looks less painful to maintain, update and work with, no need to make sure you created an implementation, you can use it from anywhere even in |
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Let me digest your comments but I like them very much 😀. No need for sorry, I also need to find some spare slots for this 🤣. |
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Personally I'm not a huge fan of adding public static void Run(this Game game, Action start, Action update)
{
if (start != null || update != null)
{
var rootScript = new RootScript(start, update);
game.OnInitialize += () => game.Script.Add(rootScript);
}
game.Run();
}This way someone else can come along and add their own logic to |
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Thanks @manio143, I like that as well, let me test it and I will update you. |
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Review 4Feedback from @Eideren and @manio143. Thanks for your feedback. I think your feedback can be merged together. Note again, that the naming convention can be changed to anything appropriate at the later stage. If I forgot to address anything you mentioned previously, please feel free to mention that again. Once our thoughts are more stable. I will ping all others who expressed interest in the code-only approach. Working prototypes:
Regarding the method signature which I left below as an example I have got these findings:
Engine Game.cs2 lines of code added instead of 14. public Action OnInitialize; //new line, not sure if you want to have it this way, using Action
protected override void Initialize()
{
...
OnInitialize?.Invoke(); //new line, end of the method.
}RootScript.csBased on your feedback, it might be simplified just to public class RootScript : SyncScript
{
private readonly Action? startAction;
private readonly Action<GameTime>? updateAction;
public RootScript(Action? start = null, Action<GameTime>? update = null)
{
startAction = start;
updateAction = update;
}
public override void Start()
{
startAction?.Invoke();
}
public override void Update()
{
updateAction?.Invoke(Game.UpdateTime);
}
} If we want other bits and we figure out how to get Scene public class RootScript : SyncScript
{
private readonly Action<Scene, IServiceRegistry>? startAction;
private readonly Action<Scene, IServiceRegistry, GameTime>? updateAction;
public RootScript(Action<Scene, IServiceRegistry>? start = null, Action<Scene, IServiceRegistry, GameTime>? update = null)
{
startAction = start;
updateAction = update;
}
public override void Start()
{
//create empty scene here so it can be passed
//SceneSystem.SceneInstance ??= new SceneInstance(Services) { RootScene = new Scene() };
startAction?.Invoke(SceneSystem.SceneInstance?.RootScene, Services);
}
public override void Update()
{
updateAction?.Invoke(SceneSystem.SceneInstance?.RootScene, Services, Game.UpdateTime);
}
}GameExtensions.csCode Only ExamplesExample 1 .NET 6, C# 10Nice and clean, encouraging using Components approach and using Script Components. using var game = new Game();
game.Run(start: Start, update: null);
void Start(Scene rootScene, IServiceRegistry services)
{
// adds scene, graphics comositor, camera, camera script, skybox, ground ..like through UI
game.SetupBase3DScene();
var entity = new Entity(new Vector3(1f, 0.5f, 3f))
{
new ModelComponent(new CubeProceduralModel().Generate(services)),
new MotionComponentScript()
};
entity.Scene = game.SceneSystem.SceneInstance.RootScene;
}or using var game = new Game();
game.Run(start: Start, update: null);
void Start(Scene rootScene, IServiceRegistry services)
{
// Cherry Pick
game.SetupBase(); // required, adds scene, graphics comositor, camera
//game.AddSkybox();
//game.AddGround();
game.AddMouseLookCamera();
game.AddProfiler();
var entity = new Entity(new Vector3(1f, 0.5f, 3f))
{
new ModelComponent(new CubeProceduralModel().Generate(services)),
new MotionComponentScript()
};
entity.Scene = game.SceneSystem.SceneInstance.RootScene;
}Example 2Using using (var game = new Game())
{
var entity = new Entity(new Vector3(1f, 0.5f, 3f));
var angle = 0f;
var initialPosition = entity.Transform.Position;
game.OnInitialize += () => System.Console.WriteLine("Hello, manio143");
game.Run(start: Start, update: Update);
void Start(Scene rootScene, IServiceRegistry services)
{
game.SetupBase3DScene();
var model = new CubeProceduralModel().Generate(services);
model.Materials.Add(game.NewDefaultMaterial());
entity.Components.Add(new ModelComponent(model));
entity.Scene = game.SceneSystem.SceneInstance.RootScene;
}
void Update(Scene rootScene, IServiceRegistry services, GameTime time)
{
angle += 1f * (float)time.Elapsed.TotalSeconds;
var offset = new Vector3((float)Math.Sin(_angle), 0, (float)Math.Cos(_angle)) * 1f;
entity.Transform.Position = initialPosition + offset;
}
}Let me know what you think 😀. |
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In that case I am going to move to the next steps as our brainstorming and concepts are finalised here.
Other Steps listed on the top Is that ok? |
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Sure |
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It all looks good to me. My only concern is to know that you are going to enable the inclusion of many samples into a single SLN, so that you build/run-once, and from there can browse through the various feature samples. |
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@najak3d I think it should be ok when I start working on these examples, as you suggested it can be all in one SLN and have some UI to list and launch individual examples. |
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Excellent work on this @VaclavElias We could eventually extend the documentation website, so that it references these actual code files. The C# beginner tutorials do this too. |
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Issue opened here #1295. |
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Just adding a note. The Code Only is now supported through the Stride Community Toolkit, where all discussed above was implemented https://stride3d.github.io/stride-community-toolkit/manual/code-only/index.html |
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Thanks, as always, great work! |
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I have been working with ASP.NET Core intensively and was happy when they added Minimal API to simplify the setup and learning process, this got even better with .NET 6 which allows the use of global usings and file-scoped namespaces. Please be aware I am not a game developer but I like to experiment 🤣🙏.
Note: In this conversation API means Application Programming Interface.
There might be other reasons, why not to use a game editor, including:
I got inspired by multiple projects here and there from GitHub, some issues (#80, #986), our Discord discussions and help from the community and I created a working prototype for us. Ideally it should be very flexible, starting very simple but an experienced dev can still do what they want to do, and maybe eventually it could be also a hybrid and easy to hook to Stride Studio Editor to add anything else from the Editor.
https://github.com/VaclavElias/Stride3DTutorials/tree/main/Other/Minimal
Note: Any name convention can be changed as I get your feedback.
Review 1 - Concept
The main part is a new namespace Stride.Engine.Builder, which is going to be a wrapper for a boilerplate code. My prototype doesn't need to make any changes in the Game Engine but maybe some changes could make my implementation easier by exposing new event handlers or whatever you think would be better.
One NuGet package added to a new console application will make Stride to shine just with 21 lines or less 🌟🌟🌟
Note: The Add methods can't be before the .Build() because they need Game object but we can figure out a better logic here.
I have got these questions for us:
BeginRun()in the MinimumGame class as I found that the only place this works but I don't like that I had to create a MinimalGame class. If we had a new EventHandler also for BeginRun (or wherever it is better) like we have Activated, Deactivated, Exiting, WindowCreated handlers in the GameBase, then I don't need MinimalGame class and would do the full set up in the GameApplication.cs. Do we need to update Stride GameBase class to simplify my implementation?Can anyone help/suggest how to improve the visual output, am I missing just material and lighting?..resolved-- The default could be as it is (first image)
-- And improved should look like on the second image (done in the editor as an example) or better, so anyone working with this NuGet package would be very impressed by Stride engine
What else could we add as optional? e.g. like AddSkybox, better lightning and so on...resolvedGenerated by this code-only project
Please feel free to add any comments or questions.
Thank you!
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