3 ms·

Bevy 0.11: ECS-driven game engine built in Rust

133 points by _cart 3y ago

_cart 3y ago
Creator and lead developer of Bevy here. Feel free to ask me anything!
- tcnj 3y ago
  What are the current plans/aims of the deferred renderer? I seem to recall coming across a GitHub issue in the past (but can't find it now) that mentioned that this wouldn't be an aim of bevy for the foreseeable future. What changed?
  - _cart 3y ago
    This essentially came down to: 1. We've started blurring the lines by having optional depth and normal prepasses (to enable new rendering features) 2. We have renderer devs that are currently experimenting in this space Whether or not (and how) we embrace deferred will come down to the user experience, effects on the render plugin ecosystem, desired features, perf characteristics, etc. The decision hasn't been fully made yet, but we're going to explore the space. The latest discussion has happened here: https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/1113166585075597384 https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/111316658507...
- kirillbobyrev 3y ago
  I love Bevy, but I feel like it's still more of a Game Development Library rather than an engine. Godot, on the other hand, looks very nice in terms of user experience: great editor and very easy to understand and use. Will Bevy implement a first-party editor, overhaul of game development experience etc or is the goal to only support these things with third-party plugins and crates?
  - _cart 3y ago
    Building an editor is one of our highest priorities. We've been laying the groundwork for this for awhile and we would like to have tangible progress here within the year. We can't commit to specific dates, but know that a full editor experience is a central part of our plan. Code-only will always be an option, but we firmly believe that visual editing is a critical piece of the gamedev puzzle.
  - komadori 3y ago
    A first-party editor is planned and Bevy's UI library and other infrastructure is getting to the point where it might to start to materialise in a few releases. However, I personally love the code-first experience Bevy offers in comparison to something like Godot.
    - jasonjmcghee 3y ago
      Definitely agree. The UI workflow is godot doesn’t feel good. Bevy does feel boilerplatey, but it’s so much more intuitive imo.
- mahulst 3y ago
  Large amount of work done again! When you get to the ui work in the what’s next part, do you plan to integrate one of the existing bevy ui crates? Or will you learn from them and build a new one? Really looking forward to getting some progress in that area. I feel like contributing (made the PR for swapping Y axis on UI for 0.9) but the status quo is a huge mental block to even get started. Again, awesome project!
  - _cart 3y ago
    This cycle getting UI ready for the editor is my primary focus. I'll be considering all of our options (improvements to the existing system or embracing one of the many community Bevy UI plugins). I can't give much more clarity than that until I've committed more time to the space. But this is next on my plate (right after getting Bevy Asset V2 finalized and merged)
    - mahulst 3y ago
      Cool, thanks for your answer! Looking forward to it, and take your time.
- danbolt 3y ago
  I sometimes wonder if the data transformations found in ECS Systems could be constructed through a visual editor. An analogue might be Unity's Shader Graph, where a developer with a less technical background can program a GPU's SIMD architecture. Do you think that sort of thing could ever be feasible in Bevy?
  - _cart 3y ago
    This is definitely feasible in Bevy (either via Rust codegen, "interpreter-style" node execution, or scripting). And will be even more feasible once we have an official visual Bevy Editor. However I'm pretty skeptical of "visual / node based programming" and I wouldn't personally prioritize that work when we have so many other things to do. That being said, I'm guessing someone will eventually build a 3rd party plugin to do this.
  - yuhe00 3y ago
    Unreal's Niagara has a visual editor. While it is packaged as an VFX/particle editor, it is in many ways an ECS. Each particle can have custom data structure and modules/systems that drive them. Under the hood the graphs are translated to SIMD-optimized VM bytecode when run on CPU. It can even support translation to HLSL/GPU-acceleration if all modules support it. Not sure if Unity has something similar.
    - tbillington 3y ago
      https://unity.com/visual-effect-graph https://unity.com/visual-effect-graph
- aranw 3y ago
  What are your favourite games currently published that are built using Bevy? Any available on Steam?
  - _cart 3y ago
    Molecoole is a fun one on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1792170/Molecoole/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1792170/Molecoole/ We're still in the early days of the engine so most games are pretty small in scope. But there are still plenty of fun ones! Lots of games on itch.io: https://itch.io/games/tag-bevy https://itch.io/games/tag-bevy I'm very excited for Tiny Glade: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2198150/Tiny_Glade https://store.steampowered.com/app/2198150/Tiny_Glade. They only use some parts of Bevy (Bevy ECS and Bevy App. They built their own custom renderer). xyzw is building a beautiful Dwarf Fortress-like: https://twitter.com/xyzw_io/status/1677340923292786689 https://twitter.com/xyzw_io/status/1677340923292786689
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  What're your plans regarding OpenGL support? Is that something you care about or not at all? The current state being that wgpu supports it, and as such we can already use it in bevy by setting the wgpu back-end env variable, but in bevy it only works for 2D stuff (trying the 3D examples of bevy lead to a Naga error because, IIRC the PBR stuff uses features that cannot work in OpenGL or something like that). (If you tell me that OpenGL is something you want to support and it's just an oversight, I can file an issue on github with much more details, and would even be willing to contribute)
  - _cart 3y ago
    It is something we care about, but it also isn't our first priority (as it is a "fallback" backend when other newer apis aren't available on a system). Given that we support WebGL (which IS a high priority for us and is an even more limited subset), generally OpenGL breakage is just an oversight / missed bug. Please file an issue as we do want to support as many systems as possible!
  - IceSentry 3y ago
    While OpenGL support isn't a main target, the fact that it breaks with 3D is unexpected. Many features won't work but it should definitely be able to render the pbr shader in 3d.
- jasonjmcghee 3y ago
  Just want to say I’ve had the opportunity to use bevy a fair amount and it’s such a fun experience. I really appreciate the time, effort, and attention to developer experience. I’ve also seen how much the team helps others in the discord etc. Keep up the great work.
GenericCanadian 3y ago
Awesome stuff, I've been publishing some personal notes that are up to date with the main branch if anyone wants to learn: - https://taintedcoders.com https://taintedcoders.com There are lots of stuff missing on the bevy cheatbook (https://bevy-cheatbook.github.io https://bevy-cheatbook.github.io) and lots more hidden in the Discord that are unsearchable on Google so I hoped this would help fill the gap for teaching some friends.
- __jem 3y ago
  This is so helpful, thanks.
lwansbrough 3y ago
Glad to see the ECS scheduling was cleaned up a bit. I was a bit overwhelmed by the verbosity of the APIs in the last release.
- scambier 3y ago
  I find the bevy-ecs 0.10 already cleaned a lot of cruft and improved DX.
hoot 3y ago
Any news on when Bevy will have some legit documentation? I know there was a branch in work a while back that looked to have some in depth docs, but it doesn’t seem like it’s made its way into a release. This has always been a huge hurdle for me with Bevy. I really just don’t want to wade through discord to figure out how to use it. Wishing the best and awesome work. I think I’ll give bevy another shot once there’s an editor and good docs!
- _cart 3y ago
  We'd like to open the floodgates on Bevy Book development asap. This taking so long has largely been my fault ... I've been overly protective of the Bevy Book while also not giving it the attention it deserves. Here is our current plan: https://github.com/bevyengine/bevy-website/issues/623#issuecomment-1518887997 https://github.com/bevyengine/bevy-website/issues/623#issuec..., which I'd like to execute during the next cycle.
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
> WebGPU Support Yaaayyy! Great to see faster better slicker new 3d on the web having this great engine target it.
- qchris 3y ago
  If you're interested in Bevy + WebGPU in particular, they wrote a more extensive update on that section earlier this year[1]. [1] https://bevyengine.org/news/bevy-webgpu/ https://bevyengine.org/news/bevy-webgpu/
nathants 3y ago
#showcase on bevy discord has cool stuff dropping daily. it’s fun to watch the scene progress.

133 points by _cart 3y ago

_cart 3y ago

Creator and lead developer of Bevy here. Feel free to ask me anything!

tcnj 3y ago
What are the current plans/aims of the deferred renderer? I seem to recall coming across a GitHub issue in the past (but can't find it now) that mentioned that this wouldn't be an aim of bevy for the foreseeable future. What changed?
- _cart 3y ago
  This essentially came down to: 1. We've started blurring the lines by having optional depth and normal prepasses (to enable new rendering features) 2. We have renderer devs that are currently experimenting in this space Whether or not (and how) we embrace deferred will come down to the user experience, effects on the render plugin ecosystem, desired features, perf characteristics, etc. The decision hasn't been fully made yet, but we're going to explore the space. The latest discussion has happened here: https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/1113166585075597384 https://discord.com/channels/691052431525675048/111316658507...
kirillbobyrev 3y ago
I love Bevy, but I feel like it's still more of a Game Development Library rather than an engine. Godot, on the other hand, looks very nice in terms of user experience: great editor and very easy to understand and use. Will Bevy implement a first-party editor, overhaul of game development experience etc or is the goal to only support these things with third-party plugins and crates?
- _cart 3y ago
  Building an editor is one of our highest priorities. We've been laying the groundwork for this for awhile and we would like to have tangible progress here within the year. We can't commit to specific dates, but know that a full editor experience is a central part of our plan. Code-only will always be an option, but we firmly believe that visual editing is a critical piece of the gamedev puzzle.
- komadori 3y ago
  A first-party editor is planned and Bevy's UI library and other infrastructure is getting to the point where it might to start to materialise in a few releases. However, I personally love the code-first experience Bevy offers in comparison to something like Godot.
  - jasonjmcghee 3y ago
    Definitely agree. The UI workflow is godot doesn’t feel good. Bevy does feel boilerplatey, but it’s so much more intuitive imo.
mahulst 3y ago
Large amount of work done again! When you get to the ui work in the what’s next part, do you plan to integrate one of the existing bevy ui crates? Or will you learn from them and build a new one? Really looking forward to getting some progress in that area. I feel like contributing (made the PR for swapping Y axis on UI for 0.9) but the status quo is a huge mental block to even get started. Again, awesome project!
- _cart 3y ago
  This cycle getting UI ready for the editor is my primary focus. I'll be considering all of our options (improvements to the existing system or embracing one of the many community Bevy UI plugins). I can't give much more clarity than that until I've committed more time to the space. But this is next on my plate (right after getting Bevy Asset V2 finalized and merged)
  - mahulst 3y ago
    Cool, thanks for your answer! Looking forward to it, and take your time.
danbolt 3y ago
I sometimes wonder if the data transformations found in ECS Systems could be constructed through a visual editor. An analogue might be Unity's Shader Graph, where a developer with a less technical background can program a GPU's SIMD architecture. Do you think that sort of thing could ever be feasible in Bevy?
- _cart 3y ago
  This is definitely feasible in Bevy (either via Rust codegen, "interpreter-style" node execution, or scripting). And will be even more feasible once we have an official visual Bevy Editor. However I'm pretty skeptical of "visual / node based programming" and I wouldn't personally prioritize that work when we have so many other things to do. That being said, I'm guessing someone will eventually build a 3rd party plugin to do this.
- yuhe00 3y ago
  Unreal's Niagara has a visual editor. While it is packaged as an VFX/particle editor, it is in many ways an ECS. Each particle can have custom data structure and modules/systems that drive them. Under the hood the graphs are translated to SIMD-optimized VM bytecode when run on CPU. It can even support translation to HLSL/GPU-acceleration if all modules support it. Not sure if Unity has something similar.
  - tbillington 3y ago
    https://unity.com/visual-effect-graph https://unity.com/visual-effect-graph
aranw 3y ago
What are your favourite games currently published that are built using Bevy? Any available on Steam?
- _cart 3y ago
  Molecoole is a fun one on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1792170/Molecoole/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1792170/Molecoole/ We're still in the early days of the engine so most games are pretty small in scope. But there are still plenty of fun ones! Lots of games on itch.io: https://itch.io/games/tag-bevy https://itch.io/games/tag-bevy I'm very excited for Tiny Glade: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2198150/Tiny_Glade https://store.steampowered.com/app/2198150/Tiny_Glade. They only use some parts of Bevy (Bevy ECS and Bevy App. They built their own custom renderer). xyzw is building a beautiful Dwarf Fortress-like: https://twitter.com/xyzw_io/status/1677340923292786689 https://twitter.com/xyzw_io/status/1677340923292786689
littlestymaar 3y ago
What're your plans regarding OpenGL support? Is that something you care about or not at all? The current state being that wgpu supports it, and as such we can already use it in bevy by setting the wgpu back-end env variable, but in bevy it only works for 2D stuff (trying the 3D examples of bevy lead to a Naga error because, IIRC the PBR stuff uses features that cannot work in OpenGL or something like that). (If you tell me that OpenGL is something you want to support and it's just an oversight, I can file an issue on github with much more details, and would even be willing to contribute)
- _cart 3y ago
  It is something we care about, but it also isn't our first priority (as it is a "fallback" backend when other newer apis aren't available on a system). Given that we support WebGL (which IS a high priority for us and is an even more limited subset), generally OpenGL breakage is just an oversight / missed bug. Please file an issue as we do want to support as many systems as possible!
- IceSentry 3y ago
  While OpenGL support isn't a main target, the fact that it breaks with 3D is unexpected. Many features won't work but it should definitely be able to render the pbr shader in 3d.
jasonjmcghee 3y ago
Just want to say I’ve had the opportunity to use bevy a fair amount and it’s such a fun experience. I really appreciate the time, effort, and attention to developer experience. I’ve also seen how much the team helps others in the discord etc. Keep up the great work.

GenericCanadian 3y ago

Awesome stuff, I've been publishing some personal notes that are up to date with the main branch if anyone wants to learn: - https://taintedcoders.com https://taintedcoders.com There are lots of stuff missing on the bevy cheatbook (https://bevy-cheatbook.github.io https://bevy-cheatbook.github.io) and lots more hidden in the Discord that are unsearchable on Google so I hoped this would help fill the gap for teaching some friends.

__jem 3y ago
This is so helpful, thanks.

lwansbrough 3y ago

Glad to see the ECS scheduling was cleaned up a bit. I was a bit overwhelmed by the verbosity of the APIs in the last release.

scambier 3y ago
I find the bevy-ecs 0.10 already cleaned a lot of cruft and improved DX.

hoot 3y ago

Any news on when Bevy will have some legit documentation? I know there was a branch in work a while back that looked to have some in depth docs, but it doesn’t seem like it’s made its way into a release. This has always been a huge hurdle for me with Bevy. I really just don’t want to wade through discord to figure out how to use it. Wishing the best and awesome work. I think I’ll give bevy another shot once there’s an editor and good docs!

_cart 3y ago
We'd like to open the floodgates on Bevy Book development asap. This taking so long has largely been my fault ... I've been overly protective of the Bevy Book while also not giving it the attention it deserves. Here is our current plan: https://github.com/bevyengine/bevy-website/issues/623#issuecomment-1518887997 https://github.com/bevyengine/bevy-website/issues/623#issuec..., which I'd like to execute during the next cycle.

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

> WebGPU Support Yaaayyy! Great to see faster better slicker new 3d on the web having this great engine target it.

qchris 3y ago
If you're interested in Bevy + WebGPU in particular, they wrote a more extensive update on that section earlier this year[1]. [1] https://bevyengine.org/news/bevy-webgpu/ https://bevyengine.org/news/bevy-webgpu/

nathants 3y ago

#showcase on bevy discord has cool stuff dropping daily. it’s fun to watch the scene progress.