Gena Runtime does not work in build

[TakeruGrima]

Hello,

I have an issue with Gena when I build in dedicated Server, I can't spawn my objects and I have this error :

Do you know what causing the issue ?

[Manny]

On 8/7/2022 at 3:49 AM, TakeruGrima said:

Hello,

I have an issue with Gena when I build in dedicated Server, I can't spawn my objects and I have this error :

Do you know what causing the issue ?

Hey @TakeruGrima,

This issue is very well known as GeNa currently only works on machines that support graphics cards. If you are running on a dedicated server, your server is considered to be running as 'headless' which means that there is no front-end, ergo there is no graphics card loaded into your Unity instance running GeNa. 

We've actually prevented this error from showing up in the next upcoming version by checking if the instance is running a graphics card. 

That being said, there is a way you can load a graphics card if you really want to run GeNa in a server build. But you need to do a bit of research on what Unity Command Line arguments you can run. Here's a link to some resources from Unity directly:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/CommandLineArguments.html

[TakeruGrima]

Hello, thanks for your answer.

Does that mean that Gena really needs to have access to a graphic card to be able to spawn our objects ? Because our dedicated server has to spawn our objects in runtime.

[TakeruGrima]

16 minutes ago, TakeruGrima said:

Hello, thanks for your answer.

Does that mean that Gena really needs to have access to a graphic card to be able to spawn our objects ? Because our dedicated server has to spawn our objects in runtime.

I forgot to mention that using the graphics card decreases our performance in our test.

[Tarmack]

18 hours ago, Manny said:

Hey @TakeruGrima,

This issue is very well known as GeNa currently only works on machines that support graphics cards. If you are running on a dedicated server, your server is considered to be running as 'headless' which means that there is no front-end, ergo there is no graphics card loaded into your Unity instance running GeNa. 

We've actually prevented this error from showing up in the next upcoming version by checking if the instance is running a graphics card. 

That being said, there is a way you can load a graphics card if you really want to run GeNa in a server build. But you need to do a bit of research on what Unity Command Line arguments you can run. Here's a link to some resources from Unity directly:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/CommandLineArguments.html

Hi, we might have then a missunderstanding, and a miss comunication on your side of the tools that you guys are selling.

Then what you are actually saying suggest that the tools you have are not ment to work for multiplayer games with a dedicated server?

we have actually designed our server and game around your technology for the spawning of the world, i feel a bit stunned that this is not supported.

We will see and try about running the server with argument in the command line to try to use the graphic card.


I would also like to know if you guys then recommend to use your tools for a survival type game where everything is supposed to be generated from the server then passed to the users so they can replicate.

I've been told by Adam 2 months ago that procedural runtime generation was one of your main goal, and since we had no news, is it still planned ?

Thanks for your time.
 

[Tarmack]

18 hours ago, Manny said:

That being said, there is a way you can load a graphics card if you really want to run GeNa in a server build. But you need to do a bit of research on what Unity Command Line arguments you can run. Here's a link to some resources from Unity directly:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/CommandLineArguments.html

I've been looking in the commandLineArgument for built application i haven't found anything like so

[Adam]

We have been moving GeNa to runtime / realtime for over a year now, and on the client side this is fine.

 

As part of this process a bunch of the logic in GeNa has been moved onto the GPU as it is way faster than on the CPU.

 

But we never realized until right now, the impact on server side spawning. We are looking at adding an option to move a bunch of the collision logic back onto the CPU (as a switchable option), and that will get you most of the benefit of GeNa, on the CPU, so this will help on server builds. We will get back to you shortly as to how easy (or not) this is to do.

 

However, it is not feasible at the moment to move the carve back onto the CPU, as this is a significant job and would require quite a big re-write. It would also be slow compared to the GPU.

 

The fastest workaround right now is to send a spawn call from the server to the client, execute it on the client(s), and then if needed, to replicate the objects back to the server.

[Manny]

Hi there @Tarmack & @TakeruGrima,

 

We have just released a new version of GeNa (v3.3.21) that provides a bunch of bug fixes and improvements. We've also added the ability to perform a lot of the Spawning logic on the CPU (experimental) instead of the GPU which it does by default. 

 

To enable this, simply select which spawners you'd like to run on the CPU, open the Advanced Settings Panel and for the 'Current Processor' select 'CPU' to give it a try. 

 

It's worth noting that this feature has some limitations. Currently you can't perform Spawn Criteria checks that are specific to Terrains, i.e Check Mask and Check Texture. But everything else in a Spawn Criteria is supported.

 

Basically everything that GeNa does to Terrains is not supported on the CPU because these are all done on the GPU. There are no plans in the short term to support Terrain operations on the CPU.

 

 

[Tarmack]

On 9/1/2022 at 2:11 AM, Manny said:

Hi there @Tarmack & @TakeruGrima,

 

We have just released a new version of GeNa (v3.3.21) that provides a bunch of bug fixes and improvements. We've also added the ability to perform a lot of the Spawning logic on the CPU (experimental) instead of the GPU which it does by default. 

 

To enable this, simply select which spawners you'd like to run on the CPU, open the Advanced Settings Panel and for the 'Current Processor' select 'CPU' to give it a try. 

 

It's worth noting that this feature has some limitations. Currently you can't perform Spawn Criteria checks that are specific to Terrains, i.e Check Mask and Check Texture. But everything else in a Spawn Criteria is supported.

 

Basically everything that GeNa does to Terrains is not supported on the CPU because these are all done on the GPU. There are no plans in the short term to support Terrain operations on the CPU.

 

 

I'm pleased to know that headless builds are going to work, but also really disapointed about the Check Texture, wich is the basic logic to implement biomes on our game.

So the questions is the following should we consider not using gaia and gena for our game ?
Or is something is planned to have full dedicated server build support ?


Thanks

[Adam]

10 hours ago, Tarmack said:

So the questions is the following should we consider not using gaia and gena for our game ?
Or is something is planned to have full dedicated server build support ?

Check texture has nothing to do with Gaia, as Gaia is 100% build time product.
 

If this is a deal breaker, then unfortunately yes. We have no timeline for when this could happen as it is not a trivial change.

[TakeruGrima]

@Manny Thanks for this update. I just tried it, we can build in dedicated server and spawn the objects as wanted.

But there is some issues :

• The type "RoadCrossSectionOverride" is not found in the Gena source files so I get this error :"Assets\Procedural Worlds\GeNa\Scripts\Runtime\Extensions\GeNaRoadExtension.cs(31,36): error CS0246: The type or namespace name 'RoadCrossSectionOverride' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)" .We don't need this feature for now so I just commented it.
• It seems like the feature "Get Sea Level" doesn't work anymore with this update (shown in the screenshots bellow)

 

 

This issue just appear when we use the CPU and work fine with GPU. The spawner can't just read the sea value from the WaterShader without using GPU ?

[TakeruGrima]

33 minutes ago, TakeruGrima said:

@Manny Thanks for this update. I just tried it, we can build in dedicated server and spawn the objects as wanted.

But there is some issues :

• The type "RoadCrossSectionOverride" is not found in the Gena source files so I get this error :"Assets\Procedural Worlds\GeNa\Scripts\Runtime\Extensions\GeNaRoadExtension.cs(31,36): error CS0246: The type or namespace name 'RoadCrossSectionOverride' could not be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)" .We don't need this feature for now so I just commented it.
• It seems like the feature "Get Sea Level" doesn't work anymore with this update (shown in the screenshots bellow)

 

 

This issue just appear when we use the CPU and work fine with GPU. The spawner can't just read the sea value from the WaterShader without using GPU ?

[EDIT] The RoadCrossSectionOverride error comes from my project this file wasn't added.