Parallel Scheduler, call unsafe functions in parallel

AsynchronousMatrix · June 29, 2022, 8:09am

Hey! Just wanted to share a resource i’ve recently made to improve my experience with parallel lua.

Context

Now, the problem with parallel is you cannot call task.desync or task.sync a ton of times as these functions are quite expensive.

This lead me onto some creative thinking and I eventually wondered onto the idea of a Scheduler.

Example

Lets say, for example we had a simple loop which set the CFrame of a part, this is how you would do that using the scheduler.

local ReplicatedStorage = game:GetService("ReplicatedStorage")

local ParallelScheduler = require(ReplicatedStorage.ParallelScheduler)
local Object = script.Parent

task.desynchronize()
while true do
	task.wait(1)
	
	local RandomCFrame = Vector3.new(math.random(), Object.Position.Y, math.random())
	
    -- Create a new job!
	ParallelScheduler.Job(
     -- What we want to do
		"Set", -- we want to set a property
     -- Object, Property, Value
		Object, "CFrame", Object.CFrame + ((math.random() > 0.5 and -RandomCFrame) or RandomCFrame) -- What we're setting
	)
end

The above stops us from calling task.sync/desync a bunch of times as that may have an impact on performance.

Api Document

github.com

4x8Matrix/RbxModules/blob/master/documentation/ParallelScheduler.md

# ParallelScheduler
A Roblox-Parallel module used to call/set unsafe functions and properties, this module will allow you to remain in parallel and call explicit functions which would normally throw an error of some sort if you tried to call them from inside parallel

# ParallelScheduler API Documentation
## Methods
```
    Scheduler.JobAsync(JobType: string, ...: job parameters) -> Result nil? any
```
Description: Creates a job and then yields until that job is complete

Return: Result `.AwaitJob`

---
```
    Scheduler.Job(JobType: string, ...: job parameters) -> Result string
```
Description: Create a job, this job is what will run your setters/namecalls in a non-serial thread.

Return: string, this is the JobID, a unique identifier at which you can do things like .AwaitJob with.

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Source Code

github.com

4x8Matrix/RbxModules/blob/master/sources/ParallelScheduler.lua

local HttpService = game:GetService("HttpService")
local RunService = game:GetService("RunService")

local Scheduler = { }
local Awaiting = { }

Scheduler.Jobs = {}
Scheduler.JobType = {}
Scheduler.JobHandlers = {}
Scheduler.Active = false

function Scheduler.JobAsync(...)
	return Scheduler.AwaitJob(Scheduler.Job(...))
end

function Scheduler.Job(JobType, ...)
	local JobID = HttpService:GenerateGUID(false)

	Awaiting[JobID] = { }

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In addition to this, potentially we could add in more functionality to validate if a thread is running in serial or not. As of right now though this should give us basic control over executing serial jobs in parallel

Another great resource for parallel lua is this Worker Threads module