Entity Component System (ECS)

[Dan Milward]

What is an ECS?

 

An ECS allows game objects to perform custom operations without any additional manager code.

 

In an ECS, all objects in a game world are represented as entities; their properties are represented as components; and the game has systems to update entities and components.

 

Yes. So why am I posting this?

Because we've just overhauled entities in kiwi.js and written up quite a big post on it. Take a squiz... let me know what you think

 

http://www.kiwijs.org/2015/02/kiwijs-v1-2-0-entity-component-system/

 

 

[Rezoner]

While you have implemented a good composition over inheritance paradigm here this line bothers me a little

 

> and the game has systems to update entities

 

Because in your architecture the logic has been moved from systems to components.

 

Wikipedia:

 

 

Component: the raw data for one aspect of the object (...)

System: "Each System runs continuously (as though each System had its own private thread) and performs global actions on every Entity that possesses a Component of the same aspect as that System."

 

 

And by the aspect we can understand a mask made out of components  - for example - system Movable has a mask reflecting Velocity and Position (components).

Then it loops through all the entities and if they have Velocity and Position components - the logic from that system (Movable) is applied.

 

Anyway - take my point with a pinch of salt as I don't have enough experience with this approach to tell if it will scale well (especially in terms of decoupling).

 

ref: http://www.gamedev.net/page/resources/_/technical/game-programming/understanding-component-entity-systems-r3013