Entity Component Systems

speaker: Yos Riady, Paypal event: Friday Hacks, NUS Hackers

** challenges with inheritance

• diamond problem
• deep rigid hierarchies
• big root class

** entity component systems

• originally used in game dev
• based on three key abstractions
  • component
    • a minimum reusable data object
    • plugged into entities
    • has no behavior
  • entity
    • has an identity
    • sum of its components
  • system
    • run continuously and iterate over all components of its type
    • reads an event stream, eg player input
    • eg gravity system, time system

** challenges of ECS

• not well known
• inter-component communication
• inter-system communication

** examples of ECS

• SpatialOS
• roguelike