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ECS is commonly described as "data-oriented", not "data-driven". It's confusing, yes, but the have separate and unrelated meanings in the game development space
by Jasper_ 6y ago
ECS is commonly described as "data-oriented", not "data-driven". It's confusing, yes, but the have separate and unrelated meanings in the game development space.
The former is a methodology for building engine systems that are cache-friendly, the latter talks about workflows that are more flexible to artists and developers.
You can use ECS without "being data-driven", and you can use data-driven workflows without ECS.
- Vaskivo 6y ago> You can use ECS without "being data-driven", and you can use data-driven workflows without ECS. True, I've read about ECS being used for one or both of those purposes. My first contact was ECS was as a composability pattern. So, in a "high level" purpose, as an alternative to inheritance. It was also described as "Game Object - Game component" pattern. See http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/component.html http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/component.html, specially the sidenote in http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/component.html#no-bj%C3%B8rn-at-all http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/component.html#no-bj%C3%B.... There's the "performance" ECS, where it tackles data locality. And the "game element definition and configuration" ECS, where it solves a high level problem of building game elements. On the "game developer" level, Unity works like this.