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Show HN: Evolved.lua – An Evolved Entity Component System for Lua
I'm excited to announce the first release of my library, evolved.lua!
evolved.lua is a fast and flexible ECS (Entity-Component-System) library for Lua. It is designed to be simple and easy to use, while providing all the features needed to create complex systems with blazing performance.
Enjoy!
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- euvin 1y agoCool to see a new ECS project! I've been learning and using JECS (https://github.com/Ukendio/jecs https://github.com/Ukendio/jecs) for a project of mine, and some of the core ideas (like Chunks) felt familiar. This project definitely seems to have a more in-depth documentation though and a lot more features especially by having its own scheduler stuff. Would love to try it out on a new project someday
- blackmat 1y agoHmm! I haven't heard of JECS before. I need to check it out :-) Thanks for the kind words!
- cmovq 1y ago> Components are stored in contiguous arrays in a SoA (Structure of Arrays) manner, which allows for fast iteration and processing Does this actually matter in Lua? Aren’t all array elements going to be pointers to heap allocated objects anyways? The point of SoA is your likely to be accessed values are adjacent in memory, but if you’re chasing a pointer to get that value then you’re not getting anything out of it.
- PhilipRoman 1y agoLua uses tagged unions so that primitives are stored inline within a table. Some time ago I benchmarked this and the perf gains from SOA were significant. Besides, even if you had to chase pointers, SOA still means you can reduce the number of allocations.
- blackmat 1y agoYes, organizing components as SoA can provide a significant performance boost in Lua, especially with LuaJIT. Both iteration and element access become faster, and it also reduces memory allocations and GC pressure when creating entities. And yes, Lua tables can be contiguous in memory if you use them carefully.
- dicytea 1y agoDo you have any published benchmarks?
- blackmat 1y agoComparative benchmarks are a big task on their own, and usually the author's library wins in them. I have internal benchmarks in the repository, but they are not designed for comparison or for evaluation by outsiders. Maybe I'll get to that someday. As for the SoA approach, here you can find a small and exaggerated example: https://luajit.org/ext_ffi.html https://luajit.org/ext_ffi.html
- luabloughs 1y ago[flagged]
- dogprez 1y agoWhat makes it an "envolved" ecs?
- blackmat 1y agoHonestly, it's just a fancy way of saying I learned a few things from earlier attempts and made some tweaks. I just think "evolved" sounds cool!
- poly2it 1y agoAny examples of projects using this?
- blackmat 1y agoNot yet, but I wrote this library to use in a project of mine. When I finish it, I will add a link to the README. As for a small demo project, I have one in mind, but I haven't started it yet.
- elpocko 1y ago[flagged]
- sieabahlpark 1y ago[dead]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- je42 1y agoOne alternatives I like is https://bakpakin.github.io/tiny-ecs/doc/ https://bakpakin.github.io/tiny-ecs/doc/
- blackmat 1y agoYeah, tiny-ecs is good, but it doesn't quite fit my needs. With these thoughts in mind, I started this project.
- sali0 1y agoWill give this a try. I was using claude code to make a small game in love2d, and really hoped for a nice lua ecs lib to help manage the game objects (its my first time playing around with game dev).
- binary132 1y agoIt always makes me happy to see people publishing Lua libraries in $YEAR. I am also working on Lua stuff. Thank you for posting!
- blackmat 1y agoYeah! Long live Lua! :-)