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That is a new trend though, primarily pushed by the fact that the popular Unity game engine uses this model I think. OOP is a perfectly serviceable model for d

by copx 13y ago

That is a new trend though, primarily pushed by the fact that the popular Unity game engine uses this model I think. OOP is a perfectly serviceable model for developing games like this, especially if you use modern OOP i.e. heavy on composition and interfaces as opposed to the byzantine inheritance hierarchies of the 1990s. The pro-ECS propaganda always contrasts ECS with said 1990s Java style OO, correctly pointing out that inheritance (alone) does not allow clean modelling of certain game world entities.

tinco 13y ago
No, it's primarily pushed by the complexity of modern games. The game industry is notoriously introvert about their development practices, but the popularity of ECS surely precedes the popularity of Unity. (i.e. games like Tony Hawk Pro Skater and World of Warcraft use ECS architecture). Its use is obfuscated further because the architecture is called many different names, and is implemented in many different ways (i.e. I think many programmers find the 'systems' part weird and mix parts into components and other parts into 'engines' and such) That being said, I think it's hard/unproductive/awkward to implement ECS in a non-OOP language. ECS is basically composition taken to the max, OOP languages give it much needed structure.
ijk 13y ago
Entity based design goes back to at _least_ late-90's Looking Glass; for example, Thief: The Dark Project (1998) used "a set of appropriately abstract reusable game components designed for creating object-rich, data-driven games" and "In _Thief_ there was no code-based game object hierarchy of any kind."[1] It's used in Unity because it's a flexible approach to developing games. [1] http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3355/postmortem_thief_the_dark_project.php?print=1 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3355/postmortem_thief_...
- frik 13y ago
  One of the Thief game devs wrote the book Game Coding Complete, 4th Ed. it mentions Thief game several times and it has some code and explanation about component-entity system. Also 3 articles about this topic: http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1f83c5/3_articles_about_component_entity_systems/ http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1f83c5/3_articles_a...

by copx 13y ago

tinco 13y ago

No, it's primarily pushed by the complexity of modern games. The game industry is notoriously introvert about their development practices, but the popularity of ECS surely precedes the popularity of Unity. (i.e. games like Tony Hawk Pro Skater and World of Warcraft use ECS architecture). Its use is obfuscated further because the architecture is called many different names, and is implemented in many different ways (i.e. I think many programmers find the 'systems' part weird and mix parts into components and other parts into 'engines' and such) That being said, I think it's hard/unproductive/awkward to implement ECS in a non-OOP language. ECS is basically composition taken to the max, OOP languages give it much needed structure.

ijk 13y ago

Entity based design goes back to at _least_ late-90's Looking Glass; for example, Thief: The Dark Project (1998) used "a set of appropriately abstract reusable game components designed for creating object-rich, data-driven games" and "In _Thief_ there was no code-based game object hierarchy of any kind."[1] It's used in Unity because it's a flexible approach to developing games. [1] http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3355/postmortem_thief_the_dark_project.php?print=1 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3355/postmortem_thief_...

frik 13y ago
One of the Thief game devs wrote the book Game Coding Complete, 4th Ed. it mentions Thief game several times and it has some code and explanation about component-entity system. Also 3 articles about this topic: http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1f83c5/3_articles_about_component_entity_systems/ http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1f83c5/3_articles_a...