EasyEcs

An Entity-Component-System library

Why?

Sometimes we may want to remove bidirectional dependencies between our code, and ECS is a good way to do this.

This design pattern offers a clean way to separate the data from the logic, and it's also a good way to improve the performance.

What is ECS?

E - Entity

C - Component

S - System

But what really is it?

Well, as a human, we (entities) live in the world (context), and we have some properties (components). Moreover, we have things to do based on our properties (systems).

Concepts in EasyEcs

• A Context holds several Entity instances, some System instances and some SingletonComponent instances.
• Each Entity has some Component instances.
• Each Component (or SingletonComponent) has only data properties.
• Each System can filter lots of Entity instances in the same Context by their components and operate logics on them.

Why it removes bidirectional dependencies?

• Only System contains logics and none of them should reference on each other. But we allow one system depends on another by specifying Priority. (They should only depend on the filtered entities/components)
• Component only contains data properties and no logics. (Again, no way to have dependency)
• Entity only contains components. (It is really just a container)

Why is it fast?

• As a System can operate on a batch of entities with components, we can well utilize the cache of the MMU.
• We can also easily parallelize the systems to improve the performance, in a multi-core CPU environment.

Anything special in EasyEcs?

• We have priority for System, so you can control the order of systems.
• We have frequency for System, so you can control the frequency of systems being executed.
• We only allow asynchronous interfaces for System and Context, so our ECS should not block the thread (unless you screw up).
• We introduce built-in parallelism and/or concurrency for System, so you can easily parallelize your systems (for those who are in the same priority) and well utilize the multi-core CPU.
• We have a cool guy who is maintaining this library. (Just kidding)

Example

Just check out the EasyEcs.UnitTest project. I have comments there.

Documentation

Believe me, one day I will make a website for this and document everything.