Is anybody using/has used Entity/Component design in their games?

Keon on 2014/04/22 15:34

I was reading about entity systems in games. For any of you who haven't seen them before, read the links below, they should explain it better than I can. It looks like ebs is the most common framework for python and I was wondering if any of you have used it or something like it. If so, how was it? It's certainly a shift from the way I normally think, so I'm not sure I'm going to do it this pygame, but it's something to consider.

http://python-utilities.readthedocs.org/en/latest/ebs.html
http://entity-systems.wikidot.com/

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Comments

Cosmologicon on 2014/04/22 15:54:

Yes. I forced myself to try a component-based design a while ago, and now I love it. I rolled my own framework for JavaScript and now I'll never go back to an inheritance tree if I don't need to. There's a learning curve but it's definitely worth it in my opinion. (I do, however, think that most component-based frameworks make it more complicated than necessary. Mine is simpler than most. Maybe if I were writing bigger games that would be a problem.)

However, I've never done it in python. I considered writing a framework for python, but I don't know about porting my JavaScript framework: it uses some JavaScript features that python lacks.

reidrac on 2014/04/22 16:34:

Components are cool for some abstractions but I don't use any pattern if it doesn't feel "natural" to solve the problem. So I always use it for some things (eg, player input), but depends on the project really.

permianlizard on 2014/05/05 11:09:

I tried it out for my last pyweek entry (Sept 2013), however its far from a 'pure' solution since I wasnt sure how to implement the concept in python. It did make creating new types of game units a breeze though. Ive since taken a few more stabs at it and Im sure Ill try something like this again for this challenge. 

elfette on 2014/05/06 18:15:

Ugh the concept of making everything as a class isn't very appealable to me personally.

permianlizard on 2014/05/08 06:45:

Understandable, however that's not a requirement of ECS