{"id":254,"date":"2025-12-05T05:18:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T05:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/leah-lindner.com\/blog\/?p=254"},"modified":"2025-12-05T15:15:05","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T15:15:05","slug":"e-t-engines-archetype-based-entity-component-system-part-1-how-to-use-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leah-lindner.com\/blog\/2025\/12\/05\/e-t-engines-archetype-based-entity-component-system-part-1-how-to-use-it\/","title":{"rendered":"E.T.Engines Archetype Based Entity-Component-System – Part 1: How to use it"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

To illustrate the way in which I program, I figured it would be interesting to show how I wrote the Entity-Component-System (ECS) for ETEngine<\/strong><\/a>. In this first part I will go over the basics of what it is and how we can work with it. In the next part I will go into the nitty gritty details of how it was implemented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is an Entity Component System?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Entity Component Systems are a design pattern that formalises the relationship between an Entity in a games Scene, it’s Properties (Data \/ Components) and the functionality that can be applied to them (Systems). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

ECS follows the principles of Data Oriented Design, in which Data Structures (the Components) are defined separately from the logic (Systems). Entities are simple identifiers, with which we can find all the components which hold the data that makes up this entity, which are stored separately. Systems then modify the data in components in a way that’s agnostic to specific entities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This design pattern is an alternative to other common aproaches game engines use for structuring scene data, like for example Scene Actors (in which all properties and functionality are members of an Actor, often implemented using lots of inheritance), or the nowadays somewhat ubiquitous Entity-Component model that both Unity and Unreal implement in their own way (Components contain both data and functionality, and entities may or may not do so too). Both of these approaches follow a more OOP based approach, and while this may seem a bit more intuitive to work with, there are several benefits to using an ECSs based architecture instead:<\/p>\n\n\n\n