Do I have the idea of Entity-Component System done right? I'm doing it for GUIs and here's an example.

CircleOfAwesome · 2018-05-05T04:06:09

I'm not sure if you guys can help me, but I figured an entity-component OOP design would be in your realm of experience. I want some feedback on it. Lets suppose that I have the following (it's mostly pseudo code): A header type of file: public: Button (textLabel, position); private: GuiComponent label; GuiSystem gui; A implementation type of file: // Event hookers / hooks the events to the corresponding functions: label.Clicked(onClickObj); // label is actually a pre-existing object that I can hook an event to. Now whenever user clicks, onClickObj. executes. function Button(text, position){ label.Text = text; label.Color = "Blue"; label.Position = position; } function onClickDo(){ gui.ChangeColor(label,"Red"); // Passes in our label obj. that we have in private and set its color to red! gui.ChangeText(label, "Button was clicked!"); pause(2); gui.ChangeText(label, "Button"); // Changes text back to "Button." } This is basically a button that whenever is clicked, turns red and displays "Button was clicked!" which then turns back to "Button." It's just a simple example. Label is a pre-existing object and I can already manipulate it. I just want to place a whole ECS system on it. GuiSystem is a container or class blueprint full of methods that can be used on the GuiComponent such as flash color a.k.a makes the label flash random colors, etc. Then whenever I make something really custom like a server menu and I need buttons, all I need to do is create a custom class blueprint and inherit the Button class above. Then I replace/overwrite some of the functions and bam, I have a server menu. I would add more GuiComponent labels if needed too. Is this generally how gui-design-architecture works? To show you the example in detail for instance, lets say I want a server menu. I create class blueprint detailing all member functions a server menu would do e.g: AddServer() which adds server buttons, ConnectServer() which calls something like ServerSystem.Connect(server) and connects you to the server, etc. I would then override the click function onClickDo() to do the ConnectServer() type of function. Right? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I know guis usually don't use ECS but I already have a gui class blueprint premade with all the properties and such and abilities to connect events. I'm just adding ECS ontop of it and putting functions in the GuiSystem container and when/if that container becomes full or bloated, I can split it off like GuiSystem.Effects.CreateEffect(label, effect) and etc. Do I have the idea of ECS on right? Thanks for reading!

General and Gameplay Programming Programming Gameplay Design General

Started by CircleOfAwesome April 30, 2018 01:41 AM

10 comments, last by CircleOfAwesome 6 years, 4 months ago

CircleOfAwesome

Author

May 05, 2018 04:06 AM

On 5/2/2018 at 3:09 AM, Kylotan said:

The ECS paradigm is not designed for GUIs - it's designed for 'entities' (hence the name) which, in games, refers to any of the many objects that inhabit the world and interact with each other, but where the objects are likely to vary in ways that don't fit a traditional inheritance-based approach.

There are many existing patterns for GUIs - Model-View-Controller is the standard one regarding how to structure them, although there are alternatives. Additionally, UI widgets and windows are examples of things that fit a standard inheritance system very well.

I would strongly advise looking at existing UI systems and emulating one of those, rather than trying to wedge ECS into somewhere it wasn't designed for and offers no benefits to.

I've heard of the MVC pattern before. Basically, you have the model which deals with all the data-manipulations, etc. correct? Then you have the controller which sends control signals to the view and the view gets its data from the model. Am I correct?

So with that in mind, for every unique gui interact-able item in the game, I would have a model class, view class, and controller class? Am I right on that or are we doing something else? I did read up some examples on it and it seems like this is how the MVC pattern works.

If I have to have a model class, view class, and controller class for every unique gui in the game, would it actually be practical? Maybe I'm misunderstanding something.

Do I have the idea of Entity-Component System done right? I'm doing it for GUIs and here's an example.

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Do I have the idea of Entity-Component System done right? I'm doing it for GUIs and here's an example.

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