Systems and Components to learn from

[manu3d]

Hi everybody!

Over the past few days I found extremely useful to follow Cervator's tip in the Skysphere thread and look into the Hunger/Thirst System, to get a basic idea of how Systems and Components work in practice.

I am aware there are many systems and components already in place. Would it be possible to have a short list, perhaps published on the wiki, of some representative Systems and their Components, in order of (slowly) increasing complexity?

For people unfamiliar with the codebase it would offer some useful guidance in the not so trivial task of deciding what pieces of code to look at first.

 

[Marcin Sciesinski]

For the most complex - you can look into BlockNetwork and Signalling modules.

 

[manu3d]

Allright, we have one taker for the "basic complexity" rank, the Hunger/Thirst System, and one for the "terrifying complexity" rank, BlockNetwork and Signalling modules. Any taker for the "intermediate complexity", "advanced complexity" and "moderately scary complexity" ranks?

 

[Marcin Sciesinski]

Let me make a quick list then:
1. Basic - "Hunger" mod, simple component, single widget UI, simple event handling.
2. Intermediate - "Journal" mod, simple component, composite widgets in UI, key binding, introduces events sent over network.
3. Advanced - "Growing flora" mod, advanced components, interaction with world generation and use of scheduled eventing, introduces concept of chunk states, I'd suggest not looking too much into the tree shape and growth generation itself (implementation) just look at the interfaces.
4. Moderately scary - "Workstation" mod, use of components for defining flow, use of prefabs for defining new types of objects, complex interaction with inventory, both player and entity.
5. Insane - "BlockNetwork" and "Signalling" mod, maintains a separate data structure for loaded entities to improve performance, listens on Component, Entity and Chunk life-cycle events to keep the data structure up-to-date, complex logic, delay handling of events.

 

[manu3d]

Perfect. Thanks Martin. I'll try and find a corner of the wiki where to place this list, for posterity. I guess it will link from pages regarding the Entity System and the Modding Guide. Thanks again. I look forward going through the code.

 

[manu3d]

As pre-announced above, I've created the page Systems and Components in Practice on the wiki, containing Marcin's list. It is currently reachable through links at the end of the Entity System Concepts page and the Entity System Architecture page. I have -not- added a similar link at the end of the Modding Guide page as it didn't seem appropriate for the guide's higher-level content. And it's only two mouse-clicks away from it anyway.

Hope it helps.

 

[Cervator]

Thanks a bunch to you both, we badly need more documentation like this

manu3d - feel free to go nuts in the GitHub wiki. It could use the effort! Modding guide and Modding API were more like ideas long ago that weren't followed through on enough - they need overhauls for sure.

 

[manu3d]

Will do my best. First I have to figure out how everything works, then I'll let the knowledge trickle into the wiki...