Component based game engine design

Question

I have been looking at game engine design  specifically focused on 2d game engines  but also applicable to 3d games   and am interested in some information on how to go about it   I have heard that many engines are moving to a component based design nowadays rather than the traditional deep-object hierarchy   Do you know of any good links with information on how these sorts of designs are often implemented   I have seen evolve your hierarchy  but I can t really find many more with detailed information  most of them just seem to say  use components rather than a hierarchy  but I have found that it takes a bit of effort to switch my thinking between the two models    Any good links or information on this would be appreciated  and even books  although links and detailed answers here would be preferred

User · Answer

In this context components to me sound like isolated runtime portions of an engine that may execute concurrently with other components  If this is the motivation then you might want to look at the actor model and systems that make use of it

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I researched and implemented this last semester for a game development course   Hopefully this sample code can point you in the right direction of how you might approach this    class Entity   public      Entity const unsigned int id  const std  string amp  enttype        Entity           Component Interface     const Component  GetComponent const std  string amp  family  const      void SetComponent Component  newComp       void RemoveComponent const std  string amp  family       void ClearComponents           Property Interface     bool HasProperty const std  string amp  propName  const      template lt class T gt  T amp  GetPropertyDataPtr const std  string amp  propName       template lt class T gt  const T amp  GetPropertyDataPtr const std  string amp  propName  const         Entity Interface     const unsigned int GetID   const      void Update float dt    private      void RemoveProperty const std  string amp  propName       void ClearProperties        template lt class T gt  void AddProperty const std  string amp  propName       template lt class T gt  Property lt T gt   GetProperty const std  string amp  propName       template lt class T gt  const Property lt T gt   GetProperty const std  string amp  propName  const       unsigned int m Id      std  map lt const string  IProperty  gt  m Properties      std  map lt const string  Component  gt  m Components       Components specify behavior and operate on properties   Properties are shared between all components by a reference and get updates for free   This means no large overhead for message passing   If there s any questions I ll try to answer as best I can

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There does seem to be a lack of information on the subject  I recently implemented this system  and I found a really good GDC Powerpoint that explained the details that are often left behind quite well  That document is here  Theory and Practice of Game Object Component Architecture  In addition to that Powerpoint  there are some good resources and various blogs  PurplePwny has a good discussion and links to some other resources  Ugly Baby Studios has a bit of a discussion around the idea of how components interact with each other  Good luck

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It is open-source  and available at http   codeplex com elephant  Some one   s made a working example of the gpg6-code  you can find it here  http   www unseen-academy de componentSystem html  or here  http   www mcshaffry com GameCode thread php threadid 732  regards

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Interesting artcle     I ve had a quick hunt around on google and found nothing  but you might want to check some of the comments - plenty of people seem to have had a go at implementing a simple component demo  you might want to take a look at some of theirs for inspiration      http   www unseen-academy de componentSystem html   http   www mcshaffry com GameCode thread php threadid 732   http   www codeplex com Wikipage ProjectName elephant   Also  the comments themselves seem to have a fairly in-depth discussion on how you might code up such a system

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I am currently researching this exact topic in the many  MANY  threads at GameDev net and found the following two solutions to be good candidates on what I will develop for my game    Critique my component-based entity system Outboard component-based entity system architecture -  Lord Evil s proposal

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While not a complete tutorial on the subject of game engine design  I have found that this page has some good detail and examples on use of the component architecture for games

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Update 2013-01-07  If you want to see a good mix of component-based game engine with the  in my opinion  superior approach of reactive programming take a look at the V-Play engine  It very well integrates QTs QML property binding functionality   We did some research on CBSE in games at our university and I collected some material over the years   CBSE in games literature    Game Engine Architecture Game Programming Gems 4  A System for Managin Game Entities Game Game Programming Gems 5  Component Based Object Management Game Programming Gems 5  A Generic Component Library Game Programming Gems 6  Game Object Component System Object-Oriented Game Development Architektur des Kerns einer Game-Engine und Implementierung mit Java  german    A very good and clean example of a component-based game-engine in C  is the Elephant game framework   If you really want to know what components are read  Component-based Software Engineering  They define a component as      A software component is a software element that conforms to a component model and can be independently deployed and composed without modification according to a composition standard       A component model defines specific interaction and composition standards  A component model implementation is the dedicated set of executable software elements required to support the execution of components that conform to the model       A software component infrastructure is a set of interacting software components designed to ensure that a software system or subsystem constructed using those components and interfaces will satisfy clearly defined performance specifications    My opinions after 2 years of experience with CBSE in games thought are that object-oriented programming is simply a dead-end  Remember my warning as you watch your components become smaller and smaller  and more like functions packed in components with a lot of useless overhead  Use functional-reactive programming instead  Also take a look at my fresh blog post  which lead me to this question while writing it     about Why I switched from component-based game engine architecture to FRP   CBSE in games papers    Component Based Game Development     A Solution to Escalating Costs and Expanding Deadlines   A Flexible And Expandable Architecture For Computer Games  404  A Software Architecture for Games A Generic Framework For Game Development  WebArchive  Smart Composition Of Game Objects Using Dependency Injection   CBSE in games web-links  sorted by relevancy     Component based objects Wiki  Empty wiki  Evolve Your Hierachy Game Object Structure  Inheritance vs  Aggregation A Data-Driven Game Object System  PDF  A Data-Driven Game Object System  PPT  Component-based prototyping tool for flash Theory and Practice of Game Object Component Architecture  404  Entity Systems are the Future of MMOs ogre3d org forum  Component Based Objects gamedev net  Outboard component-based entity system architecture gamedev net  Entity System question Brainfold entity-system blog  WebArchive

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