[BoorishBears]

I can't even imagine game dev without ECS. There's more performant architectures but it's such a useful mental model for the type of rapid iteration games need that so many people are willing to put up with the drawbacks

[verdagon]

What are some of the more performant architectures?

[BoorishBears]

Data oriented instead of object oriented:

https://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/articles/what-is-data-o...

Instead of treating each object as a collection of components, you can operate on bags of components

So say in you're modeling space invaders:

  every frame: 
    for enemy in enemies              
      enemy.transform.y += 10

The CPU is hopping to a random memory address where your "transform" component is located before modifying it, over and over.

Data oriented would be something like:

    each frame:
      for transform in transforms
         if transform is enemy
            transform.y += 10
         if transform is player
            transform += input 
 

So you get cache locality as you're running through your transforms.

Now imagine if instead of space invaders we're trying to model say blades of grass. Suddenly we go from a very cache unfriendly method to something that's cache friendly, branch prediction friendly, and easy to parallelize.

If you want to experiment with it Unity has some great examples under their new DOTS system

https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/EntityComponentSystemS...

APIs can make data oriented more ergonomic than my contrived example implies, but it's still not nearly as intuitive as ECS imo.

To me data oriented subsystems are fine, but not as a core concept for your game's architecture.