The first principles examination is you need an array of structs.
If your goal is to ship a product you would use this proven technique. It’s shipped more AAA and small games than any other.
The ECS is a hobby project which solves problems unrelated to your goal. (Making a cool ECS) And because it was not engineered with the goal of shipping you’re sitting on a pile of unknowns when you try to.
Proven technique is an Appeal to Authority. You have offered no real first principal evidence for your claims. Here's some evidence in favor of flecs:
I find value in its reflection and serialization system, as well as it's pipeline API.
Games require far more than a bunch of arrays. The simulation code itself is dwarfed by the UI, VFX, animation and scene layout code. The APIs in Flecs have a lot of value for these "not the core game" use cases.
Conversely, the amount of boilerplate you have to write to stand something up in Flecs is massive. And the use of macros in Flecs APIs tends to break editor auto complete. And the learning curve is very big. And the output code just looks very different from Orthodox C.
Getting nerd trapped fucking around with ECS is a real risk. The rabbit hole goes deep. But the library itself is valuable, powerful and well done.
This is my honest thoughts on ECS systems derived from first hand experience.
No it’s not an ad hominem.
The first principles examination is you need an array of structs.
If your goal is to ship a product you would use this proven technique. It’s shipped more AAA and small games than any other.
The ECS is a hobby project which solves problems unrelated to your goal. (Making a cool ECS) And because it was not engineered with the goal of shipping you’re sitting on a pile of unknowns when you try to.
Proven technique is an Appeal to Authority. You have offered no real first principal evidence for your claims. Here's some evidence in favor of flecs:
I find value in its reflection and serialization system, as well as it's pipeline API.
Games require far more than a bunch of arrays. The simulation code itself is dwarfed by the UI, VFX, animation and scene layout code. The APIs in Flecs have a lot of value for these "not the core game" use cases.
Conversely, the amount of boilerplate you have to write to stand something up in Flecs is massive. And the use of macros in Flecs APIs tends to break editor auto complete. And the learning curve is very big. And the output code just looks very different from Orthodox C.
Getting nerd trapped fucking around with ECS is a real risk. The rabbit hole goes deep. But the library itself is valuable, powerful and well done.
This is my honest thoughts on ECS systems derived from first hand experience.