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Best Practices
Daan van Yperen edited this page Jun 1, 2019
·
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Some conventions and best practices while using odb.
- Use
int
entities and API calls, instead of the legacyEntity
API calls. - Beware the intricacies of the entity lifecycle.
- Subscriptions are frozen during system processing and do not reflect deleted or new entities.
- Consider using Fluid-Entities, but only if you hate typing.
- Put data in components, behavior in entity systems.
- Strive for reusable components.
- Limit the amount of component fields. A component with position, rotation, sprite limits the use cases of the component.
- Avoid repeating the same information across multiple components.
- Use entity references judiciously. They go stale when you delete them elsewhere and cause bugs.
- Consider letting odb manage entity references for you.
- Consider referring to entities via identifiers like tag or group.
- Or manage the references via a system or manager by listening in on the EntitySubscription.
- Use prefabs or Entity-Transmuter for high volume creation of entities, like particles.
- Prefer component mappers over Entity-Transmuter in other cases.
- Consider using IDE Code Templates for adding component mappers quickly.
- Consider skipping the
Component
class name suffix. You'll be typing component names a lot. - Strive for primitives, strings and simple data as component fields. This is easier to persist and network.
- Mark components with unserializable information with
@Transient
. - Beware altering deleted entities.
- Favor small systems over less systems.
- Avoid initializing in system constructors.
- Avoid a deep system hierarchy, keep it flat.
- Operate on entity subscriptions using IteratingSystem.
- Implement supporting services using BaseSystem.
Always look for ways to decouple systems.
- Put code with multiple call sites in dedicated utility Pojo's or systems.
- Avoid coupling systems whenever possible.
- Avoid coupling systems that operate on entities.
- Consider decoupling systems using singleton components or events. (pass data, don't chain behavior).
- Beware the performance of creating aspects at runtime.
- Avoid creating aspects in tight loops.
- Use the aspect annotations over
Aspect.all
builder whenever possible.
Fastest (and verbose) way to iterate entity identifiers:
IntBag entities = subscription.getEntities();
int[] ids = entities.getData();
for (int i = 0, s = entities.size(); s > i; i++) {
// do something with ids[i]
}
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