Entity Templates

[genaray]

Background

Would be pretty neat if we could clone entities and its components based on a template which defines its values. Basically a way to create entities with set values. Has many advantages, can be serialized easily and is more effective in many ways.

Idea

Either:

var template = new Template(
   new Position(10,10),
   new Mesh(5, Mode.Batched),
   ...
);

var clone = world.Create(template);

Or using source generation:

[Template]
public struct PlayerTemplate{

   public Transform Transform;
   public Velocity Velocity;
   public Model Modell;
   public ...
   ....
}

var template = new PlayerTemplate(whateverData);
var clone = world.Create(template);

When we choose source generators we could even build more cool constructs around this. Like an extremely efficient identifier mechanic to clone certain templates:

[TemplateStorage]
public struct Templates{

   [Identifier("1:1")]  // Or raw ints e.g. for networking? 
   public PlayerTemplate playerTemplate;

   [Identifier("1:2")]
   public MobTemplate mobTemplate;

   [Identifier("2:1")]
   public FireGolemTemplate fireGolemTemplate;
}

var cloneByIdentifier = world.Create("1:1");
var fireGolem = world.Create("2:1");

[mastertnt]

Is this feature available ?

[genaray]

Is this feature available ?

Not yet, but its still on the roadmap :) Will probably be part of Arch.Extended with its own source-generator and persistence integration ^^

However that could still take a while (need to do query caching first), so if anyone wanna contribute... feel free to :p

[skelitheprogrammer]

Svelto Ecs has interesting implementation, called Entity Descriptor's. Very robust and boilerplate (like many features in Svelto).

[genaray]

Svelto Ecs has interesting implementation, called Entity Descriptor's. Very robust and boilerplate (like many features in Svelto).

It could look similar for Arch. But with less boilerplate code of course ^^