I think there’s two orthogonal things being conflated by you. Flexibility of a solution and how general the solution is.
What you’re basically saying is a solution should be flexible to change because making a game requires trial and error. I totally agree with that.
Using a general solution is one path to flexibility but it does come with a cost associated. It’s flexibility built on a tower of complexity and if you look at a modern ECS implementation that is performant it’s actually quite a lot of complexity. You’re also reducing flexibility in the sense that these sort of solutions generally have preferred patterns you need to fit your game design into. So you end up introducing a learning, maintainance and conceptual burden into the project you might not need.
OTOH if you have a specific problem you can write a specific solution for you will end up with less code, hopefully in a conceptually coherent form. That in itself offers flexibility. Simple code you can easily replace is often more flexible than complex code you need to coax into a new form.
The key is to recognise whether your problem is specific or general you need flexibility.
These architectural patterns are fun to argue over and obsessed over by armchair game developers but are a trap if you’re trying to make a game rather than a general purpose game engine.
Which isn’t to say you don’t want some framework underlying things for all sorts of mundane reasons. But most games could get away with that being an entity type that gets specialised rather than anything more complex.
> I think there’s two orthogonal things being conflated by you.
> It’s flexibility built on a tower of complexity
Agreed with the 'flexibility on a tower of complexity', 100%! :) was trying to not appear too dogmatic by describing is as 'accessible composition'; generally any solution that is 'accessible' is also broad enough that it has as many flaws as benefits, and an ECS definitely isn't an exception.
> These architectural patterns are fun to argue over and obsessed over by armchair game developers but are a trap if you’re trying to make a game rather than a general purpose game engine.
Again, agreed. Speaking from experience as an iterator and rapid prototyper who has used an ECS for years, and has been bitten by the complexity but hasn't been able to beat the flexibility of being able to just write something like `entity->Add<ScaleAnimation>(...)`, `entity->Add<DestroyAfter>(...)`, `entity->Add<Autotranslate>(...)`, `entity->Add<Sprite>(...)` to be quickly and easily create a thing that looks nice, pops in smoothly, moves effortlessly, destroys itself thoughlessly. It lets you move between ideas quickly and then you can pivot to addressing concerns if any show up.
Yeah for sure, I love a good composable approach to entity creation as well particularly when it’s specified in data rather than code. The basic framework for getting that going is extremely lightweight which is fantastic.
What you’re basically saying is a solution should be flexible to change because making a game requires trial and error. I totally agree with that.
Using a general solution is one path to flexibility but it does come with a cost associated. It’s flexibility built on a tower of complexity and if you look at a modern ECS implementation that is performant it’s actually quite a lot of complexity. You’re also reducing flexibility in the sense that these sort of solutions generally have preferred patterns you need to fit your game design into. So you end up introducing a learning, maintainance and conceptual burden into the project you might not need.
OTOH if you have a specific problem you can write a specific solution for you will end up with less code, hopefully in a conceptually coherent form. That in itself offers flexibility. Simple code you can easily replace is often more flexible than complex code you need to coax into a new form.
The key is to recognise whether your problem is specific or general you need flexibility.
These architectural patterns are fun to argue over and obsessed over by armchair game developers but are a trap if you’re trying to make a game rather than a general purpose game engine.
Which isn’t to say you don’t want some framework underlying things for all sorts of mundane reasons. But most games could get away with that being an entity type that gets specialised rather than anything more complex.