ECS to me is a subset of the binary relational data model & first order logic. Or at least expressible entirely in those terms.
An in-memory system optimized high performance munging of such relations, with super optimized joins etc. would be invaluable I think in game dev (or anywhere else seeking to declare and manage complex relationships in real time). Basically... Datalog for games... on a tick clock
But from what I've seen game developers often re-invent the wheel, or formulate things in very specific terms for performance reasons.
I do think Tim Sweeny is sorta grasping at bringing some DB concepts into games when he talks about bringing e.g. software transactional memory (STM) to game dev.
Fwiw my colleague is the author of https://github.com/wotbrew/relic and he started working on Incremental View Maintenance ~purely because he wants to build a simpler rogue-like :)
I like this a lot, though I'd rather see it in Rust.
The tarpit paper is a classic.
I've had similar thoughts about roguelikes etc. after watching my teenage son play DwarfFortress. Seems to me such a game could be written nicely & declaratively in these kinds of terms.
Right, that's where (at least for me) questions like, "What do we have to learn from Datalog?" feel interesting even if there answer is nothing. Maybe I'm hopelessly naive, but losing that naivete is a process of learning.
