Entreri

Entreri is a data-oriented entity-component framework designed for high performance applications and games. It scales well to tens of thousands of instances, in both memory and performance, and fits data models that require many similar objects of the same type, objects needing runtime aspects , and combinations thereof.

Using annotation processing over component interfaces, the underlying is packed into primitive arrays to improve cache locality. Fly-weight proxy instances are then used to access the packed data. Other advanced features include runtime decoration of components with new data, and a multi-threading oriented task API to process the entity system.

Java's garbage collection can move objects around, hurting locality when using Object arrays or collections. By using primitive arrays or buffers storing managed data in blocks, all of your game data will be automatically stored in a cache friendly, and iteration friendly manner.

In off-the-cuff performance tests, garbage collection in other entity-component frameworks could cause performance to slow down by a factor of 2 to 4, while Entreri remained consistently fast (pre-GC performances near identical).

Maven

Entreri can be easily added to a Maven project with the XML snippet below. The Eclipse plugin, m2e, can be used for Maven/Eclipse integration.

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.lhkbob.entreri</groupId>
  <artifactId>entreri</artifactId>
  <version>1.7.0</version>
</dependency>

Release Notes

1.7.0

• Drastically simplify Component definition by using interfaces and APT.
• Remove IndexedDataStore to consolidate property package.
• Make Component, Entity and EntitySystem interfaces and hide their implementations in an impl package.
• Remove ComponentData. Types now extend Component directly as sub-interfaces. The onSet() method has also been removed, but the same functionality can be used with the @SharedInstance annotation.
• Component proxy implementations generated at build time using an annotation processor.
• Add as(Class) to get components from entities with vivifying behavior, and add has(Class)->boolean as a convenience to check for component presence.

1.6.1

• Remove Entity.getIfModified() method because its semantics were vague and unhelpful.
• Make version numbers unique within a component type.
• Simplify isEnabled() and getVersion() logic for invalid components.

1.6.0

• Completely replace old Controller API with a multi-threading oriented Task and Job API.
• Add versioning to components so that properly implemented types report when their data is changed.
• Entities and components can now be owned by each other (and other types implementing Owner), allowing components to be grouped together and have the same lifetime automatically.
• Add Required annotation to support component type dependencies. When a component is added to an entity, all required components are also added, and are owned by the initiating component.
• Improve toString() methods for Component and Entity.
• Add SharedInstance documentation annotation for when unmanaged instances are reused by a ComponentData instance.

1.5.3

• Improve performance in default Property implementations by restricting them to a single primitive per component (removing a multiply and add on access).
• Expose multi-element supporting IndexedDataStores that were previously hidden inside the provided Property implementations.
• Simplify Phase enum and usage to not need ALL value.
• Fix bug with time delta calculation.
• Improve Result API in ControllerManage to not cause a type explosion.
• Add @Clone attribute to allow more flexibility in PropertyFactory.clone() without requiring you to implement an entire PropertyFactory.

1.5.2

• Improve PropertyFactory API to better support custom Property definitions that want to define new annotations to control default behavior, etc.
• Replace Controller data storage using Key objects with a simple Result API that allows Controllers to express interest in data and have that injected using custom interfaces defined by the computing controller.

1.5.1

• Add protected onSet(int) method to ComponentData to better support ComponentData's that rely on unmanaged fields for caching.
• Add functionality to estimate memory usage by component type.
• Update ControllerManage to record run time performance of each controller, for the last executed frame.
• Changed the no-argument process() method in ControllerManager to use the real change in time from the last frame, instead of a fixed time delta.