Brooks Patton
I have been working in the IT field for most of my professional career, first as a Systems Administrator at NASA Ames Research Center, as a software developer, and now I am an instructor at Galvanize.
Improve Our Rust Skills
by making an ECS library
But First...Who Am I?
Technical Team Lead at Health Scholars
Worked in the IT industry for over 15 years
Including contracting at NASA as a systems administrator
Live-coding Rust based projects fun visualizations, and tutorials on Twitch.tv
How building an ECS Library will improve our skills?
Game Dev is a different domain
Game Dev is fun*
*your fun amount may vary
What is ECS?
| Player | Enemy | Tree | Another Enemy | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | {x: 100.0, y: 200.0} | {x: 150.0, y: 200.0 | {x: 200.0, y: 750.0} | {x: 450.0, y: 200.0} |
| Size | 100.0 | 50.0 | 800.0 | 50.0 |
| Health | 100 | 10 | 10 | |
| Velocity | {x: 10.0, y: 0.0} | {x: -5.0, y: 0.0} | {x: -5.0, y: 0.0} |
Features
| Player | Enemy | Tree | Another Enemy | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | {x: 100.0, y: 200.0} | {x: 150.0, y: 200.0 | {x: 200.0, y: 750.0} | {x: 450.0, y: 200.0} |
| Size | 100.0 | 50.0 | 800.0 | 50.0 |
| Health | 100 | 10 | 10 | |
| Velocity | {x: 10.0, y: 0.0} | {x: -5.0, y: 0.0} | {x: -5.0, y: 0.0} |
What does a system look like?
We Need a Map
| Player | Enemy | Tree | Another Enemy | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | {x: 100.0, y: 200.0} | {x: 150.0, y: 200.0 | {x: 200.0, y: 750.0} | {x: 450.0, y: 200.0} |
| Size | 100.0 | 50.0 | 800.0 | 50.0 |
| Health | 100 | 10 | 10 | |
| Velocity | {x: 10.0, y: 0.0} | {x: -5.0, y: 0.0} | {x: -5.0, y: 0.0} |
| 00001111 | 00001111 | 00000011 | 00001111 |
|---|
| Location | 00000001 |
| Size | 00000010 |
| Health | 00000100 |
| Velocity | 00001000 |
A Use for BitWise Operations
fn main() {
let location_mask = 0b00000001;
let size_mask = 0b00000010;
let mut map = 0;
// We insert a location for the entity
map |= location_mask;
dbg!(map);
// Next we insert a size for the entity
map |= size_mask;
dbg!(map);
}Querying
2 Step Process
Figure out which entities match the query
Get the components for the matched entities
Clone but Still Have the Original?
All without unsafe
We can store Any type!
Yes, even Rust has an Any type*
*It's really a trait
Deleting
Just update the map
What can we create with this?
Questions
level up our rust skills by building an ecs
By Brooks Patton
level up our rust skills by building an ecs
Gamedev can be a great way to level up our skills. In this talk I give the argument that we can build a library like an Entity Component System that can be used in almost every kind of game to help us stretch our skills and also not get burned out.
