Blog 1: Terms and ECS

On the first week of Game Engine Design our professor, Saad R. Khattak, stated that there are certain terms and concepts that every student must know and must be familiar with.

Terms you must know:

-          Stack: A stack is an area of the computer’s memory that temporary stores variables, and automatically manages memory for you. The size of the stack changes as functions push and pop local variables, but the stack does have a size limit on the variables that it can store. The stack can access variables faster than the heap, but can only access local variables.

-          Heap: A heap is an area of the computer’s memory that temporary stores variables, but does not automatically manage memory for you. The heap does not have a limit on memory size and can be accessed globally, but it is slower to access those variables due to the use of pointers to access the memory on the heap. The heap can cause memory leaks in your program if you do not allocate and deallocate memory properly.

Concepts you must be familiar with:

-          Pointers: The value of a pointer is the value of another object that is stored elsewhere in the computer’s memory using its address.

-          Containers: Containers are classes, data structures, or abstract data type that are used to store objects in an organized way.

-          Iterators: An iterator is an object that enables a programmer to navigate a container.

-          Templates: Template is a feature that allows functions and classes to operate with any data type.

-          Template Inheritance: Template inheritance is a method to manage templates. Template inheritance can inherit contents of one template to another, and can change certain contents.

-          Callback Functions: Callback is part of a code that is passed as an argument to another code, which is then expected to execute in a different point in time.

-          Macros: Macros are a set of instruction that tells how certain inputs should be mapped in order to a replacement output.

-          Algorithms: Algorithms are a list of procedures for calculations.

-          String Manipulation: String manipulation is how to manage or handle a sequence of characters.

Our professor also introduced a topic called "Entity Component System (ECS)".

Entity Component System (ECS)

-          An engine is a data driven design that needs a component and a system to operate. There are three components to the ECS are the entity, the component, and the system.

o   Entity: The entity is a general purpose object, usually only consists of a unique ID.  The entity can be thought to be like a key without a purpose.

o   Component: The component is the raw data for the object, and how it interacts with the world. The component can be thought to be like the characteristics to give a key a purpose.

o   System: Each system runs and performs actions continuously on every entity that possess the same component with that system. The system can be thought to be like a lock that only works with correct key.