Elephant Game Framework

UPDATED WIKI: Home

shrt — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 19:51:55 GMT

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IMPORTANT

This project has been discontinued, but source remains in case someone wants to see an implementation of a component based entity systen (as described in the Game Programming Gems book series).

UPDATED WIKI: Home

shrt — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 20:43:41 GMT

Navigation:
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Introduction

What is it

Serving as the foundation for any game project, from prototype to the real deal, Elephant is a small and lightweight game framework that offers an aggregation based approach to composing, and managing game objects.
Its goal is to provide developers with a quick, easy, robust and flexible foundation to produce game prototypes, or even fully-fledged games.

How does it work

Elephant uses a component-model structure in which you visualize the world as a collection of entities and an entity as a collection of components (behaviors/functionalities). This concept is known as aggregation (entities are aggregates of components), and is an alternative to the old, most commonly used, way of inheritance where a complex game will end up with deep hierarchies of heavily specialized game objects.

Through the component-model implementation we force functionality out of all these specialized game objects, and move it into smaller, more maintainable, independent and self-contained components that will then offer the specific functionality - ready to serve as part of an entity.

Why is it useful

Since the system allows for run-time composition of entities and great re-usability of components, a world of data-driven goodness opens up.

By implementing your game idea using Elephant, you will achieve:

Easily maintainable code
Great re-usability of code, without introducing redundancy
Run-time composition of entities
Data-driven possibilities

Links

References

Game Programming Gems 6, 4.6, "Game Object Component System"

Other

Mick West, "Evolve Your Heirachy" (great explanation)
OTEE Unity3D, http://unity3d.com/ (great inspiration)

UPDATED WIKI: Home

shrt — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 08:56:27 GMT

Navigation:
Home / Documentation / Showcase / Tutorials Examples

Introduction

What is it

How does it work

Why is it useful

Easily maintainable code
Great re-usability of code, without introducing redundancy
Run-time composition of entities
Data-driven possibilities

Links

References

Game Programming Gems 6, 4.6, "Game Object Component System"

Other

Mick West, "Evolve Your Heirachy" (great explanation)
OTEE Unity3D, http://unity3d.com/ (great inspiration)

UPDATED WIKI: Archives

shrt — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:43:52 GMT

Archived News

August 12th, 2007

Added a Showcase page, showing off some projects using the framework. :)

July 14th, 2007

Documentation is now available in PDF. Link can be found in the navigation menu. :)

UPDATED WIKI: Home

shrt — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 14:42:42 GMT

Navigation:
Home / Documentation / Showcase / Tutorials Examples

Introduction

What is it

Elephant is a small Game Framework, currently set with a focus on game development through Microsoft XNA.
Its goal is to provide developers with a quick, easy, robust and flexible way to produce game prototypes, or even full-fledged games.

How does it work

Why is it useful

Easily maintainable code
Great re-usability of code, without introducing redundancy
Run-time composition of entities
Data-driven possibilities

Links

References

Game Programming Gems 6, 4.6, "Game Object Component System"

Other

Mick West, "Evolve Your Heirachy" (great explanation)
OTEE Unity3D, http://unity3d.com/ (great inspiration)

Source code checked in

shrt — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 09:34:29 GMT

* Changed namespaces in Elephant.Utility, so that you only have to reference Elephant.Utility.Components and not each sub-category.

CREATED ISSUE: Add feature to allow parameters in dependencies

shrt — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 11:43:35 GMT

Components that are specified as dependencies must implement an empty constructor, and thus removing the possibility to pass parameters to a dependency upon construction.

This is currently due to limitations on attributes used on classes; you can't pass most stuff. Primitive datatypes are accepted, but stuff like Vector3.Zero is not.

NEW POST: using XML for scene loading an saving

shrt — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 13:14:24 GMT

Yea, I used that in an early iteration, and it worked pretty good. However there were one major flaw with that approach; the Serializable attribute is not inherited, so it was not enough just marking EntityComponent with it. You had to mark every single component. Because of that I ditched the idea temporarily, but it is definitely something im gonna implement again at some point, when I get a better idea for a solution that is flexible enough to work for any component.

:)

NEW POST: using XML for scene loading an saving

adribeiro — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 01:09:09 GMT

Hi,

Why you not mark all game components with Seriable attribute and use XMLSerializer for save or loagind tha scene graph?

Source code checked in

shrt — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 23:20:24 GMT

* Added some xml files to SpinningPyramid sample, showing how to use the newly added xml template feature.

Source code checked in

shrt — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 18:48:53 GMT

Fixed an issue with EntityComponent.Start() not being called in certain scenarios. Added CreateFrom method in EntityFactory to create an Entity from an XML template. Added EntityTemplateReader. Added EntityTemplate. Added ComponentTemplate. Added UsingMaterials sample.

CLOSED TASK: Add material component

shrt — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 09:27:00 GMT

The material component should, at its core, just be storing an Effect (shader). This might seem like a waste, but would provide a way of encapsulating certain shader specific code away into a component.

This is just an idea, and might not work/be useful in practice.
Comments: Component available from 1.2.1 and later.

CLOSED TASK: Add factory method to create entity from (xml) template

shrt — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 09:23:13 GMT

Ability to compose entities from an editable file would ease editing of entities/components without changing any code, and thus make the system even more data-driven.
Comments: Feature will be available from 1.2.1 and later. \o/

COMMENTED TASK: Add factory method to create entity from (xml) template

shrt — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 11:38:41 GMT

Update: current solution works perfectly fine, as long as no structs are involved - which is not good enough.

CLOSED ISSUE: EntityComponent.Start() is never called in certain scenarios

shrt — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 11:27:30 GMT

EntityComponent.Start() is never called if component is added to an Entity after entity construction or after game initialization.
Comments: Fixed as of 1.2.1 or later.

CREATED ISSUE: EntityComponent.Start() is never called when component is added

shrt — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 19:10:16 GMT

EntityComponent.Start() is never called if component is added to an Entity after entity construction or after game initialization.

COMMENTED TASK: Add factory method to create entity from (xml) template

shrt — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 11:30:47 GMT

Damn Field/PropertyInfo.SetValue on value types..

CREATED TASK: Add factory method to create entity from (xml) template

shrt — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 11:28:41 GMT

Ability to compose entities from an editable file would ease editing of entities/components without changing any code, and thus make the system even more data-driven.

NEW POST: Physics, AI, Networking, etc... support

adribeiro — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 14:11:01 GMT

shrt wrote:
Hi,

Implementing some basic components wrapping functionality of, for example, a physics library is definitely a possibility and likely a good idea. However, as of now I prefer to have Elephant and Elephant.Utility as "lightweight" as possible, meaning they will only contain the most standard stuff.

As for the idea about InputService, I have actually done that and was using such a service for my editor application (it had a property letting me know if focus were on the window or on a dialog). But using such a service requires that the user always adds this service, and always uses it in his components instead of just polling Mouse/Keyboard.GetState() directly. If only there were a way of hiding/replacing Mouse/Keyboard it would be way more plausible having such a service.

I'll mark this as a work-item, to keep myself reminded. :)

Hi,

i agree with you about InputService. The architecture aggregation based simplify, but i have a question about this, several time, we need detect mouse collision with mouse, you think in simplify this work? Or you will create a Gui service like a http://aaronkm.blogspot.com/index.html?

NEW POST: Physics, AI, Networking, etc... support

shrt — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 11:31:25 GMT

This discussion has been copied to a work item. Click here to go to the work item and continue the discussion.

Elephant Game Framework

UPDATED WIKI: Home

IMPORTANT

UPDATED WIKI: Home

Recent News

Introduction

What is it

How does it work

Why is it useful

UPDATED WIKI: Home

Recent News

Introduction

What is it

How does it work

Why is it useful

UPDATED WIKI: Archives

Archived News

UPDATED WIKI: Home

Recent News

Introduction

What is it

How does it work

Why is it useful

Source code checked in

CREATED ISSUE: Add feature to allow parameters in dependencies

NEW POST: using XML for scene loading an saving

NEW POST: using XML for scene loading an saving

Source code checked in

Source code checked in

CLOSED TASK: Add material component

CLOSED TASK: Add factory method to create entity from (xml) template

COMMENTED TASK: Add factory method to create entity from (xml) template

CLOSED ISSUE: EntityComponent.Start() is never called in certain scenarios

CREATED ISSUE: EntityComponent.Start() is never called when component is added

COMMENTED TASK: Add factory method to create entity from (xml) template

CREATED TASK: Add factory method to create entity from (xml) template

NEW POST: Physics, AI, Networking, etc... support

NEW POST: Physics, AI, Networking, etc... support