v0.8.5

[richardbiely]

This release brings many stability improvements. Memory and address sanitisation tests were extended and as a result new bugs could be discovered and fixed. Internal support for SoA types was brought 99% on-par with ordinary AoS structures.

New features

Iterator view index

Performance of views can be improved slightly by explicitly providing the index of the component in the query.

ecs::Query q = w.query();
q.any<Something>().all<Position&, Velocity>();

q.each([](ecs::IterAll& it) {
  auto s = it.view<Somehting>(0); // Something is fhe first defined component in the query
  auto p = it.view_mut<Position>(1); // Position is the second defined component in the query
  auto v = it.view<Velocity>(2); // Velocity is the third defined component in the query
  ....
}

Batched entity creation

Many entities can be added or duplicated at once, now. This is more performant than creating entities one by one.

// Create 1000 empty entities
w.add(1000);
w.add(1000, [](Entity newEntity) {
  // Do something with the new entity
  // ...
})

// Create an entity with Position and Velocity.
ecs::Entity e = w.add();
w.add(e, position, Position{0, 100, 0});
w.add(e, velocity, Position{0, 0, 1});

// Create 1000 more entites like "e".
// Their component values are not initilazed to any particular value.
w.add_n(e, 1000);
w.add_n(e, 1000, [](Entity newEntity) {
  // Do something with the new entity
  // ...
});

// Create 1000 more entities like "e".
// Their component values are going to be the same as "e".
w.copy_n(e, 1000);
w.copy_n(e, 1000, [](Entity newEntity) {
  // Do something with the new entity
  // ...
});

New Contributors

• @abeimler made their first contribution in Fix some Compiling Errors #20 - this is the first-ever community contributor :)

Release notes

Fixed:

• compiling Errors by @abeimler in Fix some Compiling Errors #20
• various possible compilation issues on different compilers 18d55d7 69d7ea1
• component comparison fallback function would only compare one byte 541ade3
• reset thread handles when changing the number of workers 91524bb
• variable hiding in Roguelike example a16300b
• broken member function detection a813211
• broken reflection for size+data serialization 6e09cb0
• incorrectly done unit test check for serialization 6e09cb0
• wrong way to delete chunk memory with GAIA_ECS_CHUNK_ALLOCATOR disabled 4601dd4
• uninitialized chunk memory when building with GAIA_ECS_CHUNK_ALLOCATOR disabled b3e3ae0
• component cache items never deleted 4601dd4
• World::copy_n could access invalid memory fc6b94f
• wrong paths in build_clang.sh ec4d7b6
• span not throwing asserts 1d65f73
• data alignment in containers 1f32ccd
• use launder to make sure unnecessary optimizations don't happen to pointers inside placement new area 9364cf7
• defragmentation wouldn't move data around 5eae076
• defragmetantion could cause a crash 5eae076
• World::cleanup leaves the world in an unusable state ea0f0e6 e3255d9
• full SoA support brought up-to-date with AoS 02d51ea cca7f6f

Changed/tweaked:

• no need for entity record lookup for new entities d344cb5
• entity creation modified df5d73b
• ECS iterators passed by reference from now on 59be1d2 5354961 295a171
• Improved performance of adding/moving entities 7f6ce62
• World::bulk renamed to World::build 1c94118)
• World::set(Entity) renamed to World::acc_mut(Entity) 1c94118
• World::get(Entity) renamed to World::acc(Entity) 1c94118
• entity setters now return a reference to data (AoS) or the data accessor object (SoA) 1c94118 73913af
• extended sanitization 4601dd4
• ComponentCache::clear made hidden from users ac198f4
• archetypes keep their index in the list for fast lookup during removals 0d3a770
• simplified archetypes tracking during defragmentation 5eae076

Added:

• batch add/copy for entities d5db488
• Docker SSH e4500bd
• VSCode recommended extensions ff5c76a
• extra flags enabled for clang compilation 5474c37
• accessing iterator data via query item index 8d35525 03a4e9d 8f54d58 9e6fc74 e157d70
• App benchmark f6efa22 f9eafc9

Full Changelog: v0.8.4...v0.8.5

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This discussion was created from the release v0.8.5.