Google Summer of Code Project!

Hi everyone! This summer for Google Summer of Code, I’ll be refactoring the Destination Sol code to use Entity-Component-System (ECS) architecture, so that it’ll be easier to build upon and modify. ECS architecture uses composition, rather than inheritance, so that it’s easy to add or remove functionality.

Google Summer of Code is a program run by Google to encourage university students to partake in open source development. Students write project proposals, and if the proposal is accepted, work on implementing that goal over the summer.

ECS design uses classes called components that represent small pieces of functionality. For example, in order to construct a ship with a shield, an entity would be given a ship component and a shield component. If, at a later point, the ship loses the shield, then the shield component would simply be removed. However, if the ship with a shield was constructed using inheritance (i.e. the ship-with-a-shield class inherited from ship), then it would be very difficult to remove the shield dynamically.

Gestalt is an ECS library that is also made by the Terasology Foundation, which I will make use of for this project. With it, I’ll be creating an ECS-based version of what is currently the SolObject interface. I’ll also use it to refactor asteroids, ships, and more.

For more details, look at my project proposal. My project starts on June 1 and ends on August 24. I’ll post here about my progress every other week. I’ll also post on my forum thread. The overall project status can be found here, and the more detailed status can be found here. My code can be found here.