Entity Component System for HUD and GUI

Posted by Jason L. on Game Development See other posts from Game Development or by Jason L.
Published on 2014-03-08T15:10:57Z Indexed on 2014/06/07 15:41 UTC
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Filed under:

architecture

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entity-system

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component-based

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hud

This is a very rough sketch of how I currently have things designed. It should, at least, give an idea of how my ECS is currently designed.

current architecture

If you notice in that diagram, I have basically split the HUD out of the ECS. They have their own set of things (HudLayer, HudComponent, etc) and are handled differently. This is where I'm struggling, though.

There are many different instances in which the HUD will need to know about entities. Not just data changing (I have an event dispatcher for that), but the actual entity and all it encompasses. There are also situations where entities will need to be able to query the HUD for data. Let's take a couple examples:

First, my equipment screen. On here I can change the equipment on a character (Entity). In order for this to happen, I need to know about the entity. At least I think I do? How can I handle this?
The second scenario involves my Systems needing to query a HudComponent for data. A specific example would be my battle system. Each "team" is given a 3x3 grid they can move around in. See here:

Skills target these cells, and not the player, so I would need a way for my systems to determine which cells are occupied and which are not. Basically I need a way for two way communication between Systems and my HUD. I know it's recommended (by some people, anyways) to take your HUD out of the ECS. Is that appropriate in my case?

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