Adding sub-entities to existing entities. Should it be done in the Entity and Component classes?
- by Coyote
I'm in a situation where a player can be given the control of small parts of an entity (i.e. Left missile battery). Therefore I started implementing sub entities as follow.
Entities are Objects with 3 arrays:
pointers to components
pointers to sub entities
communication subscribers (temporary implementation)
Now when an entity is built it has a few components as you might expect and also I can attach sub entities which are handled with some dedicated code in the Entity and Component classes.
I noticed sub entities are sharing data in 3 parts:
position: the sub entities are using the parent's position and their own as an offset.
scrips: sub entities are draining ammo and energy from the parent.
physics: sub entities add weight to the parent
I made this to quickly go forward, but as I'm slowly fixing current implementations I wonder if this wasn't a mistake.
Is my current implementation something commonly done? Will this implementation put me in a corner?
I thought it might be a better thing to create some sort of SubEntityComponent where sub entities are attached and handled.
But before changing anything I wanted to seek the community's wisdom.
