class Engine

package ash.core

The Engine class is the central point for creating and managing your game state. Add entities and systems to the engine, and fetch families of nodes from the engine.

Constructor

new ()

Variables

read onlyentities:Iterable<Entity>

read onlyentityAdded:Signal1<Entity>

read onlyentityRemoved:Signal1<Entity>

familyClass:Class<IFamily<Dynamic>> = ComponentMatchingFamily

The class used to manage node lists. In most cases the default class is sufficient but it is exposed here so advanced developers can choose to create and use a different implementation.

The class must implement the IFamily interface.

read onlysystems:Iterable<System>

read onlyupdateComplete:Signal0

Dispatched when the update loop ends. If you want to add and remove systems from the engine it is required to listen for this signal and make the change when the signal is dispatched.

read onlyupdating:Bool

Indicates if the engine is currently in its update loop.

Methods

addEntity (entity:Entity):Void

Add an entity to the engine.

Parameters:

entity

The entity to add.

addSystem (system:System, priority:Int):Void

Add a system to the engine, and set its priority for the order in which the systems are updated by the engine update loop.

The priority dictates the order in which the systems are updated by the engine update loop. Lower numbers for priority are updated first. i.e. a priority of 1 is updated before a priority of 2.

Parameters:

system

The system to add to the engine.

priority

The priority for updating the systems during the engine loop. A lower number means the system is updated sooner.

inline getEntityByName (name:String):Entity

Get an entity based n its name.

Parameters:

name

The name of the entity

Returns:

The entity, or null if no entity with that name exists on the engine

getNodeList<TNode> (nodeClass:Class<TNode>):NodeList<TNode>

Get a collection of nodes from the engine, based on the type of the node required.

The engine will create the appropriate NodeList if it doesn't already exist and will keep its contents up to date as entities are added to and removed from the engine.

If a NodeList is no longer required, release it with the releaseNodeList method.

Parameters:

nodeClass

The type of node required.

Returns:

A linked list of all nodes of this type from all entities in the engine.

getSystem<TSystem> (type:Class<TSystem>):TSystem

Get the system instance of a particular type from within the engine.

Parameters:

type

The type of system

Returns:

The instance of the system type that is in the engine, or null if no systems of this type are in the engine.

releaseNodeList<TNode> (nodeClass:Class<TNode>):Void

If a NodeList is no longer required, this method will stop the engine updating the list and will release all references to the list within the framework classes, enabling it to be garbage collected.

It is not essential to release a list, but releasing it will free up memory and processor resources.

Parameters:

nodeClass

The type of the node class if the list to be released.

removeAllEntities ():Void

Remove all entities from the engine.

removeAllSystems ():Void

Remove all systems from the engine.

removeEntity (entity:Entity):Void

Remove an entity from the engine.

Parameters:

entity

The entity to remove.

removeSystem (system:System):Void

Remove a system from the engine.

Parameters:

system

The system to remove from the engine.

update (time:Float):Void

Update the engine. This causes the engine update loop to run, calling update on all the systems in the engine.

The package ash.tick contains classes that can be used to provide a steady or variable tick that calls this update method.

@time The duration, in seconds, of this update step.