[ECS] Reference an entity to another entity

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Hello there,

I am currently trying to learn using the ecs. For my current project i want to build a tree-like structure. In normal OOB this would be easy but slow since the tree might get quite large. So there is a 'HeadNode' and 'Node' entities. Each should be able to hold a reference to multiple 'Node' Entities.

One possiblity might be an array of entitys as a component on the "parent-entity" though i can't find the right types to introduce that as an component.

I am so far not able to find any useful information on this topic... Most posts are with a deprecated API or use some kind of ID-System as a workaround.

I'd be grateful for any information if this is even possible in ecs or if there is a method that might help me here. Let me know if you need more information on the project/problem.

Thanks in advance!

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Best Answer

Answer by Captain_Pineapple · Jul 30, 2019 at 03:07 PM

For anyone intrested:

this is solvable by adding a DynamicBuffer to the entity. The type of this buffer has to be a struct that implements IBufferElementDatawhich can have a member to hold an Entity.

basically like this:

 [Serializable]
 public struct ChildBuffer: IBufferElementData
 {
     public Entity childNode;
 }

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martygrof3708 · Feb 06, 2020 at 07:52 PM 0

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So does this component hold a single entity or a collection of entities?

Captain_Pineapple martygrof3708 · Feb 20, 2020 at 10:02 PM 0

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basically just one, but you should be able to extend this to multiple entities. Sadly you can not use arrays in there if i remember correctly.

michael_house Captain_Pineapple · Feb 06 at 04:59 PM 0

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An IBufferElementData is an element in a DynamicBuffer. In this case the DynamicBuffer is the collection of ChildBuffer, each of which holds an Entity.

[ECS] Reference an entity to another entity

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