Sunday 18 May 2008

EntityFragments - multi-roaming EntityInstance parts

"An EntityInstance can be fragmented to roam in specific fragments around, and these fragments can rejoin the entityInstance." - for specific tasks and goals EntityInstances will split themselves up into fragments. A base fragment is created upon EntityInstance setup, then later the Instance can create other smaller fragments of the base fragment or unite two fragments. For example a town's fighter group instance can decide to go for a trip around waging war against the enemies of the town. This EntityFragment is very low on contained data, restricted to size and RoamingBoundaries plus a special followingEntityMembers list that contains those NPCs that decided to follow the fragment for a while.

This all will serve as a small physical memory consuming solution for different multi placed operations of an EntityInstance. All the related codes were refactored this afternoon in SVN. A huge step in defining the game logic concept of entities. (I've even removed subEntities list of the EntityInstance class, because no hierarchy will build up of entityInstances, it would be an unnecessarily detailed Entity granulation! Instead EntityInstances consist only of small information containg fragments, and EntityInstances can join alliances or higher level integration groups coded in specific purposeful classes). More such concept definition will follow I'm sure.

Like EntityRelations, it has already been added to EntityInstance class, serving as relation quality storage for inter-entityInstance relations.

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