specs

Specs is an Entity-Component System written in Rust. It aims for parallel systems execution with high ergonomics and flexibility. The name can be interpret in a number of ways:

• "SPECS Parallel ECS"
• "Super Powerful ECS"
• "Special ECS"

Classification

According to ECS Design Crossroads, specs fulfills all the requirements, has In-place modification updates, and Generational ID entities.

Features

• Automatic execution of the systems in parallel. Follows Rust ownership rules, where each component storage behaves as a variable. Depends on the order, in which systems are started.
• Component storage is abstract behind the trait. One can use vectors, hashmaps, trees, or whatever else.
• New components can be registered at any point from user modules. They don't have to be POD.
• No virtual calls, low overhead.

Why is it fast

• Do you know many other natively parallel ECS in Rust?
• Abstract storage means you can choose the most efficient one according to your needs. You can even roll in your own.
• No virtual calls during systems processing means you work with the data directly.

See ecs_bench for single- and multi-threaded performance comparisons.

Why is it cool

• Your system can be as simple as a closure working on some components, no redundant info or boilerplate is needed. At the same time, you can manually fiddle with entities and components, and it would still be safe and convenient.
• Your components can be anything (as long as they implement Component)! Neither Copy or even Clone bounds are needed.
• Your component storages can be anything. Consider crazy stuff like a BSP tree, or a database over the network. Some storages can safely allow sharing their components between entities, some can not - but it's up to you to choose.

Examples

Entity creation

let mut planner = {
    let mut w = specs::World::new();
    // All components types should be registered before working with them
    w.register::<Position>();
    w.register::<Speed>();
    // create_now() of World provides with an EntityBuilder to add components to an Entity
    w.create_now().with(Position(0)).with(Speed(2)).build();
    w.create_now().with(Position(-1)).with(Speed(100)).build();
    w.create_now().with(Position(127)).build();
    // Planner is used to run systems on the specified world with as many
    // threads as virtual cpus
    specs::Planner::new(w)
};

System run

In order to run a system, you can either use a convenience-function (runXwYr) or a custom one (see below in the section "Custom system" and the examples in the /examples directory). Convencience-functions are used to request a defined number of mutable and immutable components on an entity. X and Y stand for the number of parameters respectively. run1w1r will allow you to use one mutable and one immutable component requirement respectively, as you can see below. Run-functions always iterate over all entities of a world with the requested components.

planner.run1w1r(|p: &mut Position, s: &Speed| {
    *p += *s;
});

Custom system

impl System<u32> for MySystem {
    fn run(&mut self, arg: RunArg, context: u32) {
        let mut numbers = arg.fetch(|w| w.write::<u32>());
        for n in (&numbers).join() {
            *n += context;
        }
    }
}