System
In our Thang Component System architecture, the Systems fulfill three roles.
- Systems are unto Levels as Components are unto Thangs. For example, if I want my Level to have gravity, I add the
MovementSystem and configure its gravity to 9.81 m/s^2. - They also serve as namespaces for the Components. As an example, the
PhysicsSystem doesn't actually do anything on its own yet, but it was a good place to putphysics.PhysicalComponent, which controls the size, shape, rotation, and position of all physical Thangs. - They can coordinate behavior across those Components. For example, the
CollisionSystem will look at all the Thangs which have thecollidesproperty set and update its Box2D-based collision simulation once per frame, instead of each Thang with aCollidesComponent trying to figure out its own collision interactions.
You can also live-edit the code for any System directly within the Systems tab of the Level editor, just like in the Component example. The same caveat applies: because we don't yet safely sandbox System code and haven't quite finished those permissions, you can't actually edit System yet as a non-admin. So to edit them and add new ones, [install the local server](Developer Environment) and create a local account there, which will automatically be an admin account. Then [send us](Developer Organization) the System edits for review and addition to the live site.
To see all the entity data for, say, the Movement System, I can just go to http://localhost:3000/db/level_system/movement.