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Show HN: Evolved.lua – An Evolved Entity Component System for Lua

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55 points blackmat | 3 comments | 21 May 25 15:46 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source

I'm excited to announce the first release of my library, evolved.lua!

evolved.lua is a fast and flexible ECS (Entity-Component-System) library for Lua. It is designed to be simple and easy to use, while providing all the features needed to create complex systems with blazing performance.

Enjoy!

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cmovq ◴[21 May 25 16:52 UTC] No.44053425[source]▶
> Components are stored in contiguous arrays in a SoA (Structure of Arrays) manner, which allows for fast iteration and processing

Does this actually matter in Lua? Aren’t all array elements going to be pointers to heap allocated objects anyways?

The point of SoA is your likely to be accessed values are adjacent in memory, but if you’re chasing a pointer to get that value then you’re not getting anything out of it.

replies(2): >>44053600 #>>44056559 #
1. blackmat ◴[21 May 25 21:40 UTC] No.44056559[source]▶
Yes, organizing components as SoA can provide a significant performance boost in Lua, especially with LuaJIT. Both iteration and element access become faster, and it also reduces memory allocations and GC pressure when creating entities. And yes, Lua tables can be contiguous in memory if you use them carefully.
replies(1): >>44059087 #
2. dicytea ◴[22 May 25 05:42 UTC] No.44059087[source]▶
Do you have any published benchmarks?
replies(1): >>44059930 #
3. blackmat ◴[22 May 25 08:21 UTC] No.44059930[source]▶
Comparative benchmarks are a big task on their own, and usually the author's library wins in them. I have internal benchmarks in the repository, but they are not designed for comparison or for evaluation by outsiders. Maybe I'll get to that someday.

As for the SoA approach, here you can find a small and exaggerated example: https://luajit.org/ext_ffi.html