μECS 🕹

A simple & lightweight ECS (Entity Component System) library for JavaScript and TypeScript.

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Overview

μECS (micro-ecs) is a headless library, completely agnostic to any graphics or rendering library.

Traditional ECS architectures excel in low-level contexts with direct memory control (C++, Rust, etc.).
JavaScript doesn't offer this level of control, so μECS takes a pragmatic approach: it brings only the ECS benefits that translate well to a high-level environment, leaving behind optimizations that would require direct memory management.

Design Philosophy

The library is built on three pillars:

• DX-first: Developer Experience is prioritized over raw performance.
  The library doesn't use TypedArrays which would be faster but significantly hurt ergonomics.
  A pleasant API is more valuable than squeezing out every microsecond.
• Familiarity: The API should feel natural to any JavaScript developer.
  This means using recognizable patterns: ES6 classes, getters/setters, pub/sub events, and typical OOP idioms common in the JS ecosystem.
• Speed over Memory: When trade-offs are necessary, execution speed is preferred over memory consumption.
  Using extra memory is acceptable if it yields performance benefits at runtime.

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Features

• World — Central container managing Entities, Systems, Resources, and Services
• Entity — Container for Components, can be enabled/disabled
• Component — Data attached to Entities, with independent enable/disable
• System — Logic operating on entities/components, with priority-based execution
• Resource — Singleton data shared across the world
• Service — A System that can be used as a Resource dependency
• QueryManager — Efficient component queries with cached views
• Contexts — Dependency injection for Systems (WorldContext) and Components (EntityContext)
• Events — Built-in pub/sub system via Publisher

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Installation

# npm
npm install @byloth/micro-ecs

# pnpm
pnpm add @byloth/micro-ecs

# yarn
yarn add @byloth/micro-ecs

# bun
bun add @byloth/micro-ecs

Note: This library requires @byloth/core as a peer dependency.

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Quick Start

import { World, Entity, Component, System } from "@byloth/micro-ecs";

// Define a Component
class Position extends Component {
  public x = 0;
  public y = 0;
}

// Define a System
class MovementSystem extends System {
  private view?: ReadonlyMapView<Entity, [Position]>;

  public override onAttach(world: World): void {
    this.view = this.world!.getComponentView(Position);
  }
  public override update(deltaTime: number): void {

    for (const [entity, [position]] of this.view!) {
      position.x += 1 * deltaTime;
      position.y += 1 * deltaTime;
    }
  }
}

// Create the World
const world = new World();

// Add Systems and Entities
world.addSystem(new MovementSystem());

const entity = new Entity();
entity.addComponent(new Position());
world.addEntity(entity);

// Game loop
function gameLoop(deltaTime: number) {
  world.update(deltaTime);
}

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Architecture

Core Classes

All ECS objects inherit from μObject, which provides auto-incrementing unique IDs.

μObject
├── Resource    — Singleton data, attachable to World
├── System      — Logic with update(), priority, enable/disable
├── Entity      — Container for Components
└── Component   — Data attached to Entities

QueryManager

Efficiently queries entities by component types:

// Get first component of type
world.getFirstComponent(Position);

// Get first entity with all component types
world.getFirstComponents(Position, Velocity);

// Iterate all matching entities
world.findAllComponents(Position, Velocity);

// Get cached view that auto-updates
world.getComponentView(Position, Velocity);

Contexts

WorldContext — Provided to Systems for:

• Event subscription (on, once, wait, off)
• Event emission (emit)
• Resource dependency management (useResource, releaseResource)

EntityContext — Provided to Components for:

• Component dependency management (useComponent, releaseComponent)

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Roadmap

🔴 Critical

Issues that block or compromise production usage.

• Minification-safe type identification

  The QueryManager currently uses Type.name to generate query keys. In minified builds, class names are reduced to single letters (a, b, c...), causing potential collisions between different queries.

  Possible solutions:

  • Numeric registry with auto-incrementing ID for each component type
  • Symbol() associated with each class
  • Decorator or static method that assigns a unique identifier

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🟠 Improvements

Optimizations and refinements that improve quality and performance.

• Automatic View garbage collection

  Implement an automatic clean-up system for QueryManager that detects and removes Views no longer referenced or used, avoiding memory accumulation over time.

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🟢 Future Considerations

Ideas and possible evolutions to evaluate based on needs.

• Object pooling

  Implement a pooling system for Entity and Component to reduce Garbage Collector pressure in scenarios with high creation/destruction frequency (e.g., particle systems, projectiles).

  ⚠️ Evaluate carefully: could complicate the API and go against the project's "DX-first" philosophy.

• Archetypes

  Consider an archetype system to group entities with the same component "signature", optimizing queries.

  ⚠️ In a JavaScript context, the traditional benefits of archetypes (cache locality, contiguous memory) are not exploitable. The cached View system already present in QueryManager covers part of these advantages. Actual utility to be evaluated.

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License

Apache 2.0