Components are being used in most modern game engines. My favorite (because of it makes sense to me is the PushButton Game Framework). I like the design behind it. So when faced with developing a game using Cocos2D, I tried figuring out how to approach it architecturally.

Cocos2D is a fairly mature framework and you might as why put something on top of that. I had the choice between choosing a Model View Controller Architecture and a Component (Composition Approach). I chose Components easily. I’ve only been working with the framework for a few days but I have already got that “wow” that makes more sense now feeling.

For example, here is some code to add a entity with a sprite renderer:

_entity = [[BBREntity node] retain];
BBRImageRenderComponent *renderComponent = [BBRImageRenderComponent node];
[renderComponent loadImageFromFile:@"test_image.png"];
[_entity addComponent:renderComponent name:@"Render"];
_entity.position = ccp(100,100);
[self addChild:_entity];

And then here is how you add a touch component to it to make it do something when you click on it:

_entity = [[BBREntity node] retain];
_entity.name = @"Entity 1";

BBRImageRenderComponent *renderComponent = [BBRImageRenderComponent node];
[renderComponent loadImageFromFile:@"test_image.png"];
[_entity addComponent:renderComponent name:@"Render"];

BBRTouchEntityComponent *touch = [BBRTouchEntityComponent node];
[_entity addComponent:touch name:@"touch"];

_entity.position = ccp(100,100);

[self addChild:_entity];

Simple huh. Each entity is added to the layer and that added to the scene. You can see the similarities to the PushButton Game Framework ;P

I have also implemented a way to add/remove/dispatch events inside of components plus a hash lookup system to manage entities.

Next on my list is to implement some audio components then I can start using it to build my game. Unfortunately no physics components yet because the game I am working on doesn’t need it.