Component Creation

A component in ECS is a little bit more work to set up than when using normal GameObjects. For example, the following is code needed for GoForwardComponent. There are three parts.

• GoForwardComponent - Struct which contains the actual data which will be attached to an entity. For example, this component has to implement ISimpleBaseBehavior in order to be used in a Simple Behavior.
• GoForwardAuthoring - MonoBehaviour which will be attached to the GameObject. It is only used for serialization in the scene.
• GoForwardBaker - Receives the authoring and constructs the entity from it. In this case simply adding the authoring.GoForwardComponent as component.

tip

For more information about components, authoring and baking, visit the ECS documentation.

GoForwardAuthoring.cs

using System;
using SteeringAI.Core;
using Unity.Entities;
using UnityEngine;

// The component which will be attached to an entity, to be used with GoForwardJobWrapper
[Serializable]
public struct GoForwardComponent : IComponentData, ISimpleBaseBehavior
{
    public float Speed; // Custom property for GoForwardComponent
    [field: SerializeField] public SimpleBehaviorData BaseData { get; set; }
}

// Boilerplate
[ComponentAuthoring(typeof(GoForwardComponent))] // needed for the editor
public class GoForwardAuthoring : MonoBehaviour
{
    public GoForwardComponent GoForwardComponent = GoForwardComponent.Preset;
}
    
// Boilerplate
public class GoForwardBaker : Baker<GoForwardAuthoring>
{
    public override void Bake(GoForwardAuthoring authoring)
    {
        var e = GetEntity(authoring, TransformUsageFlags.Dynamic);
        AddComponent(e, authoring.GoForwardComponent);
    }
}

note

The attribute [ComponentAuthoring] lets the editor find the correct authoring to use when adding a missing component. The editor would know that an entity needs GoForwardComponent because the attribute [JobWrapper] declares it on the GoForwardJobWrapper.