So for those of you building Entity Systems out there...I have a question about design. I think for the game I'm working on it would be a great system to use given all the "exceptions" my rules for units seem to have so being able to have componets that I can swap out would be a big benefit to me.

Question is though do you try to treat everything as an entity or keep the "basic stuff" (i.e. title screens, main menus, dialogs, etc) as more traditional classes. I guess what I'm asking is do I need to make like a MenuSystem which acts on MenuComponets and be able to have a DialogComponet (which may be the only thing a given entity had). Or not worry about that and just save the entity system for actual gameplay elements.

I ask because when I look at the various example out there they are all focused on the actual gameplay objects and so I wasn't sure what the "right" way to go about it might be.

I'm sure there is no hard and fast rule here, just trying to get an idea for best practice before I redo everything

Thanks all

Right. Do what makes sense.

But I wonder what benefits there would be to implementing your UI elements as entities. I would think that UI elements are not a part of the game simulation, thus wouldn't be represented by entities within that simulation.

As far as your question about "traditional classes," component/entity systems /are/ traditional classes. They're just a specific way of organizing your relationships between classes. In my opinion if you implement OOP in the manner intended, most of your programs will tend to look like entity component systems in that you avoid deep hierarchies, keep classes small and single-purpose, etc.

Thanks all. Very in line with what I was thinking, but figured I'd check with the experts

and yes smr I know they are "traditional classes"...I ment to seperate them from the way more hierachial class setup which I guess I should have been more specific...

Thanks again

I managed to fit my UI system into my Entity system quite easily. You see all my entities are connected to a script, some entities can be visible (Player) others, invisible (Camera entity). I have my Menu Entity spawned in the world, and in it's corresponding script, I have a binded C++ function I call, something along the lines of;

function OnLoaded() { ShowUI("TestMenu.html");
}