FLECS - The Fast Lightweight Entity Component System (C/C++)

Today we are checking out FLECS, the Fast Lightweight Entity Component System, a cross platform open source C99/C++ 11 based ECS. It can work with other engines like Unreal, Unity or Godot, or can be used in any other project, with bindings for several languages (C#, Lua, Rust, Zig).
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[@isweartofuckinggod]

"it can run on a toaster!"
weird flecs but ok.

[@dadlord689]

Kind of weird that I just have looked on it and now there is a video about it in my feed. WTH?

[@RealPeoplePerson]

Same! Been reading up on it all weekend-and here comes a video!

[@IronKore]

Googles always watching me....

[@blackcitadel37]

They're testing GPT-5. You've been chosen

[@DavidEvans_dle]

Running it on my toaster! Imagine making breakfast.
EntityBread has flourComponent, MilkComponent, YeastComponent...

[@alexs2195]

A toaster cant make bread, it just toast it, its TOASTER

[@jwadaow]

@@alexs2195 The beauty of ECS is you can add a kneading component and bake the entities before toasting.

[@יובלהרמן-ח2ד]

I fill like I'm drowning in tools and concepts lately... really hard to keep up

[@Stowy]

i wonder how it compares to entt

[@averageturtlee]

I was wondering the same thing!

[@theytittylyrics]

Imo Flecs is more fitting for games since it supports hierarchies out of the box

[@Jaynitix]

I've used both and eventually decided to stick with entt despite some appealing aspects of flecs (namely compile times). In flecs performance degrades quickly as fragmentation occurs - it's fine I'm sure if you want to design around that but I very much prefer not having to care about fragmentation with entt.

[@michaelzomsuv3631]

@@Jaynitix What? When's the last time you used flecs? How did you measured these so called fragmentation problems? That just sounds innacurate.

[@Jaynitix]

​ @Michael Zomsuv Only a few weeks ago. It is trivial to reproduce by creating a function to add some number of dummy components to entities to introduce the table fragmentation. My setup was around 80k entities with up to 30 added dummy components. I saw a 4x frametime increase with flecs and no difference with entt (as you'd expect) from roughly the same starting point before adding the dummy components. As I said though, there are ways to design around it and there are various discussions on the flecs discord channel about how you might do that - but for me I'd rather not have to worry about it.
Another way to see this is using the built-in hierarchy system - it introduces fragmentation due to how it represents the child/parent relationships. Just create a lot of entities with fine grained hierarchies.

[@Whag09]

does it run crysis ?

[@snesmocha]

um, do you realize this is an ecs and not a pc right......
edit, meant to say ecs, not game engine

[@eightsprites]

yes

[@ArnCiS96]

It will

[@alec_almartson]

It sounds very interesting to have a game implemented with DOTS (ECS) in UNREAL ENGINE 5.2... how Performant can it get? 😮

[@wanbabigyu]

is there any tutorial about how to use flecs in unity?

[@kodingamedev]

For Unity you would use DOTS to use ECS

[@perelmanych]

I looked at Tower Defense example and it uses only flecs. Does flecs also have some basic rendering capabilities?

[@leonss2356]

no, I guess they just implemented a simple webgl renderer

[@sasichkamega]

Tower defence uses sokol render

[@sweettea-hv1ls]

Isn't it supposed to be engine agnostic?

[@DylanMatthewTurner]

Wow they made Bevy for Rust--

[@2dapoint424]

So who all using FLECS?

[@AloanMoreira1]

seems Hytale is using it

[@Goalatio]

And… deprecated.

[@blazekyn2750]

how so?

[@SomeoneOnlyWeKnow.]

Wdym?