Component/Script deactivation

[Alienhead]

I was doing some thinking on the topic brought up in discord the other day it has me rather bothered...  regarding calling to many components.

I started looking over my own project and realized that 80% of the time component is out of range. Now I do a SetHidden(true) when that happens but If I understand correctly the update() and hooks() still get called?

I have a simple solution, self.entity:DeactivateComponenet(true/false)

For the 100's of objects on a map that arent even being used, seen or reacted with - this seems like a great waste of resource to me. We could simply turn the component OFF so the engine don't make calls to it - then turn it back on when it's in range or whatever the designer sees fit.

I personally,   can see major room for optimization with such an ability

[Alienhead]

Let me through out an example.

I have a map with a terrain on it, and plenty of stuff going on, underneath theres a tunnel that goes to a large cave area. Well inside the cave area I have hundreds of scripts/components for doors, particles, etc.etc..  

Now these are constantly getting called ( update() or whatever ) and Im not even in the cave.  It would be easy to build a custom function that checks player distance to component and then re-activate the components when I enter the cave..  

Just an  example... but ..

 

[Josh]

This is something I have considered. Something like Entity::SetUpdateRange(), and you would need another command to indicate where the "center" of the update region is. It can't just be the camera position, because multiple cameras are supported.

[Alienhead]

That would work to, or just the plain vanilla option to deactivate and reactivate the component on our own, I myself would prefer creating my own function to handle on/off's... for different scenarios.

 

[Alienhead]

I have a solution to do this now, but I did not want to start implementing it if there is a upcoming engine remedy.

[Josh]

I think it might work right now if you just do this:

function thing:DisableUpdate()
	self.temp = self.Update
	self.Update = nil
end

function thing:EnableUpdate()
	if self.temp ~= nil then self.Update = self.temp end
end

 

[Alienhead]

What about other hooks ?

 

[Alienhead]

My idea was to save it to a table on mapload, complete remove it from the scene, then monitor the table and positioning and load it back in when ready.  

[Alienhead]

But now I think about it, thats not really good... some components need to accumlate variables and datas and such..  Just need to freeze the entire module and go about your business !