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ECS Primer

Introduction​

ExcaliburJS ECS Tutorial Series: Introduction Welcome to ECS in ExcaliburJS

If you’ve ever wondered how modern games organize everything from enemies and bullets to UI elements, you’ve probably heard of ECS — Entity Component Systems. ECS is a way of structuring game code so it’s modular, scalable, and flexible, without the headaches of deep inheritance hierarchies.

ExcaliburJS embraces ECS principles in its core design. Understanding ECS is the key to making clean, maintainable, and fun games with Excalibur.

What You’ll Learn in This Series​

This tutorial series breaks ECS down step by step:

  1. Page 1 – ECS Fundamentals: Learn what ECS is, why it matters, and how it compares to traditional object-oriented game design.

  2. Page 2 – Components: How to create your own components, attach them to actors, and keep your data clean and reusable.

  3. Page 3 – Systems: How systems drive your game logic, query entities, and respond to component state.

  4. Page 4 – Systemless Components

By the end of the series, you’ll understand how to design game features using ECS, make your code modular, and create behaviors that are easy to expand and maintain.