Back from the Break

That was a refreshing fall break! Over the past week I re-factored the existing code into the Artemis entity system (which I'm still loving). It was fun to see all of the pieces coming together! I was able to take the pre-existing project (with about a dozen classes) and distill it down to 5 systems and 7 components. That's a significant improvement! Plus, we can now mix/match those 7 components into (potentially) 128 distinct types of objects without involving the coders. I'm sure we'll add more systems and components as we go (fixed magnets are one thing currently missing) but this is COOL!
On Tuesday I committed the code to our git repository and the other engineers have taken it and run with it. I understand that there are a few cool Components in the works. Next up - I need to get moving on the level editor. My first attempt tried to open a Windows Form from the XNA app to add, alter, remove etc entities at run-time. I found that XNA prevents the focus events from firing properly which interferes with a number of controls (notably PropertyGrid). My next attempt will use a Windows Forms application with an XNA rendering window (as described in most tutorials on the subject).