Any difference between "actor" and "entity?"

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tepples
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Re: Any difference between "actor" and "entity?"

Post by tepples »

Just pretend there's a little Spirou inside the elevator.
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Sogona
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Re: Any difference between "actor" and "entity?"

Post by Sogona »

"Entity" is the word I prefer over object and actor. I've been using "ent" im my game as an abbreviation. Anything that has it's own logic, and similar variables like X, Y, active, state, etc., falls into this category.

I'd have to check the code, because I forget off the top of my head how exactly I structured it, but I also needed to have metatiles that would need logic themselves but be separate from ents; like for example entrances to caves (which could be abstracted further by just calling them "doors", if they need to be), and sharp grass that can cut the player. I treat these as types of collisions, or interactions, and can have up to 256 of them, and the type is defined in the metatile structure. I use these as indices for a jump table, which is also based off the ent whose logic is currently being processed. That way I can have whatever logic needs to happen as a simple subroutine. If nothing needs to happen for a given metatile, it's just a simple rts.
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GradualGames
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Re: Any difference between "actor" and "entity?"

Post by GradualGames »

While I've been using "entity" in my NES games, I just started using "ntt" for Pico-8, haha. en tee tee. Entity. "Ent" makes me think of one of these:
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Dwedit
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Re: Any difference between "actor" and "entity?"

Post by Dwedit »

Sounds like pico-8 is a living antipattern factory, if it rewards people for picking bad names. This kind of stuff is unacceptable for a potential education tool.
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Punch
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Re: Any difference between "actor" and "entity?"

Post by Punch »

It makes sense to me to use actor to refer to any object that can interact with the world on its own and entity anything that doesn't do anything on its own, at most only respond to stimuli (static props, trigger zones, physics enabled object, etc).
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GradualGames
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Re: Any difference between "actor" and "entity?"

Post by GradualGames »

Dwedit wrote:Sounds like pico-8 is a living antipattern factory, if it rewards people for picking bad names. This kind of stuff is unacceptable for a potential education tool.
Tell that to my nephew who is currently learning programming with it :)
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gauauu
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Re: Any difference between "actor" and "entity?"

Post by gauauu »

Dwedit wrote:Sounds like pico-8 is a living antipattern factory, if it rewards people for picking bad names. This kind of stuff is unacceptable for a potential education tool.
People said the same thing about BASIC. In one sense, they were right, it encourages bad habits and teaches you some of the "wrong things". In another sense, it's a platform that gets kids excited about programming, they learn basic algorithms and concepts, and then (hopefully) move on to doing things more correctly later. So I'm not going to complain.
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