jeffcampbellmakesgames
commented
4 years ago With the addition of blueprints a new component API was added for Entities for Copy_ComponentName_To that enables a developer to copy the members of an existing component to an entity as a new component or a new one or an existing one.
Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
Currently, the API for modifying components on an Entity involves passing all of the properties of that component into a method either adding that component or replacing an existing component.
This works alright for components with one or two fields, but after several fields this can be a bit exhausting, particularly if you only want to modify one or two fields.
Describe the solution you'd like
Ideally, there should be a way to be able to modify a subset of a component's fields without needing to call either Add or Replace with the superset of all of that component's fields AND still have the appropriate Events be called for Adding, Replacing, or Removing a component and work with component pooling. There are a couple of options to look into:
For all of these options, their internal implementation would obey the same logic rules for events, pooling and require additional unit tests to verify that.
Describe alternatives you've considered It is possible right now to get an existing component and modify one or two fields directly on it without calling Entity methods for Replacing, but this can only be done in this context and it does not trigger events for the entity's component being updated.