Loading Namespaces

Components have to be registered before any Entity can give them, and before a save can be deserialized. That registration has to happen at startup, once, for the whole program — there is only one "position". Utils.loadNamespace is that setup as a function.

A table of paths

Works in any Lua. Each path is required; the last segment of the path becomes the key in the namespace table:

local Components = {}
Concord.utils.loadNamespace({
  "game.components.position",
  "game.components.velocity",
  "game.systems.body",
}, Components)

-- Components.position is whatever that file returned

Each file should call Concord.Component(...) or Concord.System(...) at require time. The return value is optional; you only need the namespace table if you will look Systems up by name.

If you omit the namespace argument, the files are still required. That is enough when all you care about is registration.

A directory (LÖVE)

Pass a directory path and Utils.loadNamespace uses love.filesystem to require every .lua file in that folder (not recursive):

Concord.utils.loadNamespace("components")
Concord.utils.loadNamespace("systems", Systems)

This form needs LÖVE. In plain Lua, or if you need nested folders, pass a table of paths instead.

When to load

Load Components before you spawn Entities or deserialize. Load Systems before addSystem. Making a Game inlined everything in main.lua; once the project has more than a handful of files, a namespace load in love.load (or at the top of main.lua) is the whole setup.

See also

• Utils.loadNamespace
• Serialization
• Components Guide