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Version: 0.6.0

Untold Engine Architecture

The Untold Engine is built on a data-oriented Entity–Component–System (ECS) architecture. This design keeps the engine simple, performant, and easy to extend as your game grows.

Entities​

Entities are nothing more than lightweight IDs. They don’t hold behavior or state themselves—think of them as labels that tie everything together.

Components​

Components are plain data structures that describe what an entity can do. They hold no logic, only data. For example:

  • LocalTransformComponent → position, rotation, scale
  • RenderComponent → what model to render
  • PhysicsComponent → mass, velocity, collision data
  • AnimationComponent → animation clips or state

These default components give you rendering, physics, and animation support out of the box.

Systems​

Systems are the logic layer. Each system runs every frame, looks for entities with specific components, and updates them. For example:

  • The PhysicsSystem finds all entities with a PhysicsComponent and updates their motion.
  • The AnimationSystem updates entities with an AnimationComponent.
  • You can also create custom systems, like a DribblingSystem that updates a player’s dribbling behavior using a DribblingComponent.

Extending the Engine​

During game development, you’ll often want to extend a character or object with new abilities. You can do this by:

  1. Creating a new component that defines the data you need.
  2. Creating a system that processes that component and applies the logic.

This separation of entities, components, and systems keeps the code modular and flexible. To add new features, you don’t need to modify the engine core—you just add new components (data) and systems (logic).

Take a few moments to familiarize yourself with the Untold Engine's default systems and how to extend functionality by implementing custom components and systems.

You can develop your game with or without the Untold Engine's editor. The default components are visible through the editor. However, custom components won’t be available by default. To make them available, please see the section on Custom Components & Systems.