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Unity owned ECS patent uses techniques described in 2013 Stack Exchange post (github.com)

submitted 10 months ago by sirdorius to c/gamedev

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The 2013 StackExchange post [^1] describes what is now commonly called an "archetype" based ECS architecture that was implemented as compile time archetypes in the author's open source project in Feb 2018 ^3. A similar ECS model was described later in the June 2018 patent filed by Unity ^2 and active since 2020.

It's useful to bring visibility to the issue for the inevitable patent trolling that will occur in the future.

References: [^1]: https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/58693/grouping-entities-of-the-same-component-set-into-linear-memory/

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The patent wouldn't be for any ECS; it would have to be for a specific implementation. The post may match the implementation, and invalidate the patent, but just being an ECS wouldn't be enough.