A world that ticks

In the last chapter, we covered the idea of the Update pattern. When using the Update pattern, we design with the philosophy that lots of different types of classes need to execute code on each frame. To achieve this, we will use an update function or, in the case of Unreal, a Tick Event. This pattern provides a fast way to make things happen, which is why it has a certain gravity, pulling many learning resources into leaning on it heavily. The volume of learning materials doesn’t make this a good idea, but it does allow systems to be propped up quickly, thus making learning from resources like this easy to understand. The problem lies in the seeming loss of understanding, over the cost of relying on this method. When we place any nodes or lines of code under the purview of tick, we need to remember it runs once per frame. On modern machines this equates to an average of 60 times a second, but it can vary depending on hardware, which is an important consideration...