Elysian Shadows

I'm in the process of building a 2D game engine. I now need to figure out how the components are supposed to communicate. I want to settle for a messaging system but am not entirely sure. How are you implementing component communication?

I absolutely hate messaging systems for this kind of ordeal.

A game is a real-time application in which many, MANY components/subsystems have direct dependencies upon one-another. Encapsulating pretty little messages into strings that are sent back and forth hundreds and hundreds of times per frame is waaay too pricey for my liking.

There is a really good topic on components here: http://elysianshadows.com/phpBB3/viewto ... art=999999