Material extension

[Denneisk]

Suggestion for a brand-new E2 Extension: material or materialcore. Its purpose is quite simple, to create materials.

Would need some restriction to avoid abuse but it should be overall somewhat simple. 16 is probably enough for default but a convar should be used.
The internal name of the material should probably be formatted something like wire_playerAccountID_index.

Sample functions:

• string = materialCreate(index, string basematerial, string shader, table args) advanced format (basically 1:1 of CreateMaterial)
• string = materialCreate(index, string basematerial, width, height, x, y) simple format (shader defaults to vertexlitgeneric)
• materialSetParam(index, string key, string value) sets a single shader parameter

Not sure if the shader parameter will cause any issues, just thought it could be neat.

[vurvdev]

Absolutely shouldn't be index based. Having things be index based was a huge mistake from whoever thought of it first..

I already have an extension that does essentially this, it's for materials from web urls though.

Could potentially get it into wire.

https://github.com/Vurv78/VExtensions/blob/master/lua/entities/gmod_wire_expression2/core/custom/sv_webmaterials.lua

[Denneisk]

Absolutely shouldn't be index based. Having things be index based was a huge mistake from whoever thought of it first..

Fair enough. Just something to protect against collisions.

webmaterials

That's pretty good, but I was thinking something simpler(?) using in-game textures. Maybe could even combine the two.

[vurvdev]

Fair enough. Just something to protect against collisions.

Ofc they will have indexes internally, but that shouldn't be exposed to E2. It's bad design