[RELEASE] e:getWirelink()

[kna]

He means some wired doors or doors from SBMP pack.

[Rybec]

The door idea brings up an interesting point. With this, you can make something to control an indefinite number of things without having to declare an unknown number of inputs.
Going back the the factory idea, you could create swarms of objects that can either all do the same thing, or individually receive different orders from a main controller.

Chronus could probably do some stuff with indefinite inputs, too. Like control more than one turret/weapon, organizing all of them into an array (can you put wirelinks in an array? If not, why not? Probably useful only if this gets added, though.), and then loop through that array to fire them all at once.

[Magos Mechanicus]

I actually already made something that could use an unknown number of inputs, where I did first try to use an array of wirelinks to handle indefinite outputs. In the end, I used a select() statement so adding a thruster only needs 5 keypresses, but an array would a lot less work to customize (only one wirelink input, link it to each thruster sequentially to add it to the list).
I guess the main thing in the way of this is that you're using a wire after the wire has been cut, which doesn't really fit with the wire feeling.

[TomyLobo]

I guess the main thing in the way of this is that you're using a wire after the wire has been cut, which doesn't really fit with the wire feeling.

...or without a wire ever existing.

PS: select() is a function ^^

wirelinks dont go into arrays, but they do go into tables.

[Rybec]

Table would probably be more useful anyway, minus the fact that you can't remove an entry. (Or does setting an entry to 0/""/vec() and the like clear it?)

[TomyLobo]

yes, setting an entry to its type's zero element removes it.

[kna]

...or without a wire ever existing.

Wireless connection
In fact, as wirelinks and entities in gmod lua are the same, why not allow free conversion in both ways, not only wirelink->entity?

[Rybec]

I think it's also worth noting that people will still wire things. Not everyone will use this, and those that do will only go through the effort of it on projects where it makes sense to do so, similar to how not every project is made with wirelinks now. I only use wirelinks if I have a lot of wiring to do or if I'm using wirelink-specific functions like writeString(), or I need to be able to get the entity of the component, and I believe this is true of most wirelink users.

[TomyLobo]

I already used E2 instead of welds, so...

[kna]

What do you mean? Anyway, you did it wrong. E2 can't weld things. And applyForce is not as stable as normal weld is.