Parenting supported by gates, more to come

[Anticept]

Some of you will have noticed that there is a new checkbox in the gates which is selected, or should be selected, by default. Parenting. It is still in extensive testing, but recommended that people start using this (with nocollide selected) instead of welding.

This video will explain why with the netgraph: Wiremod Gate Parenting - Xfire Video

Also, as you won't really see from the video, but can infer it, you can't black-hole easily with parented props.

It's not without a couple issues however:
1) You can't dupe parented objects with the child prop without one of the symmetrical constraints (like nocollide). Just keep nocollide on, and this won't be an issue.
2) You can only pick up groups of props by grabbing the childmost prop. Grabbing a parented object has no influence on the child prop's physics, so it would be like grabbing a frozen object. Note that a child object is actually the object you parented TO, not the object that is "parented."
3) Parented objects are basically no-collide with anything. They even go through brushes and the world's edge (need to test: will this cause crashes with max sized maps?)
4) Possibly breaks tracing. Works fine with wiring, but does this break other things?
5) You might have welding auto-selected from previous runs. You have to unselect parenting to be able to toggle welding. This is a garrysmod bug that really isn't a bug, just a side effect, as ticked boxes are remembered across startups.
6) We don't seem to have a way to REMOVE the parent constraint in the WireSVN... yet. However I do believe the easy precision stool from PHX can.
7) Possible crash bug related to repeated parenting with the same props, but needs verification.

[Syranide]

1) You can't dupe parented objects with the child prop without one of the symmetrical constraints (like nocollide). Just keep nocollide on, and this won't be an issue.

Why don't we just force nocollide if parenting is set?

[Tolyzor]

I can't remember which ones, but some parenting tools allow you to grab the child prop, which would be useful for this.

This is pretty cool though, gates may yet make a comeback!

Will the multiplayer gate quotas be increased for parented gates?

This could really be an option for every wiremod entity actually, collisions aren't usually needed for them.

[Anticept]

Why don't we just force nocollide if parenting is set?

There shouldn't ever be a typical reason for unselecting it, but this is gmod. We aren't always typical.

[LimEJET]

Has anyone looked into the Super Parent Multi STool? It has some kind of physics added to the parented props. It works great, so see if you can contact the author about using the technique if it's good and fast enough.

[Tolyzor]

Has anyone looked into the Super Parent Multi STool? It has some kind of physics added to the parented props. It works great, so see if you can contact the author about using the technique if it's good and fast enough.

Ah, yeah that's the one I was thinking about.

[feha]

Divran, this is a grat thing you just did. Best part is its a checkbox (as I usually parent all props with a secondary stool to a single prop).

Hopefully the regular sandboxers (spacebuilders usually already do this) will realise the use of parenting and use it for most stuff, and if not, atlest use the checkbox to reduce amount of lag anyway.

[Divran]

Next step is adding this for E2. I'll try to remember to get started on that tomorrow. The E2 parent checkbox should be unchecked by default, though, imo.

[Colonel Thirty Two]

If you parent an e2 to something can you update it's code?

[Divran]

If you parent an e2 to something can you update it's code?

Well I could still click gates when they were parented... so why not E2s too?