December 2024 Workshop Release Notes

[Denneisk]

What's this... a Wiremod release notes?

Well, yes! After taking brief vacation, I'm back to inform you on how much Wiremod has changed!
It's been a while, and there's been so much cool stuff added since I last informed you, so hopefully you'll enjoy the word count of this one. Consider it an early Christmas present! And, yes, I will be starting from after the April update, just to be comprehensive.

E2

E2 has been busy these past few months! With so many additions, I'm going to cover the 4 big ones, spanning all kinds of new features.

SENT Spawning

This has been a long time coming: being able to spawn Wiremod entities (and, optionally, other entities) using Expression 2. Well today that comes with DeltaMolfar's sentSpawn collection, providing a full suite to spawn entities and get some very needed information for setting up certain entities, all through E2.

christmas.tree.mp4

And, for server owners, don't worry—the system is wide open for you to modify or disable, and it runs the proper checks before doing anything—but hey, at least throw us a bone and let us spawn buttons, eh?

Collision Tracking

Another long-desired feature, tracking collisions! This one comes from DerelictDrone, starring trackCollision. Passed only an entity, the function will expect the new entityCollision event to trigger. Passed an entity and a function, it will only use that callback for collision handling. In addition, some getters for collision tracking status are also added, naturally.

Hologram Animations

From community member unknao we have animations added to holos! This features a port of the Wire Extras holoanim extension into the main hologram extension, providing holoAnim to run animations as well as many getters and setters for animation information and poses. And if that wasn't enough, we also added some extra holo functions such as holoBonemerge and holoParentBone to really seal the deal.

dancing.gman.mp4

Callback Timers

Finally, after months of procrastination, these have finally been added. Also thanks to DeltaMolfar, this update introduces how timers should have always been, with an extensive suite of timer functions all utilizing callbacks.

These need little explanation, but to keep everyone on the same page, never use the old timers ever again. These are far more intuitive to use. For a quick refresh, here's an example of how to convert to the new system:

# Old system
timer("name", 1234)
if(clk("name")) {
	doSomething()
}
# New system
timer("name", 1.234, 1, function() {
	doSomething()
})

That should explain enough on why you'd want to use these. In addition, there's also various new functions to play with the values of these new timers.

CPU

CPU has also been thriving during this time! Although development isn't as riotous as E2's, there's been some neat stuff that I'll go over briefly.

DARRAY

DerelictDrone, our resident CPU necromancer, has resurrected yet another lost ZASM function. DARRAY, from its single reference in a comment, apparently was meant to draw (D) to the screen an array (ARRAY) of pixels. DerelictDrone has implemented this and the examples are pretty sweet.

wirecpu.rendertest.128128.mp4

If you like what you see, consider trying your hand at ZCPU! It's actually quite easy to get started, and you'll be sure to impress every E2 user!

---

Besides these relatively big changes, we also have various smaller additions that you'll be able to see in the changelog, and, of course, many bugfixes and improvements all over Wiremod. I'm very proud of the work that's been accomplished and our community's contributions since I last spoke, and I hope you'll enjoy every part of it, even if you don't notice most of it.

Finally, I'd like to officially welcome @wrefgtzweve as our latest Wiremod developer. Congratulations! We hope you'll enjoy the added responsibilities and blame that comes with it.

Full changelog:

Wiremod

Additions

• Added Vehicles [ARRAY] input to Wire Camera Controller to set multiple target vehicles (community contribution from deltamolfar)

Changes

• Refactored the Pod Controller (community contribution from thecraftianman)
• Optimized some parts of Wiremod (community contribution from thecraftianman)
• Wire User now passes itself as the caller when performing a use action (community contribution from Bonyoze)
• wiremod_force_workshop will default to loading Canary branch if it does not detect the server is on the Workshop branch
• Optimized overlay visbility logic (community contribution from thecraftianman)
• Creating a Wire Motor can now be cancelled
• Increased Wire entity execution limit from 4 to 8
• Remote Controller SWEP avoids running if its owner is invalid
• EGP HUDs only network to connected players now
• EGP now uses compression when networking
• Minor optimization with colors (community contribution from Astralcircle)
• Pod Controller simulated use action now calls PlayerUse hook
• Cleaned up code related to hint notifications (community contribution from Astralcircle)
• Minor cleanup and optimization to the base Wire entity (community contribution from Astralcircle)

Fixes

• Fixed Friends List would only output up to 4 players
• Fixed error involving Wire Teleporter tracking invalid objects
• Fixed errors caused by BeingLookedAtByLocalPlayer
• Fixed an error with the debugger when viewing E2s with types that did not have a debugger formatter
• Fixed a small mistake when rendering E2 tables in the debugger
• Fixed an error with the Wire tool trying to use a NULL entity
• Fixed a conflict with Contraption Framework and the Wire Camera Controller (community contribution from LiddulBOFH)
• Fixed issues caused by the Wire Map Interface (community contribution from Grocel)
• Fixed Wire tool would error when rendering wires with a NULL entity
• Fixed Sound Emitter would not stop its current sound when changing
• Fixed errors with NULL players in the Wire Pod Controller (community contribution from Astralcircle)
• Fixed the Wire Eye Pod would spam every player with a certain error (community contribution from Astralcircle)
• Fixed potential NULL error with looking at Wire entities (community contribution from Astralcircle)
• Fixed Hydraulic tool would spuriously error on the client (community contribution from Astralcircle)
• Fixed errors with Pod Controller being invalid when updating data (community contribution from Astralcircle)
• Fixed Pod Controller would stay active after the player exits a pod at the same time as entering it

Expression 2

Additions

• Added sentSpawn functions to spawn various SENTs with propcore (community contribution from deltamolfar)
• Added trackCollision collision tracking functionality to propcore
• Added holoAnim functions to animate holograms (community contribution from unknao)
• Added timer(..., function) functions that utilize callbacks (community contribution from deltamolfar)
• Added holoBonemergeandholoParentBone` functions for attaching holos to bones
• Added assertSoft functions that only assert on strict chips (community contribution from deltamolfar)
• Added isStrict() to check if the current chip is in strict mode (community contribution from deltamolfar)
• Added wire_expression2_entity_trails_max to limit how many trails an player can make (community contribution from deltamolfar)
• Added trailsLeft(), trailsCount(), and trailsMax() to query the amount of trails that can be created with said convar (community contribution from deltamolfar)
• Added entity:parentToAttachment to allow parenting an entity to an attachment directly (community contribution from unknao)
• Added entity:propNoDupe function and getters to handle whether entities can be duped (community contribution from deltamolfar)
• Added printCaption functions to display Source Engine subtitles to the player
• Added entity:ragdollGetAng() for symmetry with ragdollSetAng
• Added entity:propSleep(number) to toggle whether an entity is physics sleeping (community contribution from Astralcircle)
• Added table:copy() to shallow copy a table
• Added holoLocalPos and holoLocalAng to set holo local pos/ang
• Added _WIREVERSION and _WIREVERSION_STR constants to represent current Wiremod version
• Added wire_expression2_getowner to allow servers to dictate if Entity.GetOwner should be used for ownership when CPPI fails
• Added descriptive error for client-server version conflicts with the file extension (community contribution from Zvbhrf)
• Added descriptions for the EGP convars

Changes

• Optimized the hologram extension
• Optimized parts of the egpfunctions and egpobjects extensions
• Optimized and cleaned up the E2 file browser
• entity:use() now passes the E2 chip as the caller (community contribution from Bonyoze)
• Updated the default E2 file (community contribution from deltamolfar)
• Updated ranger whitelisting to use Gmod built-in whitelisting (community contribution from Fasteroid)
• Improved internals to handling trails in E2 (community contribution from deltamolfar)
• Improved deprecation hints and descriptions for various deprecated functions (community contribution from deltamolfar)
• Improved the way screen size is tracked in EGP
• Replaced a useless local in constraintcore (community contribution from Astralcircle)
• sound extension now checks that sounds exist on the server before playing
• Modularized the E2 helper and editor to allow better external compatability
• holograms extension now errors when trying to use NaN (community contribution from Zvbhrf)
• Replaced deprecated functions in the editor (community contribution from Astralcircle)
• Minor optimization with ownership checks in E2 (community contribution from Astralcircle)
• Minor clean-ups to the debug extension
• Minor optimization to the effects extension (community contribution from Astralcircle)
• Changed output of tostring(bone) to cope with internal changes
• Reverted bone:index() to a slower alternative
• Improved performance and readability of wire_holograms_display_owners (community contribution from Astralcircle)
• Rewrote table:clone() to be faster and severely reduce dynamic op cost
• Modified table extension to be safer with performance
• @autoupdate now errors when defining it more than once, and warns when placing text after it
• Optimized out some redundancy in color extension (community contribution from Astralcircle)
• Made propcore eye target and flex functions less strict

Fixes

• Fixed an issue when removing and creating an EGP object at the same time
• Fixed #includes with E2 errors would cause a Lua error
• Fixed constant _TAU could break the number extension on older servers
• Fixed an error that could randomly occur when creating an E2
• Fixed an error where E2 would try to be created with NULL player
• Fixed CPPI would not initialize after reloading E2
• Fixed vector2:toAngle() was accidentally defined as a function instead of a method
• Fixed entity:armor() would error on NPCs (community contribution from Astralcircle)
• Fixed spurious warning from functions defined in #included files (community contribution from deltamolfar)
• Fixed clearing text on EGP text objects
• Fixed playerUse event would not account for simulated uses properly
• Fixed issues with bone extension invalidating bones spuriously
• Fixed entity:ragdollSetAng(angle) would always rotate relatively
• Fixed EGP Circle Outlines wouldn't render when increasing their line width
• Fixed entity:getFlexes() could return a number
• Fixed NULL EGPObjects would be considered not an EGPObject
• Fixed @autoupdate could cause network disconnects and crashes
• Fixed certain table functions would break certain objects

Removals

• Deprecated timer(string, number) and interval(number)

CPU

Additions

• Added the ability to use custom RAM and ROM size
• Added the ability to change the form of IP followed in the debugger or disable following
• Added displaying CS:IP and PHYS IP to debugger
• Added ability to proxy a failed privileged instruction
• Added MEMRQ = 6 to avoid writing to the CPU's memory
• Added performance information to ZVM test suite with zcpu_tests_benchmarking
• Added DARRAY instruction to draw an array of pixels

Changes

• MOD now interrupts on division by 0
• Modularized the CPU Helper

Fixes

• Fixed jumping inside Lua function defined instructions
• Fixed examples loading on Workshop version
• Fixed LOOPB would end on -1 instead of 0
• Fixed CPU would try to run code in memory that it couldn't access
• Fixed link to ZCPU documentation
• Fixed R0 to R31 would act as memory access instead of registers

API

Additions

• Added WireLib.SoundExists to check if a sound exists on the server
• Added E2Lib.EGP to access EGPLib. This will eventuall replace the global EGP
• Added EGP.HookPostInit for internal use in EGP to run code after EGP loads

Changes

• WireLib.GetVersion now returns a number and string representing version, as well as optimizing its internals
• Rewrote EGP objects library
• E2Lib.registerConstant now throws a soft error instead of a Lua error on bad input
• E2Lib no longer redefines itself in case it's defined before it loads
• Updated netstream and increased its timeout to 30 seconds
• Optimized WireLib.hud_debug (community contribution from Astralcircle)

Fixes

• Fixed error with von deserializing nan or inf numbers

Removals

• Deprecated global table EGP