Methods to Get/Set dynamic material attributes on entities

[azy-1]

Problem

Materials can be made vastly more dynamic and interactive through the use of dynamic material attributes. This has many applications in custom games, such as composing an entire interface out of custom materials that players can then interact with, and changing the appearance of a material based on some state.

Currently, the only way to manipulate the dynamic material attributes on entities is by firing the "SetRenderAttribute" and "ClearRenderAttribute" inputs on the entity directly through i/o:

Instance.EntFireAtTarget(entityHandle, "SetRenderAttribute", "attributeName=value");
Instance.EntFireAtTarget(entityHandle, "ClearRenderAttribute", "attributeName");

There are also the inputs "SetRenderAttributeFloat", "SetRenderAttributeVector", and "SetRenderAttribute4Floats", but I haven't tested these.

Proposal

Additional methods on the base Entity class that serve as ways to get, set, clear, and check for the existance of dynamic material attributes by operating directly on the Entity handle itself.

Here's a rough example implementation:

export class Entity {
  /**
   * @param {string} attributeName
   * @returns {any}
   *
   * Checks the entity for the specified attribute and returns its value if it exists.
   */
  GetRenderAttribute(attributeName: string): any;
  /**
   * @param {string} attributeName
   * @param {any} value
   *
   * Set an attribute on the entity to the specified value.
   */
  SetRenderAttribute(attributeName: string, value: any): void;
  /**
   * @param {string} attributeName
   *
   * Returns true if the specified attribute exists on the entity.
   */
  HasRenderAttribute(attributeName: string): boolean;
  /**
   * @param {string} attributeName
   *
   * Clears the specified attribute from the entity.
   */
  ClearRenderAttribute(attributeName: string): void;
}