[Adonthell-devel] Rendering, for the 1000st time

[Kai Sterker]

With fresh motivation, here is another go. I have the algorithm,
implementation is in progress. But better have it checked for flaws
first.

The general principle is that (a) objects don't intersect and (b) need
to be rendered from "back" to "front". Rians idea of doing a simple
depth-sorting based on the distance to the view plane did not work,
because of large objects. My own idea of checking if objects overlap
others and only draw those that do not overlap anything failed,
because of implementation flaws.

Now here's a proposal that combines the two :-).

Project the shadow of each object onto a common plane to check for
overlap. If two objects do overlap, use their distance to the view
plane to figure out which one's above and below. The algorithm then
goes as follows:

Pick an object and compare it against all other objects. If it ends up
not overlapping any of those or is the "lowest" object, it can be
drawn and removed from the queue. If provision (a) holds and the
implementation is correct, there should be no chance for deadlock. But
I'd still implement a safety check for that case.

As usual, I'll let you know how it goes. Wish me luck! ;-)

Kai