[Adonthell-devel] Rendering progress

[Kai Sterker]

Good news, finally. I got the rendering into a state where it is
working in principle :-). Code is in CVS, so try it out.

Now, unfortunately, there are still a few corner cases where it is not
working out. Those happen when objects intersect. That's something I
didn't think would happen, but reality proved me wrong. So far, I have
identified three instances, where this will happen:

1. When the character is getting close to an object, overlapping of
object and character bounding boxes may occur. This is, because for
the purpose of collision detection, characters are represented by
spheres. If the collision is not along the center of the sphere, it is
possible to move closer to an object than the bounding box would
normally allow.

2. Objects whose model is shaped different from a cube, like the
diagonal wall piece. It is represented by a triangular shape, but for
the purpose of rendering, a bounding box enclosing this shape is used.
So objects or characters can exist inside the wall bbox.

3. There are in fact objects on the map that do overlap. I do not know
if there is a way to avoid this. One example is the diagonal wall
piece and the ground piece that sits on top of that. (cliff-se and
cliff-se-top). Maybe it can be fixed by changing the way both images
have been split. Maybe not.

For all three cases, it should still be possible to figure out which
object is in front and which is behind, which would allow for flawless
rendering.


I also believe that fixing the renderer uncovered a bug in the
collision code itself or -- more likely -- the code that retrieves the
objects to test for collision. It can be observed by moving behind the
poles that support the tall platform. Press 'b' to view the object
bboxes and you'll see that the character basically can walk through
the pole. Again, this causes object intersection and leads to a
rendering issue.

You'll notice the other 3 issues as you move across the map.

I'll continue working on these problems, but if anyone wants to have a
look instead I'd also be happy to move on to other tasks :-).

Kai