Path: chuka.playstation.co.uk!news
From: Robert Swan <rs108@mdx.ac.uk>
Newsgroups: scee.yaroze.programming.3d_graphics
Subject: ordering table cheat
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1998 15:00:02 +0100
Organization: I wish!
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Been messing around with otables to try to reduce overlap.

usual solution =

gssortobject4( &ground, &otable[], 16-otablelength);
gssortobject4( &player, &otable[], 16-otablelength+1);

which means the player gets put in the otable with the apparent depth
that is half o what it really is.

+ve points = you can control what gets put in front to some degree
-ve points = messes up badly in a lot of cases.

What i always wanted was a way of doing more suble things than that, ie,
placing the player in the otable a few priorities ahead of what it
should be, and i think i found the solution (see other post asking why
it doesnt cock up though!)

for example, you want to sort the ground as normal, but the player 5
priorities closer than the ground

this is also only for one frame (cant be bothered to copy everything
else out twice for double buffering!)

#define	otable_length	(10)
#define player_offset	(5)

GsOT		otable_header[2];
GsOT_TAG	otable_array[(1<<otable_length) + player_offset];

otable_header[0].length = otable_length;
otable_header[1].length = otable_length;
otable_header[0].org = &otable_array[player_offset];
otable_header[1].org = &otable_array[0];

gsclearot(&otable_header[0]);

// set up, now for the drawing commands -

gssortobject4( &GROUND, &otable_header[0], 10-otable_length);
gssortobject4( &PLAYER, &otable_header[1], 10-otable_length);

// end of crappy code

when you have finished your registering of drawing stuff, ony draw
otable[0] and voila, the result i wanted. Im using this in my gduk stuff
on three levels, ground, objects and characters and it gives exactly the
reults i wanted (even though i expect it to do something wrong).

Hope this helps people like it did me

Robert Swan
rs108@mdx.ac.uk