Drawing order

[Max aka Moscow Dragon]

Is drawing order fine in current Exult?
Have you re-discovered the original one?
Is the ordering code chunk-by-chunk or global?

I did some reverse-engineering of the native U7.EXE from SI/SS - that New Year IIRC (I even have the byte offset in SI/SS EXE of the function which compares the shapes) - and can say that it is based on TFA.DAT only. SHPDIMS.DAT is used only to determine whether the item is visible at all.

[drcode]

It's not perfect, but it's pretty good. I remember looking at the code you discovered back then, and concluded that it was an implementation of a Zbuffer for culling objects that don't need to be painted. We don't do that, but it doesn't seem to matter (much:-)).

[Lord Rat]

Except for the wheat mill in Paws . . .

[Max aka Moscow Dragon]

...for drawing order are:
- LB castle. Especially the NE corner tower and nearby trees.
- Empath Abbey.
- Xenkan monastery entrance.
- Shrine of Enthusiasm, the maze.

[drcode]

The mill has an animation problem, but I think the static drawing order is okay there.

[Lord Rat]

Rock on.

[Colourless]

What animation problem? Where???? Tell me so I can fix it.

-Colourless Dragon

[nadir]

You must be using an old version. The CVS snapshot doesn't have any problems with the mill in Paws.

[Lord Rat]

I updated my snapshot two days ago, but Ill check again later today.

[drcode]

It could be that I have my FPS set faster than my machine can handle with the Eagle scaler. But it always looks like the mill wheel drops a frame on each iteration. And I think it's always done that, even before Colourless' (<-note the correct spelling) improvements.

[Lord Rat]

So, the animation issue (for thou info, Colourless Avatar)

On the mill in Paws, it will draw the mill, draw the dough (or whatever it is) on top, then draw the mill again, so that the dough flickers quickly for an instant.

I, too have my fps at the highest setting. (And even that feels a bit too slow)