This build essentially has the bare minimum amount of code to load stacks off the Riven DVD edition and render card pictures if a card unconditionally enables one or more pictures…. But it’s a start.Why am I releasing a tech demoI’m making this available essentially to show progress and to allow people to run the program on different hardware (and architectures, hello Intel Mac users!)… It gives me a new solid footing upon which to build the rest.How do I get anything to show upYou need to use the built-in debug shell to first load a stack, then load cards from that stack.

That implies computing a new depth value whenever an element is enabled, and eventually a complete re-quantization of all enabled elements when you reach the upper bound of the dynamic range of your depth values.Finally, depth testing doesn’t solve the what to render problem entirely. Indeed, depth testing can be used to filter out “too far” objects, but you need to define your “far plane” or “depth clipping value” and initially set the depth value of all your primitives to that cutoff threshold.The texture problemIf you recall from the previous entry, one of the big advantages of depth testing is the ability to render a large number of primitives in one OpenGL operation (using vertex arrays and the likes of glDrawArray) that share common state properties…. Typically, a 3D model will be made of a few sub-sections, each of which is made of n primitives and one texture (or a few with multitexture) that will be applied to all the primitives using each primitive’s texture coordinates.

Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software fame wrote an entry today about warnings and how we dutifully ignore them. I share his concerns wholeheartedly. There is nothing more frustrating than compiling a project (of seemingly good quality on the web) only to be bombarded with all manners of warnings to the point the important stuff just slips by unnoticed.