[Gzz] About renderables and vobs

[Asko Soukka]

Hi,

I'd like to move OvalBgVob's GL drawing into librenderable (e.g. making
dicing possible in the future). For renderables its also easier to drawn
fixed sized borders. A few questions about this:

- How should any color information be given to a renderable? Currently
  the only examples are my TDecor and SimpleConnection renderables, who
  both get four floats (red, green, blue, alpha) as their constructor
  parameters. Exact, but long parameter lists don't look very good.
  AFAIK those should work also without color information
  (using 'default color'), so I needed a shorthand for both of them.

- There are currently no "BgVobs" implemented as renderable. How should
  I implement drawing "solids" (those colored stripes or sectors, when
  cell is marked, or selected by cursor etc..)? Should the renderable be
  only the basic form and those colored subareas are drawn on the Java
  side of the Vob? Or should I create renderableVob, which somehow gets
  solids as its constructor parameters and draws them on C++ side.

Drawing solids on the Java side sound better, but it makes difficult to
use the current fast implementation for OvalBgVob with colored stripes.
Currently the oval shape is done by drawing  a quad strip with an oval
texture inside it. Unsing alpha levels the quad strips are outside the
oval is not drawn and also colored stripes can be drawn as quad strips
(exactly like for the RectBgVob). If now the background and solids are
drawn separately it could be difficult to use backgrounds alpha like
before.

I'm doing circle renderable drawn by triangles anyway, but still the
texture way is faster and at least for drawing ovals it's much easier.

-- 
Asko Soukka     | Taitoniekantie 9 A 603 | address@hidden
+358-40-8235947 | FIN-40740 JYVÄSKYLÄ    | http://www.iki.fi/asko.soukka/