Z

Introduction

The Z property controls the absolute Z position of an object. On 3D cameras (Orthogonal=false) , the smaller the Z is, the further away from the camera an object will appear. For information on setting Z in the FlatRedBall Editor, see this page.

Code Example

The following code assumes an empty Screen, and the code is written in CustomInitialize.

// First we'll make a wide sprite:
Sprite sprite = SpriteManager.AddSprite("redball.bmp");
sprite.Width = 100;
sprite.Height = 20;
// And it will have a Z value of 0 (which is the default)
sprite.Z = 0;

// Now let's make another Sprite in front of the first Sprite:
Sprite spriteInFront = SpriteManager.AddSprite("redball.bmp");
spriteInFront.Width = 20;
spriteInFront.Height = 100;
// and it will ahve a Z value of 1, which will put it in front:
spriteInFront.Z = 1;

Z in 2D

The Z value controls the distance of an object from the Camera. When using a 2D Camera (Orthogonal=true), changing the Z will not make objects get bigger or smaller as they move closer to/away from the Camera. Despite that, the Z value still impacts a few things:

• Objects with a Z value smaller than the Camera's near clip plane (by default 39) will not be drawn

• Objects with a Z value larger than the Camera's far clip plane (by default -960) will not be drawn

• Objects will sort with each other according to their Z values (excluding shapes like Circle and AxisAlignedRectangle)

Default values

• SpriteManager.Camera.Z = 40

• New PositionedObject.Z = 0

Z and Sorting

For information about how Z affects sorting, see the SpriteManager.OrderedSortType property documents.