2D Rendering and Graphics Flashcards
6 cards from real 2D Game Development practice questions. Tap to flip, then mark Knew It or Still Learning — missed cards come back until you master them.
Read the first 6 2D Rendering and Graphics flashcards as text
What is a 'draw call' in 2D game rendering?
Answer: A command sent to the GPU to render a batch of geometry
Each draw call submits geometry and state changes to the GPU; minimizing them through batching is critical for 2D game performance.
What is 'sprite batching' in 2D rendering?
Answer: Combining multiple sprite draw calls that share the same texture into a single GPU call
Sprite batching groups all sprites using the same texture atlas into one draw call, reducing CPU-GPU overhead and improving rendering performance.
What is a 'shader' in 2D game graphics?
Answer: A program running on the GPU that controls how pixels and vertices are rendered
Shaders are small GPU programs (vertex and fragment/pixel shaders) that determine how geometry is transformed and how each pixel's color is calculated.
What is the 'painter's algorithm' in 2D rendering?
Answer: Rendering objects from back to front so nearer objects overdraw farther ones
The painter's algorithm sorts objects by depth and draws them back-to-front so that overlapping objects appear correctly without needing a depth buffer.
What is texture 'filtering' (bilinear vs. nearest-neighbor) in 2D games?
Answer: Nearest-neighbor keeps pixels sharp; bilinear blends between pixels for smoother scaling
Nearest-neighbor sampling picks the closest pixel when scaling, preserving the sharp look of pixel art, while bilinear interpolation blends neighboring pixels for smoother scaling of non-pixel art.
What is 'z-ordering' (sort order) in 2D rendering?
Answer: Controlling the render order of sprites to determine which appears in front of others
Z-ordering assigns a sorting value to each sprite so the renderer knows which objects to draw on top, creating correct visual layering in a flat 2D world.