Shapes and Layering Internals

Purpose

Explain how built-in shapes, styling, z_index, and render_layer work together in queued rendering.

Core file

• packages/mini-arcade-core/src/mini_arcade_core/scenes/systems/builtins/__init__.py

Built-in shapes

The default queued renderer understands:

• rect

• circle

• triangle

• line

• poly

triangle and normalized poly points are rotated and scaled from the entity transform before being emitted to the render queue.

Fill and stroke

RenderStyle supports:

• fill

• stroke

Typical behavior:

• fill only: solid shape

• stroke only: outline shape

• both: filled polygon with outline where supported

z_index

z_index sorts entities inside one layer. Use it when two world entities overlap and one should appear above the other.

render_layer

render_layer changes the pass the entity is emitted into, for example:

• world

• ui

• effects

This is stronger than z_index because it moves the entity to a different pass entirely.

Tutorial references

• docs/source/tutorials/entity/shape_primitives_gallery.md

• docs/source/tutorials/entity/z_index_and_layer_intuition.md