When drawing sprites, we often refer to the Painter’s Algorithm. This algorithm simply involves drawing the most distant part of the scene first (i.e. background elements) before drawing the closer elements. This way the closer elements are drawn on top of the elements behind them, as when we draw we are literally copying over the existing pixel color values.

This is even more important when working with translucent (partially transparent) sprites, as we mix the translucent color with the color(s) of the elements underneath the translucent sprite. If those colors have not yet been set, this blending will not happen.

The SpriteBatch assumes that we batch sprites in the order we want them drawn, i.e. the most distant sprites should have their Draw() calls first. For many games, this is simple to accomplish, but there are some where it becomes significantly challenging (i.e. tilemap games where some tiles are “above” the background layer). For these games, we can utilize the SpriteBatch’s built-in sorting.

This is activated by calling SpriteBatch.Begin(SpriteSortMode.BackToFront) instead of SpriteBatch.Begin(). This replaces the default sorting mode, SpriteSortMode.Deferred with the back-to-front sorting, based on the depthLayer specified in the sprite’s Draw() call. When using this mode, the SpriteBatch sorts the sprites immediately before it renders them.

A couple of things to remember about this sorting:

1. It is more efficient if the sprites are for the most part batched in the order they need to be drawn (as there is less rearranging to do)
2. The sorting order is not assured to be the same from frame-to-frame for sprites with the same depthLayer value.

There is also a SpriteSortMode.FrontToBack mode that sorts sprites in the opposite order. It can be helpful when your game specifies the depthLayer values opposite the expected order (larger numbers to the back).

In addition to these depth-sorting options, there is a SpriteSortMode.Immediate which, instead of batching the sprites draws them immediately when the Draw() call is made. This can be less efficient as it requires the sprite drawing effect (a shader program) to be loaded into the graphics card for each sprite (rather than once for all sprites).

Finally, there is a SpriteSortMode.Texture option that orders sprites by their source texture. As swapping textures is an expensive operation for the graphics card, arranging all sprites that use each texture to be drawn together can result in better efficiency. However, this approach can make layered sprites be drawn out-of-order. Thus, when possible it is better to use texture atlases to minimize texture swaps.

The SpriteBatch.Begin() has additional settings that can be overridden - we’ll examine some of these in the lessons to come.