I have a separate list of moveable entities, and then the regular 3D map, represented by a 2D array of stacks of tiles. My problem is that right now, I'm rendering my moveable entities after the map, and so they end up in the right place, but rendering over everything. If I were to render my entity list at the right place, however, in the map rendering process, it would be very slow because I'd have to iterate over the moveable entity list to find one with the correct (x, y) coordinates each tile that's rendered. Here's what my world looks like:

Here's my current moveable entity drawing code:

Apologies for using a screenshot, but I can't paste into this text box for some reason. Anyway, my map drawing code is just a nested for loop over the map, pretty much. How do I merge these two? My drawing library doesn't have a Z-axis function.

I have a separate list of moveable entities, and then the regular 3D map, represented by a 2D array of stacks of tiles. My problem is that right now, I'm rendering my moveable entities after the map, and so they end up in the right place, but rendering over everything. If I were to render my entity list at the right place, however, in the map rendering process, it would be very slow because I'd have to iterate over the moveable entity list to find one with the correct (x, y) coordinates each tile that's rendered. Here's what my world looks like:

Here is a screenshot of a particularly awkward example of this issue. The colonists are positioned (or seem to be) on the right tiles, but they draw in front of trees and hills they are actually behind.

Here's my current moveable entity drawing code:

Apologies for using a screenshot, but I can't paste into this text box for some reason. Anyway, my map drawing code is just a nested for loop over the map, pretty much. How do I merge these two? My drawing library doesn't have a Z-axis function.