[Plib-users] How to determine surface material by ssgState texture filena me ?

[McEvoy, N. <nic...@ds...>]

What is the best way to determine what type of 'surface' is under my players feet ?

My setup is follows:
- I load a terrain (an AC3D model) with different textures, eg. grass, rock, ice.
- I get the hits:   iNumHits = ssgIsect(reGetWorld(), &Sphere, InvMat, pHits)
- I get the SimpleState of the hit leaf, eg.

ssgHit* h = &pHits[i];
ssgState* pState = h->leaf->getState();
if (pState->isA(ssgTypeSimpleState()))
{
	char* sTexture = ((ssgSimpleState*)pState)->getTextureFilename();

	// then depending on texture filename set different surface properties
	// - this would be a bunch of strcmp() ... too slow !!!
}

But doing a bunch of string compares on the texture filename is going to be slow ... is it not !?

Is there a better way to do this ?

Note: I had a quick look at the way TuxKart does it ... with a Material structure (ie. ssgState) ... but I don't quite follow how to apply these states when reading the AC3D model.

I have the vague idea that I should load the AC3D model using ssgLoaderOptions ... to handle ssgState ... and as each texture is read create my own ssgState (which I can then get in the hit leaf) ... but I'm still trying to work out how the loader options are supposed to work ... or am I barking up the wrong tree here.

Sorry if I sound a bit confused ... cause I am !  :)

Any suggestions ?

Nick