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I am a beginner in OpenGL, and I would like to know how to distinguish specific objects in an OpenGL game. For instance, the game world contains 3 gems of different colors, how can I know which one the user collides with exactly? P.S. At first I thought it could be picking, but no, picking is for mouse pointing

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OpenGL is a rendering technology, collisions are out of the OpenGL area, maybe you should refer to the physics library that you are using or putting down a good naming convention. – user827992 Sep 1 '12 at 11:54
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^ pretty much this. Additionally, OpenGL doesn't keep track of the objects you render - it just takes the triangles you give it, turns it into pixels on a framebuffer, then forgets about it. If you're working in 3d, the only additional thing stored besides the pixel's color is a depth value, which still gives you no information about anything behind the frontmost triangle. – Robert Rouhani Sep 1 '12 at 20:02

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It sounds like you just want a general games development glossary like this one:

http://www.gameprogrammer.com/glossary.html

If you want to know the correct terminology for something, you'll just have to look it up. There's no 'central guide'.

Generally by the point at which you're ready to implement something in your game you'll have done enough research on it to not only know that the relevant term is but give a full etymology lesson on how that term came about :)

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