okay, here is one concrete example. I'm trying to show the planet's orbit so the player can see the planet's path. The planets are 3-d, the orbit is a simple circular red line.
The approach I tried was to
1. create a plane
2. make a .png circle and paste it to the plane
3. rescale the plane based on orbit radius.
dbSetImageColorKey (0, 0, 0); // black will be the transparent color
dbLoadImage ("Media\\orbit.png", IMG_ORBIT);
dbTextureObject (OBJ_ORBIT_IMG,IMG_ORBIT);
dbMakeObjectPlain (OBJ_ORBIT_IMG, radius*2, radius*2);
dbPositionObject (OBJ_ORBIT_IMG, focusX, focusY, focusZ); // orbit focus at center
dbRotateObject (OBJ_ORBIT_IMG, 90, 0, 0); // rotate plane (TODO: non-coplanar orbit inclinations)
dbSetAlphaMappingOn (OBJ_ORBIT_IMG, 10); // 10%
dbSetObjectTransparency(OBJ_ORBIT_IMG, ON); // don't paint black
Roughly, it'll "work" but it's obviously a crappola approach. First, the orbit is not tranparent (because I'm pasting an image?), so all the planets and sun are cut off when looked at from the side. Second, scaling is a pain when observing from a distance.
Any help for this noobie? I'm not asking for code, but if someone can point me in the right direction, it would save me a helluvah lot of time. Thanks!
-Jason
