OK, have had this problem with A7 pro ever since I bought it a few years ago. Haven't messed with 3DGS in a while and forgot about it until I started working on a big project and poof, there it is. That strange clipping issue where background objects get rendered in front of foreground. This time I can't just ignore it like I usually do. I have tried it on 3 different computers, one running XP SP3 with GeForce FX5200 graphics card, one running Windows 7 with ATI Radeon X1800 Pro, and on an Alienware laptop with GeForce GT335. All do the same thing. Have tried installing the update patch, no luck. Here is a pic of what I am talking about.


You can see the planet's ring looks like it is in front of the planet, and the moon in the upper right is actually behind the ring, but is rendered in front. Anybody have any clue?

The problem is probably 32bit textures. Open your big planet in MED, go to Skin Settings and change to 24bit under Texture Format.
Alternatively, you could use a material with the PASS_SOLID flag set.

you have to use an alpha check material.
there is one in the wiki.
this clipping error is no error at all.
it is because you use an alpha texture for your ring. first thing you can try to use a non-alpha texture for the model(simple check 24 bit in the texture settings in MED)
try again...
then you have to try the alpha-check material

EDIT: Maybe, the others are right, and I simply didn't had such situation for a too long time to give a valuable suggestion
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The entities are simply rendered depending the position of their _origin_.

I guess the ring's origin is in front of that of the planet and behind the origin of the moon.

The solution for the issue of the ring depends on its purpose.

If it belongs always to the planet and it doesn't rotate independently against the planet than merge both models in MED.

If it is bound to the planet but rotates independently then add bones for animating the ring with one of the bones instructions.


If it is sort of independently relating the planet then I would seperate the ring into at least 4 pieces that I place with the vec instructions.

ENTITY* planet
ENTITY* ring1
ENTITY* ring2
ENTITY* ring3
ENTITY* ring4

VECTOR temp;

vec_set(temp, planet.pan);//copy the angle of the planet to use it to place the ring parts around it
temp.x += 0;//add an angle(don't be irritated by x instead of pan); 0 for ring1, 90 for ring2, 180 for ring3, 270 for ring3
vec_for_ang(temp, temp);//translate the angle to a vector
vec_scale(temp, dist to planet);//multiply by the dist to the planet, you have to figure out the distance to connect the parts seamlessly
vec_add(temp, planet.x);//add this vector to the position of the planet
vec_set(ring1, temp);//hand over the position to the related part of the rings

Disclaimer: I didn't test it, test and compare each part of the code with the explanations of the manual on your own to assure that it works the way it should. This is just to give you an idea.

Holy cow, you guys were right! Set the textures to 24-bit and it was fixed. Something so simple all along afterall. Thanks guys!