EntityAlpha problem

I think this has been brought up before but I can't find the thread.

Basically I have a list of entities which all copy a mesh. If I set the alpha of some of these entities to 0.5 it doesn't take effect at first, then for some reason the alpha will take effect. Then for no reason they switch back to having no transparency.

Anyone else notice this?

Could you post a small exsample?

I've tried to recreate the problem but it works fine which is just typical. I can't figure out what the difference between my game and the example is! Maybe someone will have an idea if I post a video of the issue...

http://download.newstargames.com/misc/NSS4/AlphaProb.avi

Here you can see my football player kicking the ball to knocktraffic cones over. When the cones fall down they should be alpha 0.5. At first the alpha doesn't change but when I move the player into a specific area (lower right) the alpha takes effect. The sweet spot that causes the alpha to take effect is different every time I play.

I'm not sure if it's the camera position causing the change or the player/ball position. I hope the video is clear enough to see.

Did you find out what caused this?

you discovered the Z Buffer error

the more distant entity has and position of it.

I had these babes ready



But as you see i cheacted on whater.

basic one have to sort all Z triangles manual. or else you will get some glitches. dont ask me how oblivion works and wow ?

the above pic is from b3d and demo looks nice.. but Z buffer is nuked.

Sorry Si, I missed your question. No, in the end I decided not to use alpha on the cones.

If you can, use masked textures, instead of alpha'ed ones
(Oh, I see you make your models with alpha...)

No way to solve this, unless with Z-Ordering according to the distance from the camera.

You can also mess with EntityBlend, to see if you can achieve similar results than with Entityalpha.