Max Velocity and Transparent Ghost Perils

Now on a previous assignment, I was creating ghostly images that would not collide with the player but move forward at a quicker speed; this is an upcoming test of future images on something like an AI who interacts or antagonizes the player. So far the images...are not turning as transparent and ghostly as I expected. Odd; when applied to the player, the transparency works fine, but to all other objects...

Gasp! A peril is found. The objects seem to not be as transparent as previously thought, borrowing far too much color from the clear color in the background. This is a problem with alpha transparency objects that are drawn before opaque objects. The fix? Separate the group of models to be drawn transparently from those that are drawn opaquely, and render them right after another. Since this iteration is done twice, a RenderModels method should be created to handle this.

So far, so good. However, I've been meaning to fix the player's velocity as well, as it has no limit on how fast I can push it via keyboard input. This is a problem with no damping values set; without linear and angular damping, the player ball will not respond to friction and slow down appropriately. I've settled on 0.04 for the linear and angular values.

And so far so good! The copies themselves slow down relatively quickly since they have no forces applied to it (reading the player's mind? How do we even?) but that would mean the next step would be to create an AI that interacts with the player. That, and getting the ghosts to actually disappear after awhile.