Topic category: Help with Minecraft modding (Java Edition)
I am making a mod which adds outer space, starships and planets. This is a very ambitious mod and I will need assistance with a number of things, so rather than making individual posts for each question, I've decided to consolidate them all to this one post. When I have more questions, I intend to ask them here.
PLANET VISIBILITY
I am adding planets in the form of entities. If I make the planets too big, they cause too much lag, so moons are 80x80x0 pixels and planets are 160x160x0 pixels. In order to make them feel bigger and in order to make inter-planetary navigation easier for the player, I want planets to be visible from much further away than your typical entity. Players should be able to see (if only faintly) planets from a good 500 blocks away, maybe more. Is there any way to change the distance at which an entity can be seen by players?
PLANET ROTATION
I have made Blockbench models for both the overworld's moon and the overworld planet itself, and I intend to make more for every possible planet and moon variant over the course of the mod. I have one big issue: I want the planets to always appear to be facing directly towards the player. A good example of this is from vanilla Minecraft. When you name an entity, the name hovering above it's head always appears facing directly toward you so that you can easily read the text from any angle. How can I make a planet look the same from any angle? Note that this should work in multiplayer as well.
TEXTURE IN INVENTORY DIFFERENT FROM THIRDPERSON MODEL
I've designed a plasma blaster for this mod. It has both a 2D texture intended for the inventory and a 3D Blockbench model which other players see in your hand when you hold the blaster. As far as I can tell, I can only make it display one or the other. How can I make an item have a 3D thirdperson model separate from it's 2D texture in the inventory? And I don't mean a different angle of the 3D model that looks 2D - I mean a completely different 2D texture, like with the vanilla trident.
Thank you to anyone who can be of help!