Help this Beginner with API

I've heard about API before but haven't used or needed it to this point. But now, as I run into animation transparent gifs, I've fallen victim to the dreaded "Flicker" :bigyello: (lol). Now I'm looking over Pino's API tutorial for beginners and I'm still having problems. First off, what does the mask do? I know that it is a black image of the actual image (in my case a sprite for my game) with a white background, while the actual image has a black background? Does this always have to be like that? And does it matter what format I save the images as? I've been saving as Gif to this point. Thanks in advance. I'll post problems as they occur with API, but this is all that comes to mind at the moment :blush: .

You may want to explain what exactly you're trying to accomplish first and perhaps post some code (if you have any) that directly relates to that flickering issue ...

No yet, I haven't done any coding with API, i just want to know if for example, instead of saving my images as a gif, should I save them as .bmp for example. I don't wanna submit my coding for my current game because after doing a bit of research, it seems that I would have to go back on some things.

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Originally Posted by Naru_Love_Hina

No yet, I haven't done any coding with API, i just want to know if for example, instead of saving my images as a gif, should I save them as .bmp for example. I don't wanna submit my coding for my current game because after doing a bit of research, it seems that I would have to go back on some things.

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Well, without knowing whta you do it's difficult to recommend anything... However, VB works better with BMP type images - GIFs are the worst - this doesn't necessary means that using BMP will eliminate flickering effect, though. Totally depends on what you do which is still unclear.