Transparencies/Bitblt - Can someone explain it to me --- PLEASE

I know this has probably been asked and answered a hundred times but I'm definitely an ameteur at this stuff and I don't quite understqnd it all. I've written a game in which a small picturebox moves around a form over a number of other larger pictureboxes. I'm currently doing the movement with simple adjustments of the Top and Left properties of the thing. The smaller picturebox contains a simple black circle with a white background at the corners. Of course I would like the white corners of the picturebox to be transparent. Can someone please tell me how to do this in simple, easy-to-understand terms? PLEASE?

:confused:

http://vbden.tripod.com/articles/invmask.htm

This is my BitBlt tutorial.

BitBlt Demo project / Game programming tutorial

You could also use the TransparentBlt function to draw a picture, and make any color transparent, thus eliminating the need for masks.

I think using TransparentBlt will restrict you to Win98 and above only

...you could also use DDraw :)

btw: In the games where I use BitBlt I generate the masks when starting the program, so there's no memory wasted in the bitmap files..

Hey hey, wait, he's using picture boxes, so he doesn't need BitBlt :)

All you need to do is use an image control (not a picture box). If the file you choose is a GIF file with transparency, the image control will be transparent like you want! I think that Paintbrush can save GIF files, but if it doesn't, you'll need another graphics program.

GIFs are crap, years ago I tried the same but they're very slow... you can see how first a black mask is drawn, then the picture over this mask if you try to do anything with the picture..

But his game is not BitBlt based, it's based on pictureboxes (by setting their Top/Left borders). So he can't use BitBlt :)

While I did state that I was using pictureboxes, I'm not constraining myself to using them. I'm willing to learn the "right" way of doing things. Speed is not much of a consideration as my game is fairly slow-paced. Perhaps I should upload what I have so far and get a concensus on how I SHOULD be doing it... So, without further ado, here it is...