Alright... this little tad of info is the LAST bit I need.

[Apollo]

How can I make transparent sprites using bitblt? Is there any method like vbsrctransparentpaint or something which will draw all but a certain color? The easiest, not necessarily fastest or most efficient, method would be great.

I've tried Imagelists and they were too bulky and slow... and transparent GIFs... well.... no. So, can anyone reccomend a quick and easy way?

Thanks.

The SRCAND will copy all but White and the SRCPAINT will copy all but Black.

Public Const SRCAND = &H8800C6
Public Const SRCPAINT = &HEE0086

[Apollo]

No... srcpaint does this translucent piece of trash. It doesn't fully copy my picture. Instead it makes it semi-transparent... as for srcpaint.. Are you sure? You weren't 100% correct on what srcand does, so I want to know if srcpaint really does what you say, and nothing more. If it does... then.... heheh.... I'm good to go.

The reason it does not copy propery is because you did not lay down your Mask. A Sprite is a game graphics that consists of 2 elements. The Mask, and the Sprite. The Sprite is the Graphic itself (with a Black background) and the Mask is exactly the same as the Sprite, except the graphic is coloured black regardless of the original colour and the background is coloured white.

Now. First you copy down the Mask with SRCAND which leaves out all the white (the background) and only copies down our Black image. Now we copy the Sprite using SRCPAINT. This will copy all but black. Normally we would get that ugly transparent mush, but since we have a Black templete underneath us (the Mask), it adds the black colour back to our image giving it it's true colour. Because we did not copy the background, it has none, therefor, we have a Transparent background.

[Apollo]

Ok, so srcpaint copies all but black. So, could I not just make a graphic with a black background.... and use srcpaint?

[Apollo]

Nevermind. Both srcpaint and srcand do basically the same thing... but srcand treats white as transparent and srcpaint treats black as transparent.

So.. you say make a black blotch in the same shape as my graphic (a mask). Lay that down, and then over that srcpaint my graphic onto it. Sounds darned easy. Thanks.

Fox, I know you already said all of this. Just thought I'd make sure.

[Fox]

Indeed

Well, there's a mask generator on my page (download der Zirkel demo), or I can mail it if you want.

An easy way to make a Mask Generator (can be slow for larger Images) is just to loop through all of the Pixels in the Image and if it's black, then colour it white. Then you go through each Pixel again and colour them black if they are not white.

[Fox]

Thats exactly what my mask generator does

(Using Get- and SetPixel, it isn't that slow)