i noticed (and you prolly did too) that all images like for weapon-gfx, scenary, gostek, and virutally any other bitmap need to have this one specific green color to indicate back-ground.


i want to suggest that these images can have a sorta fading effect (with like darker green) to make it semi-transparent.

the only problem with that would be different color-transparencies - so here's a better way for that: one file for the image, another sprite file for the layout...here's an example:

[IMAGE]
+
[IMAGE]
=
[IMAGE]on a blue background
OR
[IMAGE] on a yellow background


comments suggestions etc?

Yeah actually thought about this it would love to have this!.

It could work with tga's its the same as bmp's but has a fourth layer containing the alpha transparancy.

You could make some nice light effects for maps with that, or use it for custom interfaces.

Good idea. Transparency can be set on 2 different image files, .gif and .png, but when coded into a game like soldat with something to cut out the green, .bmp for soldat.

.gif doesnt allow faded tranceparency, only .png does.

So maybe if it was changed from .bmp > .png then we could have it faded.

hmm if you could explain that again mancer - the difference between .bmp and .png
for all i know they both seem to have the same quality - but .png is likt a million times smaller! (even smaller in a black and white picture than a monochromatically saved .bmp file....that's amazing)

PNG supports alpha transparency. Here is an example but you will need Opera or Firefox to see it:
[IMAGE]


Besides 3 color channels (red, green, blue) PNG may have 4th channel for transparency, which works pretty the same like the black circle in your first post. But it's included in the PNG file, not in a separate file. BMP doesn't support alpha channel.

Besides this PNG support gamma correction, interlacing and lossless compression - 3 other features you won't find in BMP.

To simplify that up: The quality of .BMP, with a fading effect if the image isnt a perfect square and or is 'erased' at the edges.

(sry but i've been ...away... for 5 days):
i agree that .png has no quality loss due to compression errors...cuz it doesn't virtually compress the image. but neither does .bmp
and why don't people use .png more often instead of .bmp since it's like 100 times smaller with EXACT same quality as .bmp?

Hell if I know. I always use png.