a artist related question

[night]

i have been thinking about some things :

in the emulator previews you use the format .PNG (what is fine) but i was thinking you use some kinda effect there removes the black around the pictures (again not bad buuut) the thing are you cant add any nice effects like glowing edges there fades to black or use black around the picture then the effect removes it...

i was thinking would it be possible to remove that feature becouse you can use .png as transparent like gif but with more colors and i normally always remove the black area`s anyway dunno if it makes any sence to you but would help me ALOT in many cases and would give me the ability to make even nicer effects

hope it makes any sence

[djrobx]

If you want to use black, use super-dark-gray instead. The eye can't really tell the difference between #000000 and #010101, but the transparency engine will know the difference. Most paint programs have a brightness control, just bump it up a notch.

We already had a discussion about utilizing PNG's more extended transparency/gradient effects for drop shadows and halo type effects over the existing background. The bottom line is that GameEx is using DirectDraw, and DirectDraw doesn't support it. The only way to get it wold be to hand-implement a custom blitter, which would likely be slow on anything but high end computers.

That's not necessarily a big issue - I imagine a good number of people are running on fast systems, since they want to run some of Mame's more modern additions, or perhaps Dreamcast or N64 emulation. Still Tom has a lot on his plate and I imagine sees this as a lot of work for something that's a fairly low priority.

-- Rob

[night]

well i didnt know adding true transperancy what PNG already does support was hard i just paint i dont code so if that are a hard thing to do i wouldnt ask for it as i thought it was an easy thing to do but i guess nothing today are easy

what i meant was the effect do make a black line around the edges and you cant make blur effects on the edges either and again its not a big deal i just thought it was relative easy to do thats all