Hi Twitchy.
First, I have no idea, of what may have caused game shutdown. I use that Gunsight in Aces High, and, as I prefer to use my gunsight instead of the "default" sight, I tried to install it in Aces High 2 and it worked as well.
You wrote: "I got into the folder and tried to edit the size and resolution of the gunsight to match the other default ones and that kept the game from shutting down but now the purplish area around the reticle isn't transparent and I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong."
As to the background, BMP image format does not, usually, support "transparency". One example of files that support transparency are some variants of GIF files. HiTech, creative as he is, used some routines to make BMP support transparency.
By "transparency" we mean that some specific color is made transparent. When you apply that image over some background, that background shows through.
Every image has a "color palette", which is range of different colors used in that image.
Each color is represented by some numeric values for (R)ed, (G)reen and (B)lue components.
In order to be "transparent" that weird purplish color MUST have 255,0,255 for RGB(Red, Green and Blue) values. Those were the values chosen by our Guru HiTech to make it work in AH.
Sometimes we open an image in a Bitmap editing program and the program uses a different color palette. That is, uses different numeric values for each color.
Save the Gunsight as it is to your, ..\AH\sights folder. It should work.
If you want to change the gunsight or make your own custom sight, load it into your favorite Bitmap editor( I use Paint Shop Pro 8) use the "dropper" tool or its equivalent to check RGB values for sight background if it's not 255,0,255 edit those values into the correct ones.
If , for any reason, you can't fix it, please e-mail me the sight with the resolution that works in your system and I'll fix the background for you.
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