How to make a gunsight?

[Rickenbacker]

OK, I get the basic idea here, you make a regular .bmp (how many colors? Indexed or not?) and one color is transparent. Now, which color is this, and why, when I borrow the exact color that's transparent in other gunsights (I believe it's 255,0,255) doesn't it turn up as transparent?

I assume I'm saving the images in the wrong format somehow, so is there a guide to what needs to be done to make them transparent? Editing existing sights works just fine, as long as I don't mess with the colors (even if I use the right background color). This is kind of frustrating, so I'd appreciate any help  .


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        Rickenbacker (Ricken)

                -ISAF-
the Independent Swedish Air Force

[Hans]

I use the simple paint program in "programs, accessories" to make sights.

To get the pink, transparent color, I use the eyedropper to sample it and let the computer do the color number.

Hans.

[Rickenbacker]

Yeah, I use photoshop to do the same, but for some reason it doesn't come out transparent  .


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        Rickenbacker (Ricken)

                -ISAF-
the Independent Swedish Air Force

[Vosper]

The way I get around it is to take a current gunsight, and then just paint over the bits I need to.  The background colour doesn't change, and since it was already transparent the sight works fine when I use it again.

If I need to repaint something in the background colour, I just use the tool to pick colour before painting over the bits I don't like.  Just save a copy before working on it.

Cheers

[Hans]

Yup, I use an existing sight, edit the hell out of it, then "save as..." and give it another name.

Plus, I have at least two backups of the orginal crosshairs, just in case.

Hans.