Alphas - cut and dry or faded?

[Anomaly]

i've got an issue here.
I'm trying to use faded alphas for alot of things... shadows.. gui's .. bunch of stuff.. and while the alphas WORK.. they aren't working the way i want them to..
it's either .. yes or no.. black or white here.. transparent or opaque.. no fading.. as far as i can tell.
heres my image of what i'm talking about.

see the one on the left is how it appears in the editor..
the way i want it.. faded around the letters.. (no thats just a test i'm not really using it)
but in game.. its cut and dry.. like it rounds up or down the alpha value then gives it a yes no..

the "over" image is an object with baseline 0
so in front of everything.
it's a PNG.

can we use faded alphas?

this would help with alot of anti alias crappy "black outlines" artifacts i'm having around my characters.

thanks

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edit it appears that this is a directdraw limitation.. and putting it in direct3d would work.. but it's not.
maybe i don't have the latest direct3d driver.

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[Gilbert]

Hmmm are you sure the game is set to 32-bit colour? Also, did you try the game in DirectDraw5 mode or DirectX9 mode?

[Anomaly]

Hmmm are you sure the game is set to 32-bit colour? Also, did you try the game in DirectDraw5 mode or DirectX9 mode?

just figured it out.
it had nothing to do with whether it was in directdraw or direct3D modes..

what was happening was this...

i went to compile the game.. to run it separate from the editor.. and upon using winsetup.. i see there's a
"Downgrade 32-bit graphics to 16-bit" checkbox on the right.

I unchecked it..
and i got my 32 bit graphics.
I also got the alpha working perfectly.. exactly how I wanted it.  this in Direct Draw5 mode.


now I'm wondering.. am I going to have to compile my movie and run winsetup and uncheck that box every single time i want to test my game with it's alphas???

because I can't find an option for it in th general settings tab.
so when i preview test through editor.. it's going straight to 16 bit without me ever telling it to.

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[Pumaman]

That box is not ticked by default, so it must have got enabled at some stage by accident. Find and delete any "acsetup.cfg" files in your game folders, and that should make sure all the defaults get reset.