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Hey folks, I'm working with:

  • Allegro 4
  • 640x480 resolution
  • 16-bit colour depth
  • GIMP for image editing

I'm able to display PCX files and move them around, but can't get any sort of transparency working - I've added areas to my images with RGB set to 255, 0, 255 but I'm guessing when GIMP exports to PCX it's not the right colour setting?

Does anyone know the right GIMP settings or potentially even another program to help edit these images and included DOS friendly transparency?

It's been a long time since I've used allegro, but IIRC transparency works differently based on the color depth of the source bitmap. The magenta color key (255,0,255) works for truecolor bitmaps, but PCX is an 8-bit indexed format, which means the transparent regions are color index 0. If you're using indexed color mode in GIMP, make sure magenta is the first entry in the palette. A drawing program like GrafX2 or aseprite is also useful for palette manipulation and working with 8-bit images in general.