Re: [SPAM: 6.000] Re: [pygame] How do I make a image transparent?

["Ulf Ekström" <uekstrom@xxxxxxxxx>]

If you do software surface blitting you can speed up the alpha
blending a lot by using RLE encoding of the transparent surface. I
suppose there is special code in there for the case of completely
transparent or completely opaque pixels. You can use it with by doing
something like surface.set_alpha(0, pygame.RLEACCEL), but I must admit
I have only used this with the C SDL functions, so perhaps someone can
fill in the details. The '0' is ignored when the the surface has per
pixel alpha.

Transparent edges of sprites really look much much better than hard
edges, compare for example

http://offload2.icculus.org/airstrike/screenshots/ohmygod.png (no alpha)
with
http://offload2.icculus.org/airstrike/screenshots/screenshot5.png (per
pixel alpha)

You can generate the soft edges by asking your artist to draw the
sprites in high resolution, on a transparent background, and then
scale them down.

Regards,
Ulf