i guess i'll just have to resort to using 3d quads

Yep, StretchRect isn't a "real" drawing function, in that it doesn't respect all your render-states. Drawing a quad (or a triangle) is the right thing to do.

Ok, however, I found this cool function called UpdateSurface, however it isn't much different from stretchrect it looks like, but it still doesn't fix the alpha problem.

I want to be able to draw surfaces over other surfaces for shader effects as well, such as adding bloom to an original image, how would i get the alpha to work? This is literally driving me nuts.

i guess i'll just have to resort to using 3d quads

Yep, StretchRect isn't a "real" drawing function, in that it doesn't respect all your render-states. Drawing a quad (or a triangle) is the right thing to do.

Ok, however, I found this cool function called UpdateSurface, however it isn't much different from stretchrect it looks like, but it still doesn't fix the alpha problem.

I want to be able to draw surfaces over other surfaces for shader effects as well, such as adding bloom to an original image, how would i get the alpha to work?