I have a question about alpha blending with ID3DXSprite. According to this website: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20010629/geczy_03.htm you can change the alpha channel of a texture to a certain value that can produce a nice effect like the pictures on that website. I''ve tried this many times but still never come up with the result like in the pictures. I tried BMP format, but the author said to use PNG or TGA. I tried both of them, the results are even worse, especially TGA, can''t see anything. Can anybody help me? Life is fair. -Albert Tedja-

I haven''t seen the website you mentionned. Yet, to avoid problem with ID3DXSprit interface, I use TGA with properly set alpha channel (I use Paint shop pro to add an alpha channel to TGA). (usefull for HUD rendering)
When I need to use a unique alpha value for the texture (ie overriding any kind of alpha channel value from the texture), I use my own interface (a little bit faster in this case). It renders translucent sprite from BMP/TGA/PNG on vertex buffers.
I think I didn''t exactly answered your problem, but I hope it will help by the way...

Freeman.