My game is comming along nicely. Working as indended (minus all the art obviously) and is generaly effective. At the moment though, I have not seen a real great way to turn a sprite semi-transparent against a background or another sprite. I am largely confused by some of the library information; Is there a good practice way to do this?

When you use SpriteBatch.Draw, you specify a color. That color has an alpha channel

Okay, let me be a bit more specific. I specifiy the proper alpha channel and all, but my objective is to make the sprite entirely translucent, not just the specified alpha channel.

You mean you want transparent areas around opaque areas, instead of just fading out the whole entire graphic?

If so, then simply utilize the alpha channel in your image editor of choice, and save in a format like PNG when importing it into Visual Studio.

When you call SpriteBatch.Begin it has the first parameter SpriteBlendMode.

The resulting pixel under each of the blending modes.
Existing Pixel = the one currently on the image
Current Pixel = the one your drawing
SpriteBlendMode.None = Current Pixel rgb
SpriteBlendMode.Additive = Existing Pixel rgb + (Current Pixel rgb * Current pixel alpha)
SpriteBlendMode.Subtractive = Existing Pixel rgb - (Current Pixel rgb * Current pixel alpha)
SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend = Existing Pixel rgb + ((Current Pixel rgb - Existing Pixel rgb) * Current Pixel alpha)

This is sorta like what I want, buut this isn't excactly descriptive on how to use it. Can you go into depth?

Zero Serenity:

Okay, let me be a bit more specific. I specifiy the proper alpha channel and all, but my objective is to make the sprite entirely translucent, not just the specified alpha channel.

I don't get it. the "specified alpha channel" does fade out the whole sprite. 0.5f and you will be able to see half the BG behind it. Or are you talking about the bordering pixels? Please try to be as specific as you can. Instead of "the alpha channel", say something like "the alpha channel in the color passed in spritebatch.draw", etc. Also, screenshots help.

FortisVenaliter Productions:

Zero Serenity:

Okay, let me be a bit more specific. I specifiy the proper alpha channel and all, but my objective is to make the sprite entirely translucent, not just the specified alpha channel.

0.5f and you will be able to see half the BG behind it.

This sentence is excactly what I want! But I'm unsure how to pull it off.

Color color = Color.White;
color.A = 128;
SpriteBatch.Draw(tex, pos, color);

this will draw your entire sprite at half (256/2) transparency

Craig Martin:

Color color = Color.White;
color.A = 128;
SpriteBatch.Draw(tex, pos, color);

this will draw your entire sprite at half (256/2) transparency

As I said in the second post

FortisVenaliter Productions:

Craig Martin:

Color color = Color.White;
color.A = 128;
SpriteBatch.Draw(tex, pos, color);

this will draw your entire sprite at half (256/2) transparency

As I said in the second post

If your talking to me, I'm aware you said that, but the OP seemed to not follow.

Craig Martin:

Color color = Color.White;
color.A = 128;
SpriteBatch.Draw(tex, pos, color);

this will draw your entire sprite at half (256/2) transparency

Or to be a little less verbose:

spriteBatch.Draw(texture, position, new Color(Color.White, 128));

Color's constructor also accepts a base color and an alpha value.

Done with this section already as of yesterday. Thanks. Might have more problems as they come, but oh well. Before I make a new thread, let me derail this one quite a bit and ask, is there a way to add pre-rendered cinematics or some sort of library that would allow for watching AVI/MPG videos? (No, this will not infringe copyrights, there is a point to this)

Its been announced for XNA 3.1, which (as far as we know) should be out in a few months

In your sprite batch begin:
SpriteBatch.Begin(SpriteBlendMode.None);

That part between the ( ) is the parameters of the begin call, I thought I was being entirely too descriptive.

Edit : NVM about the above, your wording had me screwed up on what you meant.

I really think you need to learn a bit more about the language/api if something this simple is plaguing you for more than a couple days.

And...why do you think I'm here?