Icon Format?

Anyone knows how a windows icon (that can be used in visual basic or on a shortcut) is built in terms of storing the bitmap (which is basically what it is, right?).

Even if you know only how 32x32 16 color icons are made it would be of help, but even better if you know about 32-bit XP icons with alpha channel, multi-res, packing in dll etc..

here's some basic info:
http://www.awitness.org/delphi_pascal_tutorial/source2/icon_file_format.html

Try Google for more info.

The file is in delphi and talks about "words". Is that 32-bits? Then there's some XOR bitmask (i thought icons would be stored simple)

First you have a bit.
Then you have a byte (8 bits).
Next, you have a word (16 bits, 2 bytes).
Next, you have a doubleword (32 bits, 4 bytes, 2 words)
Next, you have a quadword (64 bits, 8 bytes, 4 words)
Next, you have a double-quadword (128 bits, 16 bytes, 8 words)

http://www.blitzbasic.com/codearcs/codearcs.php?code=805

Thanx WolRon and Ford (whatever the model ;-). I suppose I just have to modify poke(255,0) to add custom alpha?

i'm not a model i'm a free man :)

well it's not a car related pseudonyme but lol who cares :)

if i remember correctly you're right the poke(255,0) is alpha information :)