alpha with images?

hello, haven't touched blitz3d for a while, but am making a simple note reading app with it. It is very slow to actually draw the notes on the cleflines with ovals and lines as I figured out, so I thought I'd make some images and paste them over.
However, no alpha channels!
I hope I am omitting something very easy, like a flag in loading or something?
I need the notes to allow the lines to show through from underneath.. I thought that just loading a bmp with alpha information should be fine, but its not working.
Any info on this?
thanks!
aristides.

sorry to bother all,
just found about maskimage. it appears my black wasnt exactly black..
however, the question still stands, is there a way to have transparency according to an alpha mask?
for example, when mask is gray, the image is semi-transparent, etc.
thanks.

You can't have that in images i'm afraid. You'll need to use a sprite system. Try nSprite?

thank you.
I was expecting this to be standard, frankly.

It is standard, in 3D.

2D commands do not have any alpha as they are DirectDraw that does not use 3d hardware acceleration -> no alpha, realtime rotation and realtime scale

You can use Draw3D for example or a different 3D basing solution for alpha or you can do it pixel wise which will not allow many alphaed images