whats the story exactly with using alpha channels. Take for example using the new tga file that can use 32 bit textures, 8 bits is signed over for for the alpha channel of your texture. But what do we do for creating our translucent alpha effect then if we want to scale down to 24 or 16 bits ? also correct me if im wrong, but opengl seems to be very sturdy as regards displaying textures of higher pixel depths than what the screen is set for. If I was to create a game of different resolutions would I just work off the one 32 bit set of textures changing the resolution to what is wanted and let opengl do all the work ? (seems funny to me !!!) please put my foggy mind to rest

first off the tga file format is very old. it also supported alpha channel for quite a while.

second using 32bit textures in a 16bit screen depth results in switching all the textures to 16bit at render time anyway. (well gl may seperate the alpha channel and use that as an alpha mask, but that is driver dependent (check the opengl spec))

want translucent effect when using 24bit or 16bit textures? then create an alpha texture that goes along with your 24bit/16bit texture. resolution and color depth are very different things.