Out of interest, how fast does this (224K) run on your comp? If it's any value >= 5 FPS then your blending could probably be improved, especially since the above is doing much more fancy stuff than just alpha-blending the screen (which it does too, though). It doesn't use MMX yet. [It works best with white backgrounds; if you press 'z' to get rid of the picture then it looks pretty snazzy].

Yes, this is sort of irrelevant and I'm showing off.

You probably would be better off with a non-translucent interface. Save most of the CPU cycles for the game .