Here's my non-VCL bitmap loader that can load from file or memory: http://www.alistairkeys.co.uk/NonVCLBitmap.pas.

I checked it with 3 or 4 24bit pictures and it seems to work. It probably handles 32 bit fine as well, though I've not tested that out.

You can combine that loader by packing your bitmaps onto the end of your exe file (link). (I can't remember if the example for that uses the VCL, but it's trivial to convert to non-VCL by using dynamic arrays + BlockRead/BlockWrite as appropriate).

Blah. Off to bed. Have fun!