I'm exporting tilesets and putting them together so I can put more stuff on my maps. I import the new tilesets back in, and select the transparency for white, and the semi-transparency for the shadow-gray.

However, when all is said and done, the shadow-gray for the semi-transparency appears lighter that what it originally was. At first, I didn't think much of it, so I went ahead and continued making my maps, but these lighter shadows aren't semi-transparent. It's just a nasty light gray over the map.

There's a couple other things I noticed. One, when I make the shadow pitch black in MS Paint, and then import it, it becomes lighter like before, but now to the normal shadow color. However, it still just lays on top of the map and is not transparent. Finally (and what I think is the culprit here), is when saving the maps in Microsoft Paint, it says any transparency will be lost when saved. No other image in MS Paint has done this. So I figured there's some transparent attribute in the image that is lost when saved. But isn't the transparency set in RPG Maker XP itself when importing? And even then, why is it when I import and set the transparency, the shadow color becomes lighter and isn't transparent anymore?

This is quite an annoying problem and I cannot make any progress on my project. Is there anyway to avoid this? Is it MS Paint causing this? If so, what's a good free alternate paint-like program I can use? Also, if it helps, this is on Windows 7.

First- never use MS PAINT Oo

Get yourself a better tool like Gimp or Paint.net (both are free)- they can handle alpha (that means transparency), so when you import pictures you made with them and also saved in the right format (i prefer .png), you don't need to define transparent colors. Try these tools, if you worked yourself into them, it's 2000 times easier for you.

Btw, i prefer Gimp^^

I'm gonna have to disagree with -dah0rst- on "never using MSPaint".

Your problem is that you're not re-uploading it to re-set the transparency. MS Paint is an awesome no-bullshit paint program, but it does not support transparency. So if you're going to edit it in MSPaint, just make sure you re-upload the tileset, so you can set the transparency again and you shouldn't have any problems.

EDIT: Actually if you ARE re-uploading and it's not making any transparent tiles, are you sure it's in the right format like PNG? If you're still having problems with MSPaint, then I'd recommend Paint.NET. It just occurred to me that things probably work different for me because I'm on Win XP.

They are PNG files that I'm uploading. For comparison's sake, I tried it on Windows XP and it worked just fine.

I will try out those programs. Thanks!