I think the easiest way for you to achieve the result you want is to start by loading the source
surface containing your character sprites, then, for every instance of your ghost create a working
copy of the surface. What you'll want to do is every time the alpha value of an instance change, SDL_BlitSurface
(doc) your source
into your working
copy and then apply your transparency (which you should probably keep as a float between 0 and 1) and then apply your transparency on every pixel's alpha channel.
In the case of a 32 bit surface, assuming that you initially loaded source
and allocated working
SDL_Surface
s you can probably do something along the lines of:
SDL_BlitSurface(source, NULL, working, NULL);
if(SDL_MUSTLOCK(working))
{
if(SDL_LockSurface(working) < 0)
{
return -1;
}
}
Uint8 * pixels = (Uint8 *)working->pixels;
pitch_padding = (working->pitch - (4 * working->w));
pixels += 3; // Big Endian will have an offset of 0, otherwise it's 3 (R, G and B)
for(unsigned int row = 0; row < working->h; ++row)
{
for(unsigned int col = 0; col < working->w; ++col)
{
*pixels = (Uint8)(*pixels * character_transparency); // Could be optimized but probably not worth it
pixels += 4;
}
pixels += pitch_padding;
}
if(SDL_MUSTLOCK(working))
{
SDL_UnlockSurface(working);
}
This code was inspired from SDL_gfx
(here), but if you're doing only that, I wouldn't bother linking against a library just for that.