Im sorry, I dont have ICQ installed at home anymore, so i'll post this here then (brought the project from home to work to copy/paste the code :P)

what you have to do in your main first is to tell the engine the background is transparent:

Code:
sky_color.red = 0;
sky_color.green = 0;
sky_color.blue = 0;


make sure to load a level after that ofcourse wink

now, when creating a panel, make sure it's layer is set negative

Code:
STRING* tempcreateSTR = "#500";

// create a string that contains the image directory
str_cpy(tempcreateSTR, "./backgrounds/"); 
str_cpy(tempcreateSTR, my.string1);

// create bitmap from string
BMAP* tempBMP = bmap_create(tempcreateSTR); 

// create a panel, and assign the bitmap created from the string to it.
PANEL* currentBGrender = pan_create("flags = SHOW;", -5);
currentBGrender.bmap = tempBMP;


I read the string of an entity (which is something like: myCurrentImage.tga), and use that to load it from the backgrounds folder, then display that into a dynamic panel i create.

that's how I did it, really that's all... nothing strange, if you cant get it to work, i can send my project so you can see how I did it...

hope that helps you!
regards,

Formerly known as dennis_fantasy
Portfolio - http://www.designorhea.com/
Project - http://randomchance.cherrygames.org/