a) what color shoud the BG be?
b) what "mode" do you save it in? (normal, additive, alphatest, etc)

see, i've tried saving it in every mode adn i still get this massive box around it..someone pls help :(

a) Doesn't matter, as long as it is the last color in the .bmp. If u open a new Paint image, this will be white.

b) alphatest.

I also believe that the bitmap must have a 256 colour palette.

Originally posted by Killaganz
a) Doesn't matter, as long as it is the last color in the .bmp. If u open a new Paint image, this will be white.

how do i check/change findout the last collor in the bmp?

I also believe that the bitmap must have a 256 colour palette.

Correct.

how do i check/change findout the last collor in the bmp?

In most graphic editors (not MS Paint), you can view and edit the bitmap palette. I use the Gimp, the palette is at "dialogs" > "indexed palette" there. Search for equivalents of this in your editor. As i said, if u create a new image in MS Paint, white will be the last colour in the palette by default.

If you still can't get it to work, try editing an existing crosshair rather than creating a completely new one. I saw already some released crosshairs at MSA - releases.
Use SprView (http://www.worldcraft.cz/soubory/sprview.zip) to view an existing crosshair and export it to .bmp.