funky alpha fading problem

howdy folks, I''m trying to do various alpha fades in my game engine, such as fading a big quad over the screen for screen fades and fading enemies out when they die. it works, but i have this funky effect during the fade. when i decrement the alpha level in the D3DCOLOR variables of the vertices, the fade goes down as it should to zero, but the visual of the effect seems to jump right to zero around 100 or below. this makes the fade look really crappy cause it fades and then all of a sudden dissapears. for the screen fade-ins, it makes the screen fade in a bit and then pop right into view. anyone know how i could fix this problem? am i just going about it the wrong way? ah, also: i was playing black and white yesterday and i noticed something cool about their screen fades. there seems to be some kind of diamond pattern that appears on the screen, but you can''t really see it. it just blends things better, i guess. i''m assuming that it''s mip-mapping or dithering in effect for a stretched logo or something... thoughts? anyway, i''d appreciate any help here cause i''m winding down to the loosely tenative publisher demo release date and i''d love to have things looking amazing thanks, and happy holidays, dave -- david@neonstar.net neonstar entertainment