About the masked texture bug : there's indeed a problem with some inproperly imported textures on meshes. The tricky part is that the bug does not appear on all system, which makes it quite difficult to betatest (for example it never happened on my comp). The other problem is that i keep forgetting the exact process to solve it
eek: ), so i have to re-learn it everytime i'm confronted with it (yeah i know, i should write it down for good...).
But i can tell you what i remember though : it has to do with the format of your texture before you import it. I always use bitmap, 256 colors, and if i'm not mistaken i think it has to be 8 bits too (don't forget the masked parts have to be pitch dark). You could try saving your file with MS paint before importing, i think it has to proper file properties by default. Of course, when importing don't forget to check the "masked texture" option. Sorry if i'm not of a great help, i'll try looking into it again if you don't figure it out by yourself.
ps : if the problem does not only appear on your own textures but on ALL masked textures (Inf or UT) then it's your video settings that are at fault.