MapGuide - renderMap - transparency

The RenderMap functions takes a MgColor object in order to set the background color of the map.
I wanted to have a transparent background - according to the API docs you can create a MgColor object by providing values for RGB and alpha:

MgColor(int red, int green, int blue, int alpha);

Problem is, the map background wont show up transparent. In order to have the background transparent MgColor needs to be called by passing hexvalues instead:

MgColor("ffffff00");

AIMS 2017