I am trying to create a rougelike, and I am using windows for the different layers. The bottom most one is the map, and the one above that is the entity layer. I have the player character, and I want to move them around on the screen. I am printing a new # (the way the player is represented) to where they move, and I am trying to put a blank space to where the character was, so that you can see the map layer where before you couldn't. I tried using NULL, but it outputs ^#. Any idea what I can use?
Use a blank character, ' ', or if you prefer just 32 or 0x20.
NULL is actually defined as:
#define NULL 0
So you are writing the character with ASCII code 0, that is a NUL character, sometimes represented as Ctrl+#, or ^#.
On modern day machines clearing the screen and redrawing the whole screen completely after each edit would probably not cause too much performance issues. I know it's not the most optimal solution, but it gets rid of that kind of trail artifacts for good.
Related
I'm making a game in C++ console using UTF-16 characters to make it little bit more interesting, but some characters are different size then others. So, when I print the level, things after character are moved further than others. Is there any way how to add spacing between characters with some console function, I try to google something helpful, but I have not found nothing.
I tried to change font size by CONSOLE_FONT_INFOEX, but it changed nothing, maybe i implement it in the wrong way, or it not work with UTF-16 characters.
// i tried this
CONSOLE_FONT_INFOEX cfi;
cfi.cbSize = sizeof(cfi);
cfi.dwFontSize.X= 24;
cfi.dwFontSize.Y= 24;
Unfortunately I expect that this will heavily depend on the particular console you're using. Some less Unicode-friendly consoles will treat all characters as the same size (possibly cutting off the right half of larger characters), and some consoles will cause larger characters to push the rest of the line to the right (which is what I see in the linked image). The most reasonable consoles I've observed have a set of characters considered "double-wide" and reserve two monospace columns for those characters instead of one, so the rest of the line still fits into the grid.
That said, you may want to experiment with different console programs. Can I assume you are on Windows? In that case, you might want to give Windows Terminal a try. If that doesn't work, there are other console programs available, such as msys's Mintty, or ConEmu.
So, after some intense googling i found the solution. And solution is fight fire with fire. Unicode include character Thin Space, that is 1/5 of the normal space, so if i include two of them with one normal space after my problematic character, the output is diplaying how i want. If anybody runs into some simliar issue, unicode have lot of different sized spaces. I found Website that shows them all of them, with their propperties.
fixed output picture
So I've outputted a string of various ASCII characters. This program involves parts of this string being modified, and then re-displayed.
Instead of clearing the entire screen and re-displaying everything, which produces an unwanted flicker effect, I've decided on moving the cursor and then rewriting only the characters that have changed.
I'm moving the cursor with SetConsoleCursorPosition, part of windows.h.
However, once I try and cout something, it pushes all of the text in front of it ahead by a space; another unwanted effect.
In an attempt to fix this, I tried various forms of 'cout<<"\b";' to remove the old, unmodified character. But there was either no effect, or it actually added a space, which is obviously not a desired effect here.
I read somewhere that in order to remove the unwanted character that you actually have to use the escape sequence twice, Example: '\b\b', because the first one moves the cursor back a space, and the second one overwrites the character in front of it with a space (' ') or something like that.
'\b\b' didn't work either, unsurprisingly. Or maybe that is surprising, I don't actually know.
My question is: How do I remove the unwanted character? Or better yet, How do I overwrite text that has already been outputted with new text?
EDIT: I apologize, I'm running Windows 7
I think maybe clearing the ENABLE_INSERT_MODE with the SetConsoleMode function might help. It should prevent the console from inserting characters and pushing the old characters forward.
I am building a part of a tower defense game in a strictly console environment and i am stuck at the moving of a creature lets say "c", i would like the letter "c" to start on the left and move a space at a time to the right on the same line basically:
c (one second later)
c (one second later)
c and so on....
i thought that this could be implimented with an array but am lost, i want to be able to use simple code, not weird libraries and weird methods, just simple as possible. Thank you
One method is display all the characters, then a carriage return ('\r') and then reprint the line.
This allows you to "walk" characters across. This will only work on video terminals that do not advance a line upon receiving a CR.
Another method would be to print 10 backspace characters, a space, then your 10 'c'. This may not be as fast as the carriage return method above, but worth looking at.
As others have said, you may want to look into a terminal library such as ncurses. The library allows you to position the cursor on the screen, based on the terminal type. This may require setting up the console window to emulate a terminal.
I would like to write 80 (standard conole width) characters in one line without the cursor go to next line. It is only problem when I want to print 80 characters in the last line of console. It cases scrolling that I dont want.
Take a look:
I dont want the newline. any way to do this? :/
Im on Windows, DEV-C++, using WinApi for colors and moving the cursor (the window resize too).
Thanx for any answers.
Instead of using standard output functions use the Windows Console API to set the cursor position and draw characters. Specifically, take a look at WriteConsoleOutput.
MSDN Console API Docs
The only reason why you are on a new line is because the console is not big enought to support the eighty stars.
So it pushed the cursor to the next line.
through one or two "\b" at the end it moves the cursor back.
For the system-critical console window, the cursor should always stay visible, and the only way for it to do so after you've reached the max number of chars in a line, is to pop up on the next visible line (without actually making any new lines).
filter the output either in the originating program or with another program through a pipe. When you have outputted too many characters on a single line, do whatever you like (i.e., drop characters, overwrite, etc....).
I posted a question similar to this earlier, however, after thinking about it and testing the answers, I believe I misinterpreted the answers and the answerer(s) misinterpreted me. The original question is here. I think people believed that I just wanted to highlight strings, I didn't state my exact purpose. So, I will now:
What I've been trying to do lately is create a 100% from scratch text box in C++ CLR using GDI+. I've gotten to the challange of placing the caret when the user clicks in the textbox. Doing simple math (Where they clicked divided by line width) I can figure out which line they clicked. But in order to get the character clicked, I need (unless there are better ways) to compare the bounding rectangles of all the characters in the line and place the caret before the one the mouse fits into. In order to do this, I need to get the exact bounds of each individual character, not an entire string.
I've already tried a few things, none of which seemed to work:
Graphics::MeasureString is not recommended by anyone, nor does
it give what I want
TextRenderer::MeasureText is more accurate, but for this not accurate enough
Graphics::MeasureCharacterRanges has a 32 character
cap, and I'm expecting lines to be over 32 characters long in some
cases
I believe I can't use these methods, unless there are ways around their limitations. I hope I made my problem and expected solution a lot more clear than I previously did.
Because of the way text is kerned and anti-aliased, the boundary of a character depends on all of the characters to the left of it. However you don't need to know every character boundary, only the ones on either side of your click point. You can find those with a binary search - split your string in half, measure that (using TextRenderer::MeasureText), and determine if it's to the left or right of your click point. Keep narrowing down the size of the string until there's only one possibility remaining.