Okay. So our team (4 people) needs to make a game that runs in a Windows console window.
It has to be programmed in C (I forget if it's C89 or C99), and we can only use pretty basic libraries, with the exception of Windows.h ... so we can't use conio.h or curse or any graphics API.
We've got a basic 'engine' set up and now we've been troubleshooting on how to deal with models and graphics. I think we're going to do a tile-based editor, which should be relatively simple to program in a while.
We're trying to decide whether to build our own graphics editor for models, or to use bitmaps so we can have all the functionality that a program like MSPaint (or countless others) already provides.
Problem is, bitmaps seem to store there info in RGBQuad's, while Windows console changes it's colors uses this RGBI format (I is intensity).
So in order to load a bitmap and have it load to our console buffer, we'd have to read in the pixel array and convert the colors to our format and place them accordingly.
My question is this:
Is it worth it to write a program that reads in these bitmap files, or would it be easier for us just to write our editor? Are there any potential drawbacks to using bitmaps vs. using our own models?
And does anybody know of any way to convert easily from RGBQuad to RGBI, or do I just have to guess and check?
Thanks. I'm sure there was more I meant to put here but I've got a headache and may have missed something. Any help greatly appreciated.