Thread: Darned Blinking Cursor

Does anyone know how to get rid of that darned blinking cursor in text graphics mode in DOS? Or at least change the colors to only black so you can't see it? Any help would be much appreciated.

(I have already searched the forums and nothing there that works)

I believe you can change the color's using conio.h. It's not standard, but it is quite widely supported - give it a look.

Are you running DOS or a Windows 'Command Prompt'? If you are running the later you can use the Win32 API functions GetConsoleCursorInfo and SetConsoleCursorInfo functions to set the cursor size and visibility.

You can use SetConsoleCursorInfo() to hide the cursor under Windows.
Here's a nice tutorial on console programming under Windows.

gg

Originally Posted by xErath

Move the cursor to position 0,25. A regular MS-DOS console has 80*25 resolution, starting at the upper-left corner with 0,0 coordinates. So 0,25 would be outside the screen. That's an accepted technique.

To the other posters: he's programming directly with video modes, so Windows or POSIX API's won't work.

then does it mean that if he wants to accept the input....the user ...watever he is typing will not appear on the screen??
dont understand this point

That's a different story. Since he's working with raw hardware mode, reading input from the keyboard would consist in removing keypresses from the key buffer in memory and transform the scancodes in ascii (or read the ascci itself), rather that using standard input functions, like getchar or scanf's, although getch() or getkey() worked well with me.
The standard input functions (I think), just determine where the cursor is and place one char at a time there them move the cursor to the next place.

Originally Posted by xErath

To the other posters: he's programming directly with video modes, so Windows or POSIX API's won't work.

What do you mean by that? I am using the deafult console mode (80x25 text) and using getch() to read in user input. There are only two problems with my program. When the player or opponent shoots, the game pauses until the shot (a while loop) missis or hits. Also only one person may move at a time, so the game is really turn based. (I don't know how to get around that in C)

The second problem is when someone shoots, the cursor is always right next to the shot as it moves up/down the screen, so it looks really ugly and it's hard to concentrate on the actual shot.

If anyone has C for Dummies Volume 2 I am using the same method of animation as the program DROPNUKE.C on page 593. A copy of my source code is in the "Post your games here" thread, it's near the last couple of posts.

Iain with your above code, how would that appear as a finished function? I don't quite get what you mean.

I gave up on that xErath because I didn't understand it. I am now using This because it works and makes sense. But I am not into graphics yet, I'm starting out with very simple games (text based) and once I get everything worked out I will move to graphics.

iain the code you gave me doesn't work for some reason. I have conio.h, and am using Turbo C witch is (I believe) is a Borland compiler. I get the error message

Code:

Undefined symbol '_NOCURSOR' in function main
Undefined symbol '_NORMALCURSOR' in function main

I am simply typing as you said

Code:

setcursortype(_NOCURSOR);

in a specific place and it doesn't work.

Maybe it's because of Turbo C. Do you know if you have to pay to download Borland C++? I have been wanting to get that.

xErath by the way your method with locating the cursor won't work with the way I am animating the bullets, I think. A copy of my source code is here.

Ah, I see, you are using a DOS compiler in Windows at the Command Prompt.

Why don't you get a 32-bit compiler? Several are available for free:
http://www.cprogramming.com/compilers.html
Add to the list of free ones 'Visual C++ Toolkit 2003', which is a very good command-line compiler.

see,if u are working in the dos mode,maybe this will help.
u can do this,
make the next display block totally black,and just before calling printf(),make it as white or whatever color u want.i dont know how to put wat i am sayin into words.
u can use this.

Code:

 int far *ptr=0xb8000000;

before every printf(),use

Code:

 *ptr=0x0f20;

after the printf(),use

Code:

 *ptr=0x0000;

tell me if it works,it worked for me.i use borland 3.0 turbo c compiler.maybe what i said will help you.u can access the video memory directly using this.

ciao
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