Just a random project

So I've been working lately..but since there's nothing to do I've gutted out one of the old computers, reinstalled the OS and installed visual studio and such so it's almost a home-away-from-home. While I've been bored out of my mind, I've made a cool little DOS console rendering class.

Basically it sets up the DOS window so you have an 80x50 area (or 80x100 if you use the block character trick that I used for rendering the bitmaps) for rendering text to a buffer and swapping it to the screen really fast (I achieved about 900 fps on some computers with it in realtime mode). I've added support for a mouse and such, and I've done a couple random things, like print out an ASCII reference table.

The cool thing I just finished though is a bitmap renderer using my Image Express library...it can load a bitmap and print it to the screen (using the available 16 colors) and does a somewhat decent job of it.

Here's a screeny and some apps for you to play with.

If you want code, feel free to ask and I'll post it. I might be doing a little tutorial thing on my site about this stuff, as it's fun to dabble with.

These two attachments need to be renamed to .zip to be opened.

Note: ImageLoader quits when you press a key, the ASCII table one has a + for the cursor. If you go in to full-screen (alt-enter) it works best.

Screeny of the rendered bitmaps:

Just added functionality for moving the bitmap on the screen and rolling the graphics around. I threw in a sin and cos wave to make it move around cool.

I haven't efficienized it whatsoever, mind you, so it might run slow, but I used a Sleep function for really rudimentary frame limiting so it shouldn't go faster than what I tested it with, I know that for sure. It could go slower though if you have a computer worse than this crap one I'm using (667mhz).

lol you got way too much free time on your hands...

this could be usefull for something i had in mind but never bother doing..

It's called work, which oddly enough means free time.

That's also the cool thing about working in an over-staffed computer help desk area as an intern. :p

nice work :)

Looks very interesting, if and when you get articles/tutorials/give out code on your site, post about it/PM me ;)