application console interface

I am looking for ways to interact with a console application, more specifically, an online game.

The first one, is merely trivial, a way to enter mouse clicks on a certain location. As a form of RSi protection everyone uses mouse clickers sometimes :D only I'd like to code my own to practice windows programming a bit and prepare for the second more difficult task.

That second task is to get the in game chat and log it. This functionality is NOT included for users and I think it is really a bad thing, sometimes it would be really nice to look back at the funnier exchanges. The chat comes in a specific window and it is colored letters on a black background. I could think of no better solution than storing that part of the screen as an image... on a keystroke... or just automatically. then it could be OCRed to real texts, or at least I hope it can;)

What I would like to know is basically just how to do the interaction with windows consoles, where to find the functions that interface with low level things like mouse control and screen output. Unfortunately i have little experience at programming in a windows environment, just unix. Perhaps the best thing would be a link to source code that does something related to these tasks?

It sounds like you want to cheat or similar. You won't get much help for that here.

I have a Windows Console Programming Tutorial starting there which will introduce console programming, but if the "console" you are looking at is embedded in another application, it will almost certainly not be done in the same way.

Maybe if you use CreateProcess() to run that online game you will gain access over the console window?
Just a thought...

the mouseclicker is the only thing that can be considered 'cheating' but like I said, only purpose is training myself. Besides, these programs are not hard to find. The real killer is logging the chat window. Which is nothing more than a more elegant and doable way of pressing print screen a lot of times and saving the image. I am sure no one will object to that ;)

The question is mainly I/O related because mouse clicking (simulated output) and screen capture (automated input) must be available somehow in the windows operating system, only question is where and how to find and adress it.

look for winsocket programming for how to make chat programs across the internet or a LAN. Here are a whole set of console functions that can be used to access mouse and other windows events.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de..._functions.asp