pouët.net

Go to bottom

Capturing text-mode demos on Windows as text

category: general [glöplog]
 
Hey guys, I've been trying to capture http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=60938 as text on Windows, but nothing seems to work.
It's frustrating how something so simple turns out so difficult on Windows.

I've tried various redirects and powershell Start-Transcript, nothing seems to work on this particular demo.

Thanks for any help!
added on the 2018-05-08 17:47:09 by RRROAR RRROAR
You should be able to hook to the device context (dc) of the console buffer window and record the frames from there. So either you program one yourself (if you're a coder) or you luckily find a tool that can record this. Good luck
added on the 2018-05-08 18:32:10 by rudi rudi
(Oh, and in the .nfo file it seems to me their using some OpenGL contexts or something, for that I dont know and its strange it cannot capture like any other openGL demo).
added on the 2018-05-08 18:36:22 by rudi rudi
Thanks, from readme.txt:
Quote:
Uses TextFX7 (c) Jari Komppa

Uses TextGL (c) Jari Komppa, based and heavily modified
from TinyGL by Fabrice Bellard (under zlib license)


I wanted to try and pipe this and some other text-mode demos to netcat, to achieve something like this - surprised it's such a challenge.

Don't think it would be difficult with a linux demo, but this particular one has proven an interesting challenge.

Maybe someone from text-mode scene has ideas I could try on this particular demo?..
added on the 2018-05-09 16:54:23 by RRROAR RRROAR
Oh, I misread your initial post. You can do an detection algorithm and use your values as index to a lookup table of your text-based characters.
added on the 2018-05-09 17:44:31 by rudi rudi
This sounds way overly complicated.

After all, it's an actual text-mode demo, I can select the text with mouse and Ctrl+c & Ctrl+v it elsewhere.

It's not rendered.

There must be a more elegant way then sending keypress events to the demo window, grabbing the text to clipboard, saving it and repeating for each frame.. brr
added on the 2018-05-09 19:45:49 by RRROAR RRROAR
You can always ask Sol_HSA on Ircnet about it, he's the creator for TextFX
added on the 2018-05-09 22:37:58 by visy visy
I wouldn't be surprised if there's an API that lets the demo write directly to the console window without going via standard output. Perhaps you could hook that.
added on the 2018-05-09 22:52:11 by absence absence
Hi. Textgl (and tinygl) are pure software rasterizers, there's just an opengl-like API that makes some things a bit more familiar to people. Unfortunately nobody else ended up using it, so, wasted effort, I guess.

Capturing the text buffer should be possible because some people have (at least tried to) made tools that show text mode demos "fullscreen" on modern windows by rendering the text to an opengl or dx window. As far as I recall, the primary problem there was lag, but that's not a problem if you ignore sound..

Apart from peeking the console buffer directly (which ought to be possible somehow) one could hook the system dll:s with some reflection hackery and intercept the console buffer update calls. Haven't tried that myself though.

Or you could just ask for the demo sources, I guess.
added on the 2018-05-10 05:37:01 by sol_hsa sol_hsa

login

Go to top