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I have seen that all the textmode demos are using a specific textmode library for windows. How is it called and in which link can I find it? For which compiler? Some C I guess? I hope it comes with some nice documentation of how to do things..

And something else. Few weird things about it. First, when I run the demo, the window pops up. But I have to press Alt+Enter to get it to fullscreen. If I am late with that, the view is fucked up (The heights of one character is twice wide and I see half of the demoscreen or something). At least in this computer. Secondly, there is a char mouse pointer at the middle, which I can move to a corner, but I am not sure what's it's meaning and seems a bit annoying too.. (Just a bit :)

1. Check the TMDC5 source, everything is there.
2. You can set up a shortcut to make the window start in fullscreen. Tho' I experienced this problem regardless of speed. (Win2000+XP?)
3. Well... uninstall the mouse driver :)

Many win32 textmode console productions use Sol's textfx library. You may also want to check out the AA-project which has somewhat better looking ascii art renderer, but for black'n'white stuff only.

I haven't seen the problems you describe on putting the prod to fullscreen, although I have experienced that audio on most win32 textmode demos doesn't work if the production is started in a fullscreen console. In those cases the audio works if the prod is started in a window and switched to fullscreen with alt+enter only after the audio is initialized (i.e. the demo has basically started). I'm not sure if this can be fixed.

You know some funny things you can do with textmode demos? Heheh.,.

If you watch them for a long then go back and run a modern demo with high resolution. It will look so WOW!

If you also dislike 320*200 software demos, it will surelly work there too! I will try it. There are some mode13h demos which look really ugly in a 21" monitor. Hehe,. but how about after watching a lot of textmode stuff?! ;P

tonic: This can be fixed, yes. I spent hours and hours fixing it for our unfinished demo who was supposed to enter tmdc5. What you have to do is make sure your musicplayback-lib (bass in my case) is not using multithreading, and you must also make sure the thread is at normal speed (bass seems to turn it up at init). Atleast this worked for me. Also, I have hacked the texfx-lib a lot to suit my needs. (it is really a horrible piece of code ;)

Also, dynamicly loading the function SetConsoleDisplayMode from kernel32.dll lets you set fullscreenmode automaticly if supported by the system. Oh, and SetConsoleCursorInfo to remove the textcursor. (I haven't figured out the mouse-cursor yet)

"not kusma" (or what should I call you?-), too bad you didn't get your demo finished!

Thanks for the tips, might be nice if you would want to share your improvements for the textfx lib possibly to be included in the next release.. send them to sol if you think so too. =)

Not _every_ Windows textmode demo is using the same library. :-P

iam not coder but disabling cursor would be nice
option...

DiamonDie, every Win32 console textmode utilizing demo uses same library, which is the library Win32 API offers for using the console. If a production doesn't use that, then it's not a Win32 console textmode demo.

It's another thing if some production uses some extra libs to make it easier for rendering to a console window, for example textfx or aalib.

i did not use sols lib and i regret that. his lookup tables are many times better than mine ...

Perhaps it wouldn't be that much hard to output textmode gfx, without having to use some additional libraries. I hate when there are many libraries and I have to get used to them ;P

tonic: "kusma" works fine. I haven't bothered to change my nick back after some joke. I didn't say I improved textfx4, I hacked it to suit my needs ;)
Also, I think I'll write my own textmode-lut for the release of the demo, it will proabebly be a lot cleaner and powerfull than the solution I currently use. And yes, too bad our demo didn't get finished, it was due to a couple of things. A bug in my 3dengine (i decided to change all the lightingcode 2 days from deadline or so), and the fact that I didn't bother to code much the last week (prioritized social-shit). It will rule when it's done ;)
(not too far ahead in time, I guess)

Optimus: outputting textmode isn't hard, but the default palette in windows textmode differs a bit from windowed- to fullscreenmode, from win9x to winNT-based versions etc. Writing routines that makes sure everything is right all the time is a bitch. (Setting up the lut isn't the tiresome part of the job).

Optimus:
a) Start->Run...
b) type "cmd" and press enter
c) Press Alt+Enter to go full screen
d) run your demo...

change "cmd" with "command" for Windows 9x and ME.

kusma, I think no publicly available textmode output lib for win32 handles the default textmode palette issues differing on windowed/fullscreen/win version. If you implement something to address those, it'd be very nice if you could release the important parts of that stuff for others to take advantage too.. ;-)

tonic: actually, textfx4 seems to have some kind of handeling for this(not the fullscreen-stuff, though). I don't know how good it works, since I only have win2k installed myself.

Well, i think not EVERYBODY does use the same "higher level" libraries... For example, I like to use PDCURSES for textmode output and keyhandling, and own code for everything else :)
It seems to work properly in a window or fullscreen.