Is there a better way to make console games than with Console.Clear() ?

Question

I'm messing around with game loops and going to create some games as practice.

Currently I have a steady game loop up where the game is updated as fast as possible and the rendering is updated x times a second (25 currently)

The rendinging method is basically a draw + Console.Clear() and at very high updates the display becomes very jittery since it's not finished drawing when Console.Clear() hits.

Is there a better way of doing something like this?

Can I write whatever data to the console and then replace it with some other data?

Answer 1

Since you're in C# anyway, you might want to look into the XNA Framework.

I'm guessing your problem arises from Console.Clear() not being optimized for this kind of use, as XNA uses a similar method (Clear() is called on a GraphicsDevice).

If you don't want to try using XNA, then it may possibly be faster to draw a rectangle (solid black or gray or whatever) rather than call Clear() to 'blank' out the screen and then draw over it.

Answer 2

You migth wanna check out the ConsoleLibrary

I didn't use it, but from the article/demos it seems it would allow you to do bunch of neat stuff on the console.

Answer 3

Assuming you Write a full screen from topleft again in every loop you could simply replace the Clear() with:

 Console.SetCursorPosition(0, 0);

And overwrite the previous screen.