Drawing in a Win32 Console on C++ ?

Question

What is the best way to draw things in the Console Window on the Win 32 platform using C++?

I know that you can draw simple art using symbols but is there a way of doing something more complex like circles or even bitmaps?

Answer 1

Not without usng ASCII art. Back in the days of DOS it was "fairly" easy to do by redesigning the character bitmaps. It might only be possible in windows by creating your own font, but im really not sure thats possible

Answer 2

No you can't just do that because Win32 console doesn't support those methods. You can however use GDI to draw on the console window.

This is a great example of drawing a bitmap on a console by creating a child window on it: http://www.daniweb.com/code/snippet216431.html

And this tells you how to draw lines and circles:
http://www.daniweb.com/code/snippet216430.html

This isn't really drawing in the console though. This is sort of drawing "over" the console but it still does the trick pretty well.

Answer 3

Perhaps you are talking about DOS programs, using VGA mode. A quick google search shows up a C tutorial.

Answer 4

As Nick Brooks has pointed out, you can use GDI calls in console apps, but the graphics cannot appear in the same window as the text console I/O. This may not matter since you can draw text elements in GDI.

A simplified interface to GDI calls in console apps is provided by WinBGIm. It is a clone of Borland's DOS BGI API, but with extensions to handle resizable windows, mouse input, and 24bit colour models. Since it is available as source code, it also serves a good demonstration of using GDI in this way.

It is possible to either have both a console and the GDI window, or you can suppress the console window by specifying that the application is a GUI app (the -mwindows linker option in GNU toolchain) - not that specifying a GUI app really only supresses the console, it is only really a GUI app if it has a message loop. Having the console is good for debugging, since it is where stdout and stderr are output to by default.

Answer 5

It is possible, albeit totally undocumented, to create a console screen buffer that uses an HBITMAP that is shared between the console window process and the calling process. This is the approach that NTVDM takes to display graphics once a DOS application switches to graphics mode.