I am coding a game in C. Console or not?

Question

I was making some games using Game Maker, but I would like to make simple games using C. I am a newb C programmer. When I code the output is always in the CMD Windows Console. I could make some simple games but always in the console, which is not very flexible (you can't animate without scrolling). When you run a more complex game, a complete new screen is created and I actually interact whit that screen.

So the question that i am having using C language is: How is this new screen being loaded? I think there is some windows API to create a new screen or something. By the way, in the old times, I mean DOS time, you just used a console but you could load a new screen where the game was played. How can you achieve this?

I would like some guideline to research the root. I just don't want to call library X or use SDL.

Thanks your your help.

Answer 1

C programming dates back to 1970's, so you can think of creating games similar to that era. The window or the new screen is loaded by few preprocessor directives which are already compiled and stored by the developers. A new screen can be achieved by giving a few commands:

  #include<stdio.h>
  #include<conio.h>
  void main()
  {

  local declarations;
  And your program for the game;

  getch();
}

What this basically do is the function getch(); which is stored in (conio.h) will open a new window and it will display the output till it gets a value from the keyboard ie it displays the output till you press any key from the keyboard.

hope this answer helps you.

Answer 2

Since you mention library X i assume you are on a Linux system. There are several different ways to archive your goal. If you would like to still use the console but with more graphics involved you could take a look at library ncurses ( http://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/ ).

If you want to do more advanced graphics i recommend you to take a look here : How do you create a window in Linux with C++?

Answer 3

Creating new Windows can get pretty hairy (ie. the code can be complicated and difficult to read). I'll try to give a somewhat high-level overview, then link you to a good tutorial for loading a basic window.

You need to declare a couple of variables of types HWND and WNDCLASSEX, and call a bunch of Windows API functions to initialize the Window with some settings and whatnot.

Once this is done, you need to enter a loop that handles all the window interactions, usually with TranslateMessage and DispatchMessage inside the loop.

You also need to implement a callback procedure for handling Windows events such as mouse clicks, closing the window, etc. This is usually done in a LRESULT CALLBACK WndProcedure.

I've now thrown a bunch of new words and ideas around with little explanation; check out this tutorial for a full example of what I've just tried to explain.

http://www.functionx.com/win32/Lesson01c.htm

(EDIT: the link above is dead now, so here's a link to a cache of it from the Wayback Machine https://web.archive.org/web/20190203182520/http://www.functionx.com/win32/Lesson01c.htm)

Hope this helps!

Also - this is all assuming you're on Windows based on your comment about a Windows API (ie. windows.h). If you're on Linux, you'll need to use X.