🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <08NOV92.18660100.0176@UNBVM1.CSD.UNB.CA> K1N2 <K1N2@UNB.CA> writes:
>I've been trying to write a computer movie, and I got interested in
>the idea of text animation when I saw my VGA card had a mode for
>80 x 50 text characters.  I thought that if I used colored spaces
>placed on the screen, using (say) the BASIC COLOR and LOCATE/PRINT
>statements as a replacement for a 'putpixel' routine, I could
>create a very fast-moving if somewhat cheap animated screen.
>
>However, I tried doing this and it seems disappointingly slow. Of
>course this is probably because I was using the QBASIC interpreter
>that comes with DOS; but then again, this interpreter was on a
>386/33 PC.  Is it feasible to use text mode animation in the way I
>described, with some other language, perhaps?  Would it be in
>general faster than typical pixel-based animation?
>
>I also heard about 'ANSI', which seems to be an improved form of
>text mode.  Would this make for good animation instead?
>
>Anyhow, could someone please give any advice or comments on how I
>could do this quickly and smoothly?

   I wrote some ANSI animation programs (for BBS ads) in 'C' a number of
years ago, and they flew on the lowly XT I had at the time, so speed isn't
really a problem.  :-)
   All you really need is a Pascal or C compiler (plus a limited knowledge
of either of these languages, of course), and an ANSI-drawing program.  The
drawing program I used was called "TheDraw", and it's probably your best
bet.  Any semi-recent version of it will include a README file which gives
an in-depth explanation of how to use ANSI text "bitmaps" (arrays) in C or
Pascal programs, so I'd suggest getting a copy of this program from an FTP
site or BBS.


Hope this helps...

-Mark-