Display non-printable/ANSI characters

Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Beginners Area/Display non-printable/ANSI characters

OzBlitzManic(Posted 2006) [#1]
Hi All,

I have been thinking about the days when BBS's (Bulletin Boards) were all the rage. I am planning on creating a simple text only game similar to an online BBS game I loved called 'Exitilus' or something. I was wondering if using Blitz3D if it is possible to print ANSI characters. I vaguely recall in order to type them, I had to hold down my ALT key and type numbers, i.e Hold ALT + 184 would display some character that could be used for borders. Anyone have any ideas? I was kinda hoping to make this a text only game.

Any other thoughts or info would be great.

Thanks in advance.

Al


Sir Gak(Posted 2006) [#2]
Well, I'm not sure Blitz is set up, natively, to mess with ANSI. But, there's no reason you can't create your own interpretation using bitmap images. Use a SELECT....CASE in which each ANSI code can be called up, and have a bitmap representation of the corresponding ANSI character (use Keydown to watch for ALT keys being pressed ) The program's code will respond to keyboard-only interaction, even if you have to use bitmaps to form the desired image(s).


octothorpe(Posted 2006) [#3]
Extended ASCII, not ANSI. Character 184 in the ANSI Character Set is a cedilla (a funny looking comma), while 184 in the Extended ASCII Character Set is a line-drawing character.

Extended ASCII defines the glyphs which used to be characters 128-255 (including line-drawing characters;) it is now referred to as ISO Latin1. Blitz3D's text output commands can deal with characters numbered 0-255, so you just need to find a font with ISO Latin1 characters mapped to the 128-255 range, just like they were in the olde days.

P.S. BlitzMax is able to access characters above 255.


WolRon(Posted 2006) [#4]
I was going to say what octothorpe said. You just need to find the right font with the characters you want...


VP(Posted 2006) [#5]
Though you will still be better off writing your own implementation using bitmaps because it will most likely be quite a bit faster.

My bitmap font routine could be adapted very easily for the purpose.


OzBlitzManic(Posted 2006) [#6]
Thanks for the tips everyone, I will probably go with the graphics, as I really am only after about 9-10 of these to create my borders.

Cheers all and I hope everyone had a great new year.

Al