hello,

I'm making some console apps and games in C++ while I learn the language.

I really like the terminals in the game Fallout 3 and would like to make my console apps similar. Is there a way I can achieve a similar effect to the way text is drawn to the screen without any add-ons like ncurses etc?

Say for example drawing 5 characters to the screen, then half a second later another 5 etc to simulate that effect?

If you skip to 00:58 on the below link you'll understand what I'm after. Thanks!

std::string message = "Hi I'm a console with really badly optimized text rendering capabilities";

for(size_t i = 0; i < message.length(); ++i) {
  std::cout << message[i];
  
  Sleep(50);
}

On Windows #include Windows.h for Sleep which is in milliseconds, and on Linux you can use usleep in unistd.h, and usleep is in microseconds.

EDIT:

Actually, if you have a reasonably up-to-date compiler you can use the built-in sleep if you include <chrono> and <thread>:

std::this_thread::sleep_for(std::chrono::milliseconds(50));

On Windows #include Windows.h for Sleep which is in milliseconds, and on Linux you can use usleep in unistd.h, and usleep is in microseconds.

Or in order to not make your whole game pause, use timers in your game. Something like this semi-pesudo-code:

Draw() {
  timer += elapsed_time;
  if (timer > 0.5f) {
    length = min(max_lenth, length + 5);
    timer -= 0.5f;
  }

  DrawText(string, length);
}

Then every half second, 5 more characters will be added to how many can be drawn at a time. You'll need to account for layout and other VFX of course but that's the gist of it.

The other option is to use a mask that animates per line on the rendering. You can then just set the text of all lines and the mask animation will reveal text as goes a long untill it is finished.

Ignore this I missed the console app, my solution will only work if you are doing some fancy rendering

on that subject, at the moment i've just been doing exclusively console based games for windows.

If I did want to branch out in some graphics for more fancy text games like the fallout terminal, what is the easiest thing to use with C++ do you think to achieve something like that and practice graphics for text games?

EDIT: just for the record I'm clueless on graphics and have never done anything but console stuff.