Contents:

• About
• How to use
• Future Plans
• Documentation

About:

CGI (Console Graphics Interface) is a Windows only c++ library that allows for a wide array of features. The library has a wide variety of features to cover the redundancies between projects.

If you come up with ideas/implementations to update here, be sure to add your name to the credits using the same format before pushing :)

How to use:

Setup should be simple enough, Just add this project to the project that youre working on, then right click on your project and go to Add -> Reference -> Select CGI

Alternatively, you can build the library separately and then move cgi.lib to the same directory as your solution

All functionality will be part of the cgi namespace so that the code is more organized.

Dont forget to add the lib file next to the EXE if running outside of visual studio.

Future plans:

These are mostly ideas/suggestions, might get implemented:

• Multithreaded Audio Interface

  • Multichannel audio (like NES probably)
  • Audio loading from file
    • Format: COUNT::NOTE:SCALE:DURATION::... int ::enum: int : int ::...
    • Example: 3:A:7:100::C#:7:150::E:7:200 3:W:0:100::W :0:050::W:0:000

• Performance improvements

  • Right now we load each row into a buffer then we add the buffer to the a string and print that

    An Optimization could be to get rid of the intermediate buffer somehow, or better yet, instead of storing each color into an array if we had direct access to the buffer string that would solve all the problems

  • A faster way to load images on to our buffer would also be a much needed optimization but it completely depends on how the buffer works

  • We have a function called PerformanceTest that returns the time a function took to execute in milliseconds. The value for all the draws to the buffer as well as the swapping should be below 16ms ideally

• Game Class that draws asynchronously

  • Not a string necessity because the game class depends on the kind of game made, this depends more on the entity component system. If we do implement this we should try to make the draw calls on a separate thread so that we our main thread calculations arent paused

• An input system

  • Something that reads the entire keyboard state and then polls is as required

• An error messaging and debugging system

  • We already print colored text onto the buffer but we also need a separate buffer that somehow displays the output without disturbing the console. A shortcut to generate a log dump would also be very useful