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ms dos utility to clear the screen

category: general [glöplog]
 
is there any program written for dos that can completly clear a 320x200 screen, after a specific keypress? something like snarf but instead of saving it, it clear the screen

i have a game with a 2D engine inside it and id like to see how the screen is redraw after complete clearing...
maybe it is possible directly from dosbox ?

I checked if there is any plugin / special port of dosbox that show specific information (like the screen buffer, palette and so) but found nothing ... :(
added on the 2010-08-03 11:35:52 by Tigrou Tigrou
I'm not sure. But what do you mean exactly? Like clearning the screen back in command prompt?
added on the 2010-08-03 11:47:43 by Exin Exin
tl;dr
cls.exe
I belive he means a TSR. Write one yourself. Very easy with TP for example.
added on the 2010-08-03 12:13:14 by dr_evil dr_evil
clr
added on the 2010-08-03 12:17:07 by ringofyre ringofyre
what i mean is clearing the screen buffer when in vga mode and the game is running (by filling zeroes at 0xA000)

yep writting a TSR is one of the solutions but i dont want to spend 2 days learning dos programming and debugging a dos app
added on the 2010-08-03 13:12:38 by Tigrou Tigrou
ermm... what *exactly* are you trying to do?
added on the 2010-08-03 13:20:35 by xeron xeron
clear the screen buffer when the game is running, since its a 2D game and the screen is not fully refreshing every frame (not like in doom), you can actually watch how each element is redraw
added on the 2010-08-03 13:30:49 by Tigrou Tigrou
i just dig into dosbox source but dont know where to start...

a single

if (GetAsyncKeyState(special_key))
{
memset(&memory[0xA000], 0);
}

should be enough
added on the 2010-08-03 13:33:16 by Tigrou Tigrou
What game? Is it a game you have the source code to? Or are you trying to nuke the screen while the game is running?

You're running it in dosbox?
added on the 2010-08-03 14:02:16 by xeron xeron
Could you maybe run the game under a debugger? Break into it, clear the mem, continue?
added on the 2010-08-03 14:03:42 by ara ara
You've got the source to DOSBox - couldn't you mod it to log all writes to VGA memory? (or rather the access pattern if that's what you're interested in)
added on the 2010-08-03 17:14:49 by mic mic
As dr_evil wrote, a TSR would be a fine solution to your problems.
added on the 2010-08-03 19:22:30 by Adok Adok
Most ms-dos programs used an offscreen buffer anyway, since writing randomly to (and specially reading from) 0xA000 was so slow
added on the 2010-08-03 19:47:04 by Jcl Jcl
(thus clearing the vidmem to see how it's redrawn would be quite pointless, since the redrawing would not happen directly on video memory)
added on the 2010-08-03 19:49:46 by Jcl Jcl

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