How to paint my simple 2D game world, in console , smoothly?

Question

I want to render my 2D semi_text-based game scene, in the console (cmd) as my frame output ...

I did it by printing a 2D-array of simple character that present my game world. ( like "-" and "|" )

but each frame ( = each loop ) I want to clear screen to repaint my matrix . and now I use system("cls") ... But It's too slow ! Here is my render function :

void Engine::engineRender()
{    
    system("cls");          
    // Render Background        
    for(int i=0; i<10 ; i++ )
    {       
        for ( int j=0 ; j<40 ; j++ )
        {           
            printf("%c",map[i][j]);             
            if((int)(player1->yPos)==i && (int)(player1->xPos)==j )
                printf("\b&");          

        }           
        printf("\n");           
    }
}

And my Main Game loop is this :

 while(true)
    {
        _ftime(&cur);
        elapsMili += (cur.time - last.time)*1000 + (cur.millitm - last.millitm) ;

        if ( elapsMili >= 1000/frameRate ){
            elapsMili -= 1000/frameRate ;
            last=cur;
            needRender = true ;
        }
        engineUpdate();
        if (needRender){
            engineRender();
            needRender=false;
        }
    }

any idea to have more smooth render ?

Answer 1

You could try a little library I made just for this purpose (fast smooth console rendering). It should be pretty straightforward to use. It works only on windows though.