# ASCII Art driver for SDL

**URL:** <https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/ascii-art-driver-for-sdl/1898>\
**Category:** SDL Development\
**Created:** [March 1, 2000, 3:04am UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/ascii-art-driver-for-sdl/1898 "2000-03-01T03:04:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Stephane\_Peter](https://discourse.libsdl.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/b77776/32.png) [@Stephane\_Peter](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/Stephane_Peter)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2000, 3:04am UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/ascii-art-driver-for-sdl/1898/1 "2000-03-01T03:04:29Z")

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My AAlib driver for SDL is now commited in the 1.1 devel branch. Here is a  
brief summary of what this is all about :

- The driver needs to be enabled explicitly at compile time, using the  
–enable-video-aalib flag for configure ; you need to have aalib installed on  
your system already. Red Hat has some precompiled packages in its Powertools  
section.

- SDL will resort to AAlib display after X11, fbcon and sometimes SVGAlib  
fails, depending on what was compiled in. AAlib should always be able to  
display something, so you can force it by setting SDL\_VIDEODRIVER to ‘aalib’.  
It opens a new window in X11. Resizing the window is supported.

- The driver has full input support, i.e. mouse and keyboard, even on the  
console (using ncurses and gpm). Of course mouse is not supported when in a  
telnet session or the like…

- You can pass additional options to AAlib using the AAOPTS environment  
variable (I did not try that yet myself)

Overall this is very exciting and funny. You can watch movies with plaympeg, and  
the next patch releases of Heroes3 and Myth2 will have builtin (and unsupported)  
support for it :-)–  
Stephane Peter  
Programmer  
Loki Entertainment Software

“Microsoft has done to computers what McDonald’s has done to gastronomy”

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**Author:** ![hayward\_at\_slothmud](https://discourse.libsdl.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/h/ea666f/32.png) [@hayward\_at\_slothmud](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/hayward_at_slothmud)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2000, 3:17am UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/ascii-art-driver-for-sdl/1898/2 "2000-03-01T03:17:58Z")

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> Overall this is very exciting and funny. You can watch movies with plaympeg, and  
> the next patch releases of Heroes3 and Myth2 will have builtin (and unsupported)  
> support for it 🙂

Unsupported support. Hrmm… 🙂

This ASCII driver is hilarious. I saw the ascii quake thing on slashdot a  
while back. Pretty neat.

I do sorta wonder what the point was. Maybe it’s just me, but I couldn’t  
see enough details in the quake screenshot to make it very playable.–  
Brian

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**Author:** ![Nicholas\_Vining](https://discourse.libsdl.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/f04885/32.png) [@Nicholas\_Vining](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/Nicholas_Vining)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2000, 3:24am UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/ascii-art-driver-for-sdl/1898/3 "2000-03-01T03:24:19Z")

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> > This ASCII driver is hilarious. I saw the ascii quake thing on slashdot a  
> > while back. Pretty neat.
> > 
> > I do sorta wonder what the point was. Maybe it’s just me, but I couldn’t  
> > see enough details in the quake screenshot to make it very playable.
> 
> Four words: Telnet Quake From School.
> 
> > –  
> > Brian
> 
> ## Nicholas
> 
> Nicholas Vining “While you’re out there struggling  
> vining at [pacificcoast.net](http://pacificcoast.net) with your computer, I’m naked,  
> icq: 20872003 clueless, and feeling good!”  
> - Ratbert
> 
> > ----- Original Message -----  
> > From: hayward at [slothmud.org](http://slothmud.org) ([hayward@slothmud.org](mailto:hayward@slothmud.org))  
> > To: sdl at [lokigames.com](http://lokigames.com)   
> > Date: Tuesday, February 29, 2000 7:31 PM  
> > Subject: Re: [SDL] ASCII Art driver for SDL

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**Author:** ![Michael\_Vance](https://discourse.libsdl.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Michael\_Vance](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/Michael_Vance)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2000, 4:16am UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/ascii-art-driver-for-sdl/1898/4 "2000-03-01T04:16:01Z")

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> I do sorta wonder what the point was. Maybe it’s just me, but I couldn’t  
> see enough details in the quake screenshot to make it very playable.

We were watching the South Park movie through plaympeg today.

It was pretty amazing.

m.On Tue, Feb 29, 2000 at 09:17:58PM -0600, hayward at [slothmud.org](http://slothmud.org) wrote:

–  
Programmer “I wrote a song about dental floss,  
Loki Entertainment Software but did anyone’s teeth get cleaner?”  
[http://lokigames.com/~briareos/](http://lokigames.com/~briareos/) - Frank Zappa, re: the PMRC

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**Author:** ![Bill\_Kendrick](https://discourse.libsdl.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/df788c/32.png) [@Bill\_Kendrick](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/Bill_Kendrick)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2000, 4:31am UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/ascii-art-driver-for-sdl/1898/5 "2000-03-01T04:31:53Z")

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> Overall this is very exciting and funny. You can watch movies with plaympeg, and  
> the next patch releases of Heroes3 and Myth2 will have builtin (and unsupported)  
> support for it 🙂

Screenshots, please? 🙂

-bill!

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**Author:** ![Nicholas\_Vining](https://discourse.libsdl.org/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/n/f04885/32.png) [@Nicholas\_Vining](https://discourse.libsdl.org/u/Nicholas_Vining)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2000, 4:19am UTC](https://discourse.libsdl.org/t/ascii-art-driver-for-sdl/1898/6 "2000-03-01T04:19:09Z")

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> > > I do sorta wonder what the point was. Maybe it’s just me, but I couldn’t  
> > > see enough details in the quake screenshot to make it very playable.
> > 
> > We were watching the South Park movie through plaympeg today.
> > 
> > It was pretty amazing.
> 
> Yeah… just when you thought that the graphics couldn’t get any cruder. 🙂
> 
> Now, if we wanted to do something REALLY cool to that ASCII art driver, we  
> could make it so that it modified the character set! THAT would be pretty  
> damn funky, but it’d only work in pure text modes. I wonder if it would be  
> worth it, and how good it’d actually look (There’s a demo called “Textro”  
> out there by OTM which shows this off… hope y’all have a DOS machine!)
> 
> > m.
> 
> ## Nicholas
> 
> Nicholas Vining “While you’re out there struggling  
> vining at [pacificcoast.net](http://pacificcoast.net) with your computer, I’m naked,  
> icq: 20872003 clueless, and feeling good!”  
> - Ratbert
> 
> > ----- Original Message -----  
> > From: [briareos@lokigames.com](mailto:briareos@lokigames.com) (Michael Vance)  
> > To: sdl at [lokigames.com](http://lokigames.com)   
> > Date: Tuesday, February 29, 2000 8:30 PM  
> > Subject: Re: [SDL] ASCII Art driver for SDL  
> > On Tue, Feb 29, 2000 at 09:17:58PM -0600, hayward at [slothmud.org](http://slothmud.org) wrote: