TCAPUTIL -- Freeware text screen capture utilities from MobyGames.com by Jim Leonard Written on 19990602 Modified on 19990724 Beta "finished" release on 19990813 INTRO ----- Welcome to TCAPUTIL, a bundle of utilities that let you take "classic" text screen captures. By "classic", I mean that the screen capture looks exactly like it would on a real CGA card from 1981. Why bother? Well, here at MobyGames.com, we pride ourselves on archiving things as closely as possible to how they originally appeared. This includes capturing text screens and converting them to .GIF files to display on the web. A perfect screen capture is essential for this. We wrote these utilities because capturing text screens with other programs, like PCXDUMP and Screen Thief, used the VGA 9x16 screen font. This resulted in 720x400 .GIF files, which, while technically accurate for a VGA screen, looked "odd" because of the aspect ratio. We then tried running these progams in a DOS Window under Windows 95 so that we could capture the screen to the clipboard, but it was much more of a hassle and the supplied 8x16 and 8x8 fonts didn't look authentic. So that's why we wrote GRABTEXT and the T2GIF_?? utilities. Once a file has been captured and converted by these utilities, the resulting .GIF file is indistinguishable from a real CGA card and color monitor. The .GIF files are also optimized for the web with a 4-bit color palette, so they're smaller than "regular" .GIF files created by other programs. USAGE ----- Capturing/converting text screens is really easy. Here's an overview: 1. Load GRABTEXT. 2. Run your program. 3. Hit ALT-= whenever you want to capture a screen. 4. Run T2GIF_?? on each captured screen to convert it into a GIF file. (The "??" refers to the number of columns in the captured file; 80, 40, etc.) That's all there is to it. Want a quick example? Type this at the DOS prompt: "T2GIF_80 SAMPLE.RAW" (without the quotes). Now view the resulting SAMPLE.GIF that was created in a web browser. Pretty neat, huh? Here's the process in more detail: 1. Load GRABTEXT. This is a memory-resident program that will dump an 80x25 screen to a series of files, gtext_nn.RAW. "nn" starts at 00 and goes up to 99, so the files created will be gtext_00.RAW, gtext_01.raw, etc. 2. Run your program as usual. 3. Every time you hit the hotkey, ALT-= (that's the "equals" key), a new screendump will be created. Once you're done, exit your program. 4. Run T2GIF_?? with each filename as a parameter, where "??" is the number of colums in the capture file (80, 40, or TL for "tweaked low-res"). For example, "T2GIF_80 SAMPLE2.RAW" will convert SAMPLE2.RAW into SAMPLE2.GIF. You should see status messages as it gets rendered, then it will save to a .GIF file, then exit back to DOS. (The T2GIF_?? utilities do not beep or otherwise make annoying noises.) Hint: If you want to convert all of the *.RAW files in a directory, type in this handy DOS shortcut: for %1 in (*.raw) do t2gif_80 %1 This will convert all the *.raw files into *.gif. Once you're done capturing screens, you can type "GRABTEXT /U" to unload it from memory. CREDITS and SUPPORT ------------------- All programming and documentation of these utilities by Jim Leonard. (Who says Brian gets to have all the fun? ;-) If you have a problem using these programs or want to suggest additional features, email me at: trixter@oldskool.org MISC. NOTES -- YOU WOULD BE WISE TO READ THIS SECTION ----------------------------------------------------- You don't have to use GRABTEXT explicitly; any program that dumps a raw 80x25 screen to a file will work (although if you want to use the "tweaked" conversion programs, make sure you dump the entire 16K area at 0xB800). Video Thief can capture tweaked text-mode screens from programs where GRABTEXT fails, so we've provided quick utilities called VTF2RAW and VTF2RAW2 that take Video Thief text-mode captures (*.VTF files) and converts them into raw files suitable for use by the t2gif_?? utilities (*.RAW files). (The README.1ST file has slightly more info on these utilities.) When we say "indistinguishable from an IBM CGA card," we mean it--the font that's used in the T2GIF_?? utilities was sucked directly out of a real IBM PCjr for maximum authenticity. Viva l'Oldskool! We made the capture and conversion processes different programs to save RAM. If we hadn't, the resulting TSR would've taken up a rediculous amount of precious DOS memory. This is unacceptable if you're trying to capture screens on a machine with only 64K of RAM and can't load the program you're trying to capture from! GRABTEXT and T2GIF_?? should work on any computer. If they don't, email me. They don't support monochrome screens. If you want them to, email me. GRABTEXT does *not* make any sound at all when capturing. Do a test run before settling down for a 2-hour capture session to make sure it works okay for you. The T2GIF_?? utilities produce highly-optimized GIF87 files suitable for the web (and to deter editing--I *hate* website "watermarks"). All common graphical web browsers display them just fine, but other display or editing programs may not be able to. You have been warned--don't complain to me if you can view the file but can't seem to edit it. Yes, I know that four seperate utilities with negligible differences is lazy programming. It's free software, not elegant software. :) When I'm finally and completely done developing it, I'll add all the bells and whistles, such as recombining t2gif_?? back into a single program. Quickie Legal Mumbo-Jumbo: These utilities are provided for free by MobyGames.com, and contain no express or implied warranty or purpose. In other words: If your machine crashes and you want to blame it on these utilities or MobyGames.com, don't bother, because you can't.