C++ Pixels In Console Window

Question

In C++ using Code::Blocks v10.05, how do I draw a single pixel on the console screen? Is this easy at all, or would it be easier to just draw a rectangle? How do I color it?

Answer 1

If you're willing to have the image look blocky, you could take advantage of the block characters from the console code page.

• █ = '\xDB' = U+2588 FULL BLOCK
• ▄ = '\xDC' = U+2584 LOWER HALF BLOCK
• ▀ = '\xDF' = U+2580 UPPER HALF BLOCK
• and space

By using the half-blocks in combination with colored text, you can turn an 80×25 console window into an 80×50 16-color display. (This was the approach used by the QBasic version of Nibbles.)

Then, you just need to convert your image to the 16-color palette and a reasonably small size.