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Capturing Screen in DOS
I need to capture a screen in a DOS program (namely, a game called "Fantasy General"). It uses a very high graphics resolution (at least 800x600x256). Are there any programs for that?
I tried running the game from under Win95 and then pressing "Print Screen", but that just caused my computer to lock.
I tried running the game from under Win95 and then pressing "Print Screen", but that just caused my computer to lock.
If you use any of the graphics programs like PaintShopPro, there is a screen capture feature.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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Running Screen Thief without any command line or environment options
results in the following default settings:
Blink Attribute : HIGH LZW Compress Level : (N/A)
Buffers : all searched Mono Translate : OFF
Clicks : ON Numeric Naming : OFF
Compression : ON Output Format : BMP
Core Dump : OFF Output Directory : current
EGA Fonts : OFF RGB : OFF
Full Frame : OFF RTC Refresh : ON
Hot Key : Alt • Ctrl • T Stream Size : 768 bytes
Interrupt Base : DB hex Max Width : 1188 pels
--------------------------
/BLINKATTR:str Selecting the Attribute for Blinking Pixels
/BUFFERS:str Selecting the Control Buffer Area
/CLICKS[+|-] Disabling the Scan Line Clicks
/COMPRESSION[+|-] Choosing a Compressed Image File Format
/COREDUMP[+|-] Dumping the Control Core to File
/EGAFONTS[+|-] Using EGA Fonts for Text Mode Captures
/FULLFRAME[+|-] Generating True Raster Output Images
/INTERRUPT:hex Selecting the PIC Interrupt Base
/KEY:char|hex Setting the Screen Capture Hot-Key
/LZW:num Choosing the LZW Compression Level
/MONO[+|-] Mono Translate for Text Mode Captures
/NUMERIC[+|-] Selecting Numeric Output Image File Naming
/OUTPUT:str Specifying the Output Image File Format
/RGB[+|-] Quick Support for 24-bit RGB Output
/RTCREFRESH[+|-] Disabling Real Time Clock Refresh
/SHIFTS:str Setting the Screen Capture Hot-Key Shifts
/STREAMSIZE:num Setting the Output Image Stream Size
/UNLOAD Unloading Screen Thief from Memory
/VIDEO:str Overriding the VGA Chip Set
/WIDTH:num Setting the Maximum Screen Capture Width
/? Displaying the Help Screens
--------------------------
This switch selects the output image format encoder to be used
for all screen capture. It takes a string value which names the
format. Currently supported formats are PCX, TIFF, BMP,
ASC (ascii), TXT (text) and SCR (screen).
Note that for all output formats, when capturing a monochrome
image (as opposed to a 2-colour image), Screen Thief will always
produce a 16-colour image file. Monochrome modes require three
colours anyway for black, white and intense white, and as some
formats do not support 4-colour images, they are simply promoted
to 16-colour by default.
/OUTPUT:GIF CompuServe GIF format is no longer supported.
/OUTPUT:PCX ZSoft PCX format is one of the industry standard
formats, although there can be problems with file
compatibility between applications. Screen Thief
always generates Type 5 PCX files regardless of
colour content, as most programs now seem to work
with that type. The PCX format can support images
at resolutions of 2, 4, 16 and 256 colours, plus
24-bit for HiColor and True Color images. Screen
Thief, however, will not use the 4-colour format
because of possible compatibility problems and
will always promote 4-colour images to 16-colour.
The PCX format incorporates RLE image compression
as standard. This is not affected by the /LZW or
/COMPRESSION switches.
/OUTPUT:TIFF Aldus/Microsoft TIFF format is another standard
image format popular in the Desktop Publishing,
printing and document processing industries. It
directly supports all the colour resolutions that
Screen Thief also handles and as such is a good
format for general use.
/OUTPUT:BMP Microsoft Windows BMP format is the best choice
where the output image will ultimately be used
in the Windows environment. It directly supports
all the colour resolutions that Screen Thief also
handles. Output is always in Device Independent
Bitmap (DIB) format as used by Windows 3.0 and
higher with optional RLE encoding when enabled
with the /COMPRESSION:ON switch. As the BMP type
does not support 4-colour images these will be
automatically promoted to 16-colours, although
the majority of BMP file viewers and tools will
report these as being only 4-colour.
NOTE: If the BMP files are intended for further
editing within the Windows Paintbrush program,
set RLE compression off with /COMPRESSION:OFF.
Paintbrush does not understand the RLE format.
/OUTPUT:ASC This is one of the three character based output
formats. It only applies to text mode screens and
an error will be issued if any attempt is made to
capture a graphics screen. Output comprises text
characters extracted from the display, without
attributes, and encompassing the full IBM/ASCII
character set, that is in the range 0 through FF.
The ASC format also adds an end of line (CR/LF)
to each character row and removes all trailing
space characters. Other than this non-printable
characters remain within the output. Use the TXT
format to remove all non-printing characters from
the text. Use the SCR format for capturing the
complete screen, including attribute information.
Note that although any byte panning programmed
into the VGA adaptor can be accounted for in the
output, horizontal and vertical pixel panning
cannot be handled in any of the three character
based output formats. Also note that split screen
effects are ignored.
/OUTPUT:TXT The TXT output format is functionally the same as
the ASC format (see above). However, all of the
non-printable characters are replaced with space
characters. A TXT file consists of just the ASCII
character codes 20h through 7Eh.
/OUTPUT:SCR The SCR output format is simply a data dump of
the visible screen character and attribute data.
No additional information is added such as line
breaks, and is not a directly 'printable' format.
Each screen character occupies two bytes in the
output file, the character code followed by its
associated attribute byte. Thus an 80 x 25 screen
generates a 4,000 byte file. The first character
and attribute pair in the file comes from the top
left origin of the screen.
--------------------------
This switch overrides the normal SuperVGA detection routines. If
Screen Thief fails to detect one of the supported SVGA chip sets
and you know your video card uses one, you may force Screen Thief
to load the required driver. It is also of use where the automatic
detection routines adversely affect an unrecognised chip set due to
the register-level accesses it makes. In this case you can force
Screen Thief to load the Standard VGA driver.
The switch accepts a string value naming a particular chip set.
/V:VGA The standard IBM register-level compatible VGA card.
This driver is is fully tested and should be capable
of determining and handling any mode programmed into
the VGA card, even non-standard modes. It will also
suffice for the majority of SVGA cards equipped with
256K of video RAM. Even 800 by 600 16-colour modes
should be captured successfully.
/V:ET4000 Screen Thief's Tseng SVGA card driver is ET4000 chip
specific. It has been thoroughly tested for all the
documented ET4000 SVGA modes. The ET3000 chip will
not be detected or handle correctly.
/V:GD5422 SVGA cards based on the Cirrus Logic CL-GD5422 single
chip controller are becoming increasingly common. It
incorporates fast BitBlt support in hardware and an
in-built RAMDAC for 15/16 bit HiColor and and 24-bit
TrueColor modes. Screen Thief has been tested with
all documented video modes supported by this chip.
/V:OAK The Screen Thief Oak Technology Inc. driver is fully
tested with the OTI-037C (256K) and OTI-077 (1024K)
chips in all possible modes other than, at present,
support for 32K color modes with a Sierra RAM DAC.
We see no reason why Screen Thief will not work with
the OTI-057 and OTI-067 chips.
/V:PARADISE The Screen Thief PARADISE/Western Digital driver is
fully tested for use with the PVGA1A chip set. It may
work successfully with the later WD90C00 chip (also
known as the PVGA1B), WD90C10 and WD90C11. It's been
reported that the WDxxxxx types create corrupt images
sometimes. We assume this is with interlaced displays
and a fix will arrive in due course. This driver has
not been tested with the older and bugged PVGA1 chip.
/V:S3 The Screen Thief S3 driver caters for the base level
86c911 chip variant. It has been tested with all of
the documented video modes.
/V:TRIDENT The TRIDENT chip is popular and found on many cards,
even those manufactured under other names. The most
common chip versions are TVGA-8900B, 8900C and 9000.
This Screen Thief driver is fully tested under all
these versions and should detect and work with any
remaining versions compatible with the 8900/9000.
The only problem that may be encountered is with the
older, and now rare, 8800 chip - particularly the
8800BR variant.
So, the way this might work is, boot your system in "DOS MODE ONLY", once in the prompt, execute "Screen Thieft", you should moddify some parameters, like the type of your Video Card.
C:>\ST.EXE /V:[yourvideocard]
After this, execute your game, then when you want to capture a screen, press "CTRL+ALT+T", the image will be named after the name of the game (6 chars only), and 2 digits (eg: PACMAN01.BMP), after you have done that, execute ST again like this.
C:>\ST.EXE /U
this acction unloads "Screen Thieft" from memory, now you can re-boot.
There's a message that ST can work on windows, well that windows was 3.x, i don't know if it works for Win95, i once had "Screen Thieft" for Windows, but i can't seem to locate it. :(
results in the following default settings:
Blink Attribute : HIGH LZW Compress Level : (N/A)
Buffers : all searched Mono Translate : OFF
Clicks : ON Numeric Naming : OFF
Compression : ON Output Format : BMP
Core Dump : OFF Output Directory : current
EGA Fonts : OFF RGB : OFF
Full Frame : OFF RTC Refresh : ON
Hot Key : Alt • Ctrl • T Stream Size : 768 bytes
Interrupt Base : DB hex Max Width : 1188 pels
--------------------------
/BLINKATTR:str Selecting the Attribute for Blinking Pixels
/BUFFERS:str Selecting the Control Buffer Area
/CLICKS[+|-] Disabling the Scan Line Clicks
/COMPRESSION[+|-] Choosing a Compressed Image File Format
/COREDUMP[+|-] Dumping the Control Core to File
/EGAFONTS[+|-] Using EGA Fonts for Text Mode Captures
/FULLFRAME[+|-] Generating True Raster Output Images
/INTERRUPT:hex Selecting the PIC Interrupt Base
/KEY:char|hex Setting the Screen Capture Hot-Key
/LZW:num Choosing the LZW Compression Level
/MONO[+|-] Mono Translate for Text Mode Captures
/NUMERIC[+|-] Selecting Numeric Output Image File Naming
/OUTPUT:str Specifying the Output Image File Format
/RGB[+|-] Quick Support for 24-bit RGB Output
/RTCREFRESH[+|-] Disabling Real Time Clock Refresh
/SHIFTS:str Setting the Screen Capture Hot-Key Shifts
/STREAMSIZE:num Setting the Output Image Stream Size
/UNLOAD Unloading Screen Thief from Memory
/VIDEO:str Overriding the VGA Chip Set
/WIDTH:num Setting the Maximum Screen Capture Width
/? Displaying the Help Screens
--------------------------
This switch selects the output image format encoder to be used
for all screen capture. It takes a string value which names the
format. Currently supported formats are PCX, TIFF, BMP,
ASC (ascii), TXT (text) and SCR (screen).
Note that for all output formats, when capturing a monochrome
image (as opposed to a 2-colour image), Screen Thief will always
produce a 16-colour image file. Monochrome modes require three
colours anyway for black, white and intense white, and as some
formats do not support 4-colour images, they are simply promoted
to 16-colour by default.
/OUTPUT:GIF CompuServe GIF format is no longer supported.
/OUTPUT:PCX ZSoft PCX format is one of the industry standard
formats, although there can be problems with file
compatibility between applications. Screen Thief
always generates Type 5 PCX files regardless of
colour content, as most programs now seem to work
with that type. The PCX format can support images
at resolutions of 2, 4, 16 and 256 colours, plus
24-bit for HiColor and True Color images. Screen
Thief, however, will not use the 4-colour format
because of possible compatibility problems and
will always promote 4-colour images to 16-colour.
The PCX format incorporates RLE image compression
as standard. This is not affected by the /LZW or
/COMPRESSION switches.
/OUTPUT:TIFF Aldus/Microsoft TIFF format is another standard
image format popular in the Desktop Publishing,
printing and document processing industries. It
directly supports all the colour resolutions that
Screen Thief also handles and as such is a good
format for general use.
/OUTPUT:BMP Microsoft Windows BMP format is the best choice
where the output image will ultimately be used
in the Windows environment. It directly supports
all the colour resolutions that Screen Thief also
handles. Output is always in Device Independent
Bitmap (DIB) format as used by Windows 3.0 and
higher with optional RLE encoding when enabled
with the /COMPRESSION:ON switch. As the BMP type
does not support 4-colour images these will be
automatically promoted to 16-colours, although
the majority of BMP file viewers and tools will
report these as being only 4-colour.
NOTE: If the BMP files are intended for further
editing within the Windows Paintbrush program,
set RLE compression off with /COMPRESSION:OFF.
Paintbrush does not understand the RLE format.
/OUTPUT:ASC This is one of the three character based output
formats. It only applies to text mode screens and
an error will be issued if any attempt is made to
capture a graphics screen. Output comprises text
characters extracted from the display, without
attributes, and encompassing the full IBM/ASCII
character set, that is in the range 0 through FF.
The ASC format also adds an end of line (CR/LF)
to each character row and removes all trailing
space characters. Other than this non-printable
characters remain within the output. Use the TXT
format to remove all non-printing characters from
the text. Use the SCR format for capturing the
complete screen, including attribute information.
Note that although any byte panning programmed
into the VGA adaptor can be accounted for in the
output, horizontal and vertical pixel panning
cannot be handled in any of the three character
based output formats. Also note that split screen
effects are ignored.
/OUTPUT:TXT The TXT output format is functionally the same as
the ASC format (see above). However, all of the
non-printable characters are replaced with space
characters. A TXT file consists of just the ASCII
character codes 20h through 7Eh.
/OUTPUT:SCR The SCR output format is simply a data dump of
the visible screen character and attribute data.
No additional information is added such as line
breaks, and is not a directly 'printable' format.
Each screen character occupies two bytes in the
output file, the character code followed by its
associated attribute byte. Thus an 80 x 25 screen
generates a 4,000 byte file. The first character
and attribute pair in the file comes from the top
left origin of the screen.
--------------------------
This switch overrides the normal SuperVGA detection routines. If
Screen Thief fails to detect one of the supported SVGA chip sets
and you know your video card uses one, you may force Screen Thief
to load the required driver. It is also of use where the automatic
detection routines adversely affect an unrecognised chip set due to
the register-level accesses it makes. In this case you can force
Screen Thief to load the Standard VGA driver.
The switch accepts a string value naming a particular chip set.
/V:VGA The standard IBM register-level compatible VGA card.
This driver is is fully tested and should be capable
of determining and handling any mode programmed into
the VGA card, even non-standard modes. It will also
suffice for the majority of SVGA cards equipped with
256K of video RAM. Even 800 by 600 16-colour modes
should be captured successfully.
/V:ET4000 Screen Thief's Tseng SVGA card driver is ET4000 chip
specific. It has been thoroughly tested for all the
documented ET4000 SVGA modes. The ET3000 chip will
not be detected or handle correctly.
/V:GD5422 SVGA cards based on the Cirrus Logic CL-GD5422 single
chip controller are becoming increasingly common. It
incorporates fast BitBlt support in hardware and an
in-built RAMDAC for 15/16 bit HiColor and and 24-bit
TrueColor modes. Screen Thief has been tested with
all documented video modes supported by this chip.
/V:OAK The Screen Thief Oak Technology Inc. driver is fully
tested with the OTI-037C (256K) and OTI-077 (1024K)
chips in all possible modes other than, at present,
support for 32K color modes with a Sierra RAM DAC.
We see no reason why Screen Thief will not work with
the OTI-057 and OTI-067 chips.
/V:PARADISE The Screen Thief PARADISE/Western Digital driver is
fully tested for use with the PVGA1A chip set. It may
work successfully with the later WD90C00 chip (also
known as the PVGA1B), WD90C10 and WD90C11. It's been
reported that the WDxxxxx types create corrupt images
sometimes. We assume this is with interlaced displays
and a fix will arrive in due course. This driver has
not been tested with the older and bugged PVGA1 chip.
/V:S3 The Screen Thief S3 driver caters for the base level
86c911 chip variant. It has been tested with all of
the documented video modes.
/V:TRIDENT The TRIDENT chip is popular and found on many cards,
even those manufactured under other names. The most
common chip versions are TVGA-8900B, 8900C and 9000.
This Screen Thief driver is fully tested under all
these versions and should detect and work with any
remaining versions compatible with the 8900/9000.
The only problem that may be encountered is with the
older, and now rare, 8800 chip - particularly the
8800BR variant.
So, the way this might work is, boot your system in "DOS MODE ONLY", once in the prompt, execute "Screen Thieft", you should moddify some parameters, like the type of your Video Card.
C:>\ST.EXE /V:[yourvideocard]
After this, execute your game, then when you want to capture a screen, press "CTRL+ALT+T", the image will be named after the name of the game (6 chars only), and 2 digits (eg: PACMAN01.BMP), after you have done that, execute ST again like this.
C:>\ST.EXE /U
this acction unloads "Screen Thieft" from memory, now you can re-boot.
There's a message that ST can work on windows, well that windows was 3.x, i don't know if it works for Win95, i once had "Screen Thieft" for Windows, but i can't seem to locate it. :(
ASKER
The game I'm talking about uses DOS4GW, i.e. the Protected Mode. If I try to run it with Screen Thief loaded in memory, it doesn't even start, it either reports a general protection error or simply locks.
So, here is a clarification to the question:
I need a program for capturing high-resolution graphics screen under DOS that will work with DOS4GW without causing trouble.
So, here is a clarification to the question:
I need a program for capturing high-resolution graphics screen under DOS that will work with DOS4GW without causing trouble.
ASKER
The Video Thief program did the trick just nicely. Thanks a bunch!
whatboy01@hotmail.com