The Basics of VB.NET Through Text Game Development - Changing Color
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Of course, throwing boring gray characters across the screen isn't very impressive. For our game, we're going to need a bit of color. Thankfully, adding color is incredibly easy. Two properties of Console help us out in this area: ForegroundColor and BackgroundColor. The former sets the color of the character itself, and the latter sets the color of the character's background. Both properties accept a value in the ConsoleColor enumeration. Here, we set the foreground color to yellow and the background color to dark red:
Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.Yellow
Console.BackgroundColor = ConsoleColor.DarkRed
In Visual Studio, as soon as you key the assignment operator (=), a list of all possible values should appear. A list of colors can also be found here:
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.consolecolor.aspx
When we finish messing with color, we can restore the system colors:
Console.ResetColor()
Manipulating the Console Window
We can also manipulate the console window itself by setting the size of the console area and giving the window a title. Let's start with size first. The window's height is measured in rows and can be accessed using the WindowHeight property of Console. The window's width is measured in columns and can be accessed using the WindowWidth property of Console. Here, we display the console window's height and width:
Console.WriteLine("Console Size: {0}x{1}", _
Console.WindowHeight, _
Console.WindowWidth)
Using these two properties, we can also set the height and width of the console window. Here, we make the console window larger than normal, giving it a height of thirty rows and a width of one hundred columns:
Console.WindowHeight = 30
Console.WindowWidth = 100
There's also a procedure for setting the size of the window, SetWindowSize. The first argument is the width of the window, and the second argument is the height of the window.
Console.SetWindowSize(80, 25)
This ability will come in handy later when we create the game's interface. We need the console window to be high enough and wide enough to accommodate everything.
Now let's work with the title of the window. The title of the window is stored in the Title property of Console. We can read and set the title using this property:
Console.Title = "Hello World"
Console.WriteLine("Window Title: {0}", Console.Title)
That's it for now. Be sure to join us in the next installment of the series.
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