SadConsole is a C#-based .NET cross-platform terminal, ascii, console, game engine. It simulates these types of programs and with it you can make ascii-styled games for modern platforms. At its heart, SadConsole is really a giant tile-based game engine. However, its object model is conceptually similar to a traditional console app.

While SadConsole is a generic library that doesn't provide any rendering capabilities, "host" libraries are provided that add renderers to SadConsole. The two hosts provided by this library are for SadConsole.Host.MonoGame and SadConsole.Host.SFML. When adding a host library to your project, you don't need to reference the base SadConsole package. If you use MonoGame, you'll also need to add a rendering NuGet package, such as MonoGame.Framework.DesktopGL.

SadConsole currently targets .NET 6, .NET 7, .NET 8, and .NET 9

For the latest changes in this release, see the notes below

Features

Here are some of the features SadConsole supports:

• Show any number of consoles of any size.
• Uses graphical tile-based images to build out an ASCII-character font with support for more than 256 characters.
• Fonts are simply sprite sheet tilesets tied to ascii codes, you can use full graphical tiles if you want.
• Use more than one font file. However, each console is restricted to a single font.
• Full GUI system for interactive controls such as list boxes, buttons, and text fields.
• Importers for DOS ANSI files, TheDraw text fonts, RexPaint, and Playscii.
• Animated consoles and instruction system to chain commands together.
• String encoding system for colors and effects while printing.
• Entity support for drawing thousands of movable objects on the screen
• Translating images to text-blocks.
• Keyboard and mouse support.
• Highly customizable framework.

String display and parsing

GUI library

Scrolling

Example startup code

using Console = SadConsole.Console;
using SadConsole;
using SadConsole.Configuration;
using SadRogue.Primitives;

Settings.WindowTitle = "SadConsole Examples";

// Configure how SadConsole starts up
Builder startup = new Builder()
    .SetScreenSize(90, 30)
    .UseDefaultConsole()
    .OnStart(Game_Started)
    .IsStartingScreenFocused(true)
    .ConfigureFonts(true)
    ;

// Setup the engine and start the game
Game.Create(startup);
Game.Instance.Run();
Game.Instance.Dispose();

void Game_Started(object? sender, GameHost host)
{
    ColoredGlyph boxBorder = new(Color.White, Color.Black, 178);
    ColoredGlyph boxFill = new(Color.White, Color.Black);

    Game.Instance.StartingConsole.FillWithRandomGarbage(255);
    Game.Instance.StartingConsole.DrawBox(new Rectangle(2, 2, 26, 5), ShapeParameters.CreateFilled(boxBorder, boxFill));
    Game.Instance.StartingConsole.Print(4, 4, "Welcome to SadConsole!");
}

Imports SadConsole
Imports Console = SadConsole.Console
Imports SadConsole.Configuration
Imports SadRogue.Primitives

Module Module1

    Sub Main()

        Dim startup As New Builder()

        ' Configure how SadConsole starts up
        startup.SetScreenSize(90, 30)
        startup.UseDefaultConsole()
        startup.OnStart(AddressOf Game_Started)
        startup.IsStartingScreenFocused(True)
        startup.ConfigureFonts(True)

        ' Setup the engine and start the game
        SadConsole.Game.Create(startup)
        SadConsole.Game.Instance.Run()
        SadConsole.Game.Instance.Dispose()

    End Sub

    Sub Game_Started(sender As Object, host As GameHost)

        Dim boxBorder = New ColoredGlyph(Color.White, Color.Black, 178)
        Dim boxFill = New ColoredGlyph(Color.White, Color.Black)

        Game.Instance.StartingConsole.FillWithRandomGarbage(255)
        Game.Instance.StartingConsole.DrawBox(New Rectangle(2, 2, 26, 5), ShapeParameters.CreateFilled(boxBorder, boxFill))
        Game.Instance.StartingConsole.Print(4, 4, "Welcome to SadConsole!")

    End Sub

End Module

Latest changes

• [All] Add .NET 9 target. This will be the last release for .NET 6 and .NET 7.
• [Core] Some components that used their own renderers weren't disposing the ones they replaced.
• [UI] Fix bug with mouse moving over composite controls such as the list box.
• [Extended] Rework DebugMouseTint class and add DebugFocusedTint class. Both settable as configuration builder options now.
• [MonoGame] Use TitleContainer for serialization. This was previously removed for some reason. Configurable through the UseTitleContainer configuration builder option.
• [Debug Library] Release the first version of the SadConsole.Debug.MonoGame library. This also adds general ImGui support.