Windows Screen-shooting in DOS

Does anyone know how to screen-shoot something in DOS? I've tried the Print Scrn button (of course, duh) but the Paste option in Photoshop is greyed out. I've also tried various screen-shooting utilities like SnagIt, but none seem to work. The program I'm trying to screen-shoot is a really old game (1990) by John Romero, called Dangerous Dave. I'm feeling nostalgic, but Windows won't let me screen-shoot... For you convenience I've provided a link to the game.

Any ideas?

 

Turn off something in hardware acceleration?

 

Like what?

 

I seem to be mistaken... Hardware Acceleration isn't used by MSDOS, but it is by Windows Media Player and other programs like Winamp...

If you're really stuck for ideas, do you have a digital camera you can use?

 

I thought of doing that, but I hate analog quality. Digital forever!

Anyway, I may be out of options, so I might as well do that... *sigh*

 

What about running it in windowed mode?

 

Weird... I can't get it running in windowed mode... If anyone else manages, I'd really appreciate it if you screen-shoot the welcome screen for me, and saving it to a .png file (not .jpg, it's lossy).

 

that would also be my suggestion

 

the welcom screen for which windows?

there is a program out that will extract the graphical elliments out of dlls exes and other things that the system uses. that includes the welcome scrrens for 2K and XP

but let me know which version of windows you want the welcome screen from and ill see what i can do

 

Did you even read my previous posts?

I refer to the welcome screen of the game. There should be some brown blocks, two golden crowns and two fireballs-kinda-things.

 

i did but i guess i skiped a line. im sorry i have a tendency to do that. I will try and be more carefull in the future. but no need to get up set

and the program i was thinking of i beleive is caled ResHacker
im sure it could open the EXE of the old game and pull out the graphical elements of the game.

 

I'm not upset. I just made you aware of it.

I tried ResHack, but it spew out "Access violation at adress xxxxxx in module 'ResHacker.exe'".

 

Resources that a program like ResHack accesses are windows resource elements, such as dialog box templates, string tables, keyboard accelerators, icons, bitmaps. They are resources compiled into the .exe, .dll, etc. In the case of bitmap images only things like splash screens and icons for use on controls are part of the resource file as to change these images the resource file needs to be changed, compiled and then and the whole thing relinked. In games, no matter what OS they're going to be run on the game data files, including all images, are stored as seperate files, although they will often be packed into sets of game resources (.zip, .pak, .pk3, .wad, whatever). Sometimes the data files are just dumped in a subdirectory and are easily accesible (although frequently the file formats are non standard, especially in the days of DOS games). I'll download that file zip you linked and see if the startup screen is easily accessible. Have you looked in the game directory? It might be that the image is just dumped somewhere in there or a subdirectory.

 

Hope this is the one you want. The resources for that game are all packed up unfortunately.

http://www.x-bb.org/~ash/dd.jpg

 

Thanks a lot, that's exactly what I wanted.

I don't mean to be rude, but I'd really like a PNG file. PNGs are lossless, whereas JPGs aren't. But again, thank you very much!

EDIT: How did you do it, by the way?

 

Since you say your using Paint Shop Pro, you can do a window capture.

Goto: File // Import // Screen Capture // Setup
Choose Window & Right Mouse Click
Open the DOS box you want to capture and Right Click anywhere within the DOS area.

That will capture the entire DOS window

 

Doh!

I meant Photoshop. Heh, I mix them sometimes.

 

As much as I would like to say I worked out the file format of the .dav file and extracted it from that (it may not have even been a once piece image, making the task nearly impossible) I didn't.

http://www.daimi.au.dk/~jesperf/Pcxdump/

 

Hmm... Despite my best efforts, I can't figure out how that program works. Care to explain?

 

I'll try and explain how to use pcxdump. I'll add in a couple of steps that aren't really necessary but make the process easier (copying the files to the root directory of c:\)

1. Download this .

2. Extract to c:\pcxdump

3. Copy the dangerous dave files into c:\dave

4. Open up a command prompt window (DOS box).

5. From C:> type cd pcxdump and enter

6. type pcxdump and enter

7. press down until you get to the Install PCXDUMP option and press enter.

8. Type cd ..\dave and enter

9. Type dave and enter

10. Press Ctrl + Alt + C then Enter

11. Exit dangerous dave and the dumped image should be in c:\dave stored as a .pcx image.

Hope that helps pho.