Consoles are not setting the background color by default.

[jpuertos]

I am attempting to print colored text using 'setColorControl', the foreground is color is correctly set but not the background.

In my main loop I have:

TCODConsole::root->setDefaultBackground(TCODColor::black);
TCODConsole::root->clear();
...
TCODConsole::setColorControl(TCOD_COLCTRL_1, TCODColor::gold, TCODColor::blue);
TCODConsole::root->printf(0, 0, "%ccolored%c not colored", TCOD_COLCTRL_1, TCOD_COLCTRL_STOP);
     
TCODConsole::flush();
   

am I doing something wrong?

[jpuertos]

Tried using different renderers but same issue.

[HexDecimal]

I don't see anything wrong with your code example. The C++ API forwards to the C API so this issue should have been reproducible in the Python port as well, but it worked correctly when I tried it in python-tcod.

Which version of libtcod are you using? Be sure to use the latest alpha release.

Sample the background color after printing to make sure the issue is here:

TCODConsole::root->printf(0, 0, "%ccolored%c not colored", TCOD_COLCTRL_1, TCOD_COLCTRL_STOP);
TCODColor bg = TCODConsole::root->getCharBackground(0, 0);
printf("%d,%d,%d", bg.r, bg.g, bg.b);

[jpuertos]

I am using libtcod/1.16.0-alpha.15@hexdecimal/stable

printf tells: 0,0,0

[jpuertos]

libtcod is built locally, as it comes as a conan source package. no warnings during build

[HexDecimal]

Thanks for the input. I think I've successfully reproduced the error in C++ and can take it from here.

[HexDecimal]

The issue was that the console background flag is unset. The default value is TCOD_BKGND_NONE which leaves the background color unaffected. So you need to set this attribute before calling print:

TCODConsole::root->setBackgroundFlag(TCOD_BKGND_SET);  // Now the background colors will be set as expected.
TCODConsole::root->printf(0, 0, "%ccolored%c not colored", TCOD_COLCTRL_1, TCOD_COLCTRL_STOP);

I've forgotten this was the normal behavior of libtcod. Losing track of the 'console defaults' has been a frequent issue so I wrote python-tcod to bypass these defaults completely. That is why I couldn't reproduce the issue there.

This is the correct behavior of TCODConsole. It's unintuitive and to me it's a reminder of why I wanted to rewrite the C++ API in the first place.

[jpuertos]

Thanks for your help, now it works. I think it would be a good idea to mention about it in the 'printing with color control' documentation section.

[HexDecimal]

The documentation still needs to be rewritten. The v1.6.4 docs are effectively read-only.

[hazeled]

Should the "Bug" label be removed from this?