Capture Anarch game from TTY

Claude.

Ah, Anarch! That’s a great retro FPS. It’s designed to be extremely portable and can run in various modes.

For Anarch specifically:

Anarch supports multiple SDL backends. In TTY mode, it most likely uses SDL framebuffer or SDL with fbcon/fbdev.

Basic capture command:

ffmpeg -f fbdev -framerate 30 -i /dev/fb0 \
       -vf "scale=1024:-2" \
       -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast -crf 23 \
       output.mkv

With audio (Anarch has sound):

ffmpeg -f alsa -i default \
       -f fbdev -framerate 30 -i /dev/fb0 \
       -vf "scale=1024:-2" \
       -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast -crf 23 \
       -c:a aac -b:a 128k \
       output.mkv

  1. Start ffmpeg capture in one TTY (e.g., TTY2):

    sudo ffmpeg -f fbdev -framerate 30 -i /dev/fb0 -c:v libx264 -preset ultrafast output.mkv

  2. Switch to another TTY (Ctrl+Alt+F3) and run Anarch

  3. Play the game - it’s being captured!

  4. Stop recording: Switch back to TTY2 (Ctrl+Alt+F2) and press q to stop ffmpeg

Performance tips for Anarch:

Since Anarch is lightweight but you’re capturing video:

  • Use -framerate 20 or -framerate 15 if you get slowdown
  • Use -preset ultrafast (already in command)
  • Consider -crf 28 for smaller files with acceptable quality

Troubleshooting:

If the framebuffer capture shows a black screen, Anarch might be using a different rendering method. Try:

# Check what SDL backend Anarch is using
SDL_VIDEODRIVER=fbcon ./anarch

or force it to use framebuffer:

SDL_VIDEODRIVER=fbcon ./anarch &
ffmpeg -f fbdev -framerate 30 -i /dev/fb0 output.mkv

Let me know if you run into issues - Anarch is pretty straightforward but SDL backend detection can be tricky!