§12.2. The Status Line
The status line is the reverse-coloured bar along the top of the window during play, which conventionally, but not necessarily, shows the current location, the score (or sometimes the time of day) and the number of turns so far. It has been highly traditional since the early 1980s (Infocom's customer newsletter was for many years called "The Status Line"): it has become the visual identifier of IF. It plays the same role for IF that a header with chapter name and page number plays in a printed book.
The status line is ordinarily printed from two named pieces of text, the "left hand status line" and the "right hand status line". These can be changed during play, so for instance,
When play begins, change the right hand status line to "Time: [time of day]".
The examples below offer miscellaneous alternatives, and are fairly self-descriptive.
See Viewpoint for a way to make the status line list the player's current identity
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Suppose a game with a large map entirely subdivided into regions. We could define:
Note that, since regions can be stacked, we technically can be within more than one region at once. In the Port Royal example, for instance, the Tavern region is inside the Inland region. If there is any ambiguity, "the map region of the location" will be construed as "the smallest region that the location belongs to": so we would see "Tavern" rather than "Inland" in the status bar, when the player was in the Feathers or the Feathers Bedroom. Some extra finesse would be necessary if the names of map regions were very long or if there were some rooms that were not considered to belong to any region at all. |
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Suppose a game with a large map entirely subdivided into regions. We could define:
Note that, since regions can be stacked, we technically can be within more than one region at once. In the Port Royal example, for instance, the Tavern region is inside the Inland region. If there is any ambiguity, "the map region of the location" will be construed as "the smallest region that the location belongs to": so we would see "Tavern" rather than "Inland" in the status bar, when the player was in the Feathers or the Feathers Bedroom. Some extra finesse would be necessary if the names of map regions were very long or if there were some rooms that were not considered to belong to any region at all. |
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