Score

The Score tab controls the standard six-digit score display: which font it uses and its background color. Drawing custom digits also happens here, when a custom font is selected.

Score font

• Score font — a dropdown of built-in presets, plus:
  • Default — a fixed, built-in font. Nothing to edit here.
  • Squish (compact - shrinks the score row) — a fixed, built-in compact font that shrinks the score row to make room for the Text Minikernel's text lines underneath it. Offered even if you're not using the Text Minikernel.
  • Custom (drawn below) / Squish Custom (compact - drawn below) — draw custom digits using the pixel grids that appear below. Squish Custom starts from Squish's compact digit shapes and uses a shorter (5-row instead of 8-row) grid, since Squish never reads the top 3 rows at runtime.

Only Custom and Squish Custom show the digit-drawing editors - every preset (including plain Squish) is a fixed bitmap with nothing to edit.

• Score background color — the score row's background color, independent of the playfield. Click "Use background color" to instead always track the live background color, including any runtime changes from a "Background: set color" block, rather than a fixed color. Only takes effect when the Text Minikernel is in use elsewhere in the project (e.g. a "Show text" block) - the standard score bar's background is otherwise fixed at compile time regardless of this setting. With the DPC+ kernel the setting always takes effect, and a "Score set background color" block changes it while the game runs.
• Add score padding (Custom/Squish Custom only) — 0, 1, or 2 extra scanlines of the score row's background color, drawn right after the score digits finish and before whatever draws next.
• 5 score digits — a switch next to the score fade option. On, the score shows five digits instead of six: the leftmost digit is left out (so scores up to 99999 show in full) and the five that remain are centered. It applies to the standard kernel, the DPC+ kernel and the Text Minikernel's score digits. On DPC+ the digits sit a few pixels left of the standard kernel's.

Drawing custom digits

With Custom or Squish Custom selected:

• Use extra glyphs (10-15) — adds 6 more drawable glyph slots beyond the ten decimal digits. Costs 48 extra bytes of ROM space.
• Each digit has a pixel grid (8 pixels wide). See the Graphic Editor Toolbar page for a description of graphic editing tool functionality.

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Reset to default digits — replaces all ten (or sixteen, with extra glyphs enabled) digits with the built-in default font's shapes, as a starting point to edit from.

Using the score from your blocks

On the Actions tab, the Score category has blocks for reading and changing the score, its color, and the two optional playfield score bars:

• Score / Score set to [n] / Score change by [n] — read, set, or add to the six-digit score.
• Score digit [1-6] / Score digit [1-6] set to [n] / Score digit [1-6] change by [n] — read, set, or change a single digit directly (counting from the left), without affecting the others. Values 0-9 only - setting/changing a digit doesn't wrap or carry into its neighbor.
• Score color / Score set color to [color] / Score change color by [n] — read, set, or change the score's color.
• Fade Score color to [color] over [n] frames — starts fading the score's color toward the given color, same hue as the target, brightness automatically climbing or dropping from wherever it currently is. Only needs to be triggered once - the fade keeps running by itself every frame afterward, even from inside an "if" block that only briefly becomes true, until it reaches the target and stops.
• When Score color has finished fading — runs the connected blocks once, the moment a matching fade reaches its target color. Does nothing if no matching fade ever runs anywhere in the project.
• Score set background color to [color] — updates the score row's background color at runtime. Only takes effect when the Text Minikernel is in use elsewhere in the project - see the Score background color setting above for the same restriction.

Score bars

Two independent playfield score bars ("1" and "2"), colored using the score's color:

• Score Bar [1/2] / Score Bar [1/2] set to [n] / Score Bar [1/2] change by [n] — read, set, or change a bar's raw binary pattern directly (%00000000 to %11111111 - each 1 bit lights a pixel of the bar). Setting or changing a bar enables it.
• Score Bar [1/2] set health to [0-8] / Score Bar [1/2] change health by [n] — treats the bar as a health bar: a solid block of the given width, growing outward from the score (0 = empty, 8 = full). A literal negative change shrinks it; a variable amount can only grow it, since the bar has no separate stored "current value" to read a sign from.
• Score Bar [1/2] set lives to [0-4] / Score Bar [1/2] change lives by [n] — treats the bar as a lives indicator: evenly spaced dots, growing outward from the score. Same negative-literal-only-shrinks rule as health above.

See the Actions tab's Score category for every Score block: reading/setting/changing the score, its color, and a single digit, fading the score's color, setting its runtime-only background color, and the two optional playfield score bars.