Rich Text

Before this: Text Values

Next steps: Safe Text, Score Card, Text on Screen

Parts that use this: Shooting Gallery, Scoreboard HUD, Team Match

Text the game shows can carry formatting: bold, color, size, line breaks and small icons. The formatting is written as tags inside the string itself, so a circuit can change how a sign looks the same way it changes what it says. This lesson builds a shop sign driven by two switches.

Code
Run
Under the Hood
Modify
Make
Good to Know

switch1 Enabled -> chip shopOpen
switch2 Enabled -> chip busy
chip text -> decal Text

Code

@left in shopOpen: bool
@left in busy: bool
let word = if shopOpen then "OPEN" else "CLOSED"
let hex = if shopOpen then "44dd44" else "dd4444"
let note = if busy then "<i>Busy, please wait</>" else "Come on in"
@right out text = '<size="48"><b><color="${hex}">${word}</></></><br>${note}'

A tag is a word between < and >. The game reads it as an instruction and does not show it:

<size="48"> makes the text after it 48 points tall.
 makes it bold, and  makes it italic.
<color="44dd44"> colors it. The color is six hex digits: two each for red, green and blue, so 44dd44 is green and dd4444 is red.
  starts a new line.
</> closes the most recently opened tag. The three </> after ${word} close the color, then the bold, then the size, so the second line is ordinary text.

The template uses single quotes, so the double quotes inside each tag need no escaping.

What does the sign show with shopOpen on and busy on? With both off?

Run

Compile the chip and paste it in-game. Place two Switches and a brick with a Text Decal.
Wire one Switch’s Enabled to shopOpen and the other’s to busy.
Wire text to the Text Decal’s Text.
With both switches off, the sign shows a large red bold CLOSED over a smaller Come on in. Flip shopOpen: the word turns green and reads OPEN. Flip busy: the second line changes to Busy, please wait in italics.

Under the Hood

Open the chip. There are three Select gates, one for each if, and one Format String gate. The Format String’s template holds every tag, and the Selects fill in the color, the word and the note. To the circuit, a tag is only text. The sign is what reads it.

The if choices are bound to names with let before they go into the template. That keeps the template short, and it is also the safe way to write it: put a choice in a let, then put the name inside ${...}.

Modify

A color tag does not need a closing </>. It lasts until another color tag replaces it, even across a  . Color both lines, with no </> at all:
```
@left in shopOpen: bool
let status = if shopOpen then '<color="44dd44">OPEN' else '<color="dd4444">CLOSED'
@right out text = '${status} Snacks and drinks <color="ffffff">Ask inside'
```
The second line takes the status color, and the third line is white because a new color tag replaced it.
Use a character that is not on your keyboard. There is no escape code for it: copy the character and paste it into the string, for example '<size="40">★ Open ★'. It counts as one character in Length().

Make

Make a sign for a door with two switches, locked and alarm. It shows a green Unlocked or a red Locked on the first line, and while alarm is on, a second line in bold yellow that reads ALARM.

switch1 Enabled -> chip locked
switch2 Enabled -> chip alarm
chip text -> decal Text

Good to Know

Tags work anywhere the game shows text: Text Decals, chat, status messages. Rich Text Markup lists them all, including fonts.
<icon>Name</> draws one of the game’s own icons inline, at the size of the text around it. These docs do not list the icon names yet.
A wire carries at most 10,000 characters of text, and the rest is cut off. Every tag counts toward that, so a sign that colors every character can hit the limit long before it looks full.
A player’s own name can contain tags too. Showing it unchanged lets it restyle your sign. Safe Text fixes that.

Next: Safe Text.

Wirescript