7: Print

Trying to communicate with text? TIC-80’s print is particularly chunky and TIC-like. Here are a few tricks to smooth it over just a little.

Optional Arguments

This is the version you’ll use almost all the time:

print(text, x, y, colour)

But make sure you play with the optional arguments. Particularly useful for putting BIG letters on the screen, though unfortunately scale is an integer value, so we can’t smoothly scale it (*):

(*) unless we use it as a texture on ttri. But that’s for later.

smallfont is also interesting to explore - it’s not so common.

print(text, x, y, colour, fixed=false, scale=1, smallfont=false)`

Shadow

For a bit of visual pop, or to guard against your text disappearing when the text colour matches the background colours:

function TIC()
	cls()
	local text,x,y="ByteJamuary!",85,60
	print(text,x+1,y+1,14)	-- shadow first
	print(text,x,y,12)		-- then overprint with the main ink colour
end

Outline

The nuclear option to outset your text is to draw it with a 1 pixel offset in all directions.

We’re also overprinting once here, but there’s lots of computer power to play with, so let’s not worry about that.

function TIC()
	cls()
	local text,x,y="ByteJamuary!",85,60
	for dy=-1,1 do
		for dx=-1,1 do
			print(text,x+dx,y+dy,14)
		end
	end
	print(text,x,y,12)
end

For an extra flourish, play with the colour indices as well. Here’s a snazzy metal embossed look, using the default palette:

function TIC()
	cls(2)
	local text,x,y="ByteJamuary!",85,60
	for dy=-1,1 do
		for dx=-1,1 do
			local c=math.min(math.max(14+dx+dy,12),15)
			print(text,x+dx,y+dy,c)
		end
	end
	print(text,x,y,12)	-- again, overprinting once ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
end

Width

print returns the width of the text as it is printed on screen. You can use this to centre- or right- justify your text by printing it offscreen (it’ll get clipped, and won’t be expensive) just to get the width, which you can then use to set a position.

function TIC()
	cls()
	local w=print("ByteJamuary!",0,140)	-- print this somewhere offscreen
	print("ByteJamuary!",120-w/2,60,12)
end

Newline

\n in a string moves printing to the next line.

function TIC()
	cls()
	print("It's\nByteJamuary!",88,50,12)
end

It’ll be left justified, but you can do some clunky (possibly imperfect) alignment by adding spaces.

Unfortunately there’s no built-in way to get a height the way you can for width

Substring

You can use string.sub to pick out a substring.

The long form is string.sub(text,i,j), but this can be shortened as per the following:

local T=0
function TIC()
	cls()
	local text="It's ByteJamuary!"
	local x=70
	for i=1,#text do
		local c=text:sub(i,i)
		local y=60+math.sin(T*.2+i)*10
		x=x+print(c,x,y,12)
	end
	T=T+1
end

Scroller

A quick and dirty way to make a scroller is to print the whole string with an offset that gradually moves further and further off-screen to the left. Anything that isn’t visible will be quickly clipped and you can have a wrapping strategy to keep it looping:

local T,WRAP=0,999999
function TIC()
	cls()
	local text="This is my ByteJamuary scroller running across the screen!"
	WRAP=print(text,240-(T)%(240+WRAP),60,12)
	T=T+1
end

Drawing with Letters

Why let the primitive shapes have all the fun, when you can also use characters?

Shout out to EvilPaul’s effect in this Byte Jam - which first makes a little lookup map of (more or less) increasingly heavy characters, and then sweeps across the screen with a math function that’s then translated into one of those characters. Very stylish! See it running

#ByteJamuary