Message text

This article is about written text displayed on-screen. For messages sending ZZT-OOP objects to specific labels, see Label.

All lines of ZZT-OOP which do not have any matching prefix are considered to be message text.

Throughout the execution of code, these lines are collected, and after the object's cycle is complete, they are displayed:

• If only one line was collected, it is displayed on the bottom of the board as a message (provided a message timer can be spawned).
• If more than one line was collected, it is displayed in a pop-up text window.
  • In this case, lines prefixed with $ are displayed centered and in white, while lines without such a prefix are displayed left-aligned and in yellow.

Message text has an implicit length limit of 50 characters per line. However, text windows can only display up to 42 characters per line without creating visual glitches; of those, one character eats into the arrow padding, so for proper centering, 41 characters should be assumed.

Text can be displayed conditionally (e.g. #if foo "Hello.") if the text string does not begin with an alphabetic character (A-Z, a-z) or a ZZT-OOP prefix.