Static Text

Quite often, there will be some static text in a game. If we want to display static images, then we can use a gameObject that does not override the GameObject class's update() method. An example is shown here. The code for this example is shown below.

StaticText.js

/* Author: Derek O Reilly, Dundalk Institute of Technology, Ireland. */

const STATIC_TEXT_CENTRE = -1;

class StaticText extends GameObject
{
    /* Each gameObject MUST have a constructor() and a render() method.        */
    /* If the object animates, then it must also have an updateState() method. */

    constructor(text, x, y, font, fontSize, colour)
    {
        super(null); /* as this class extends from GameObject, you must always call super() */

        /* These variables depend on the object */
        this.text = text;
        this.x = x;
        this.y = y;
        this.font = font;
        this.fontSize = fontSize;
        this.colour = colour;

        ctx.font = this.fontSize + "px " + this.font;
        this.width = ctx.measureText(this.text).width;
        if (this.x === STATIC_TEXT_CENTRE)
        {
            this.x = (canvas.width - this.width) / 2;
        }
    }

    render()
    {
        ctx.fillStyle = this.colour;
        ctx.fillText(this.text, this.x, this.y);
    }
}

STATIC_TEXT_CENTRE is used as a flag that will set the text to be horrizontally centred.

const STATIC_TEXT_CENTRE = -1;

In the constructor() method, we measure the width of the text using the highlighted code below:

constructor(text, x, y, font, fontSize, colour)
    {
        super(null); /* as this class extends from GameObject, you must always call super() */

        /* These variables depend on the object */
        this.text = text;
        this.x = x;
        this.y = y;
        this.font = font;
        this.fontSize = fontSize;
        this.colour = colour;

        ctx.font = this.fontSize + "px " + this.font;
        this.width = ctx.measureText(this.text).width;
        if (this.x === STATIC_TEXT_CENTRE)
        {
            this.x = (canvas.width - this.width) / 2;
        }
    }

If "this.x" has been set to be the value STATIC_TEXT_CENTRE, then we centre the text, as shown in the highlighted code below.

constructor(text, x, y, font, fontSize, colour)
    {
        super(null); /* as this class extends from GameObject, you must always call super() */

        /* These variables depend on the object */
        this.text = text;
        this.x = x;
        this.y = y;
        this.font = font;
        this.fontSize = fontSize;
        this.colour = colour;

        ctx.font = this.fontSize + "px " + this.font;
        this.width = ctx.measureText(this.text).width;
        if (this.x === STATIC_TEXT_CENTRE)
        {
            this.x = (canvas.width - this.width) / 2;
        }
    }
 
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