I got asked by a new user for help with creating a custom status line, as part of an effort to translate AGI games into other languages. I thought I'd post my reply here in case anyone else has the same question.
It's not too tough to create a custom status line, but there are a few things that you need to consider to have your custom status bar behave exactly the same as the built in one.
To start with, you need a way to let AGI know whether or not you want the status line to show up or not. A flag is the obvious choice - say fStatusOn.
With this flag, you can add code that runs in every interpreter cycle that uses the display() command to show your custom status line when fStatusOn is set, or clear it when the flag is not set.
While this is a good start, you will find that your status line will flicker, because it gets drawn in every cycle, even when there are no changes. To solve this, a second flag, fUpdateStatus, can be used to control when to draw the status line. You can check this flag, and then only display or remove the status line when fUpdateStatus is true.
When you do need to update the status line (for example, score has changed), set fUpdateStatus to true.
This solves the flickering problem. And the result will work almost exactly the same as the built in status line. But there are still a couple more things you need to do to handle a few edge cases.
The first is dealing with the menu. When the menu.input() command is called, AGI will display the menu at the start of the next interpreter cycle. Assuming your menu is on the same line as your status line (as is the case with almost all Sierra AGI games), it will overwrite your status line. After dismissing the menu, your status line is erased. The way to solve this is to use fUpdateStatus after the menu.input() command. To reduce flickering, you also should place your code that draws your status line BEFORE the menu.input() command.
The second thing to consider is any code that implements the text mode. That would be the status() and text.screen() commands. You will need to force your status line to redraw after either of these commands run, because your status line will get erased when AGI switches modes.
A sample logic is attached that contains code (with lots of comments) that demonstrates this. Using this approach, you can create your own status line that is as complex or as simple as you like.
