# Status Line Options

The "status line" is the area at the bottom of the main playfield window where text messages are displayed. This dialog lets you customize what's displayed there.

There are actually two lines of text shown in the status area, an "upper" and "lower" status line. You can program separate custom messages into each line.

## Message text

Enter the messages to display in the text boxes. Enter multiple messages by writing one message per line (press the Return key to start a new line). Messages are shown in a loop in the order they're entered in the text box.

### Substitution variables

Within the text of each message, you can use a number of "substitution variables". These are special tags that are replaced at run-time with current information, such as information about the current selected game or the game filter that's currently in use.

[Game.Title] | The title of the currently selected game
[Game.Manuf] | The current game's manufacturer (Williams, Gottlieb, etc)
[Game.Year] | Year of release of the original arcade version current game
[Game.System] | Name of the current game's player system (Visual Pinball, etc)
[Filter.Title] | Name of the current game filter (All Tables, 70s Tables, etc)
[Filter.Count] | Number of games matching the current filter
[Filter.Count:A:B:C] | Displays "A" if the filter count is 1, "B" if it's greater than 1, or "C" if it's zero
[Credits] | Current number of credits from inserted coins
[Credits.Count:A:B:C] | Displays "A" if the credit count is 1, "B" if it's greater than 1, or "C" if it's zero
[lb] | A literal left square bracket ("[")
[rb] | A literal right square bracket ("]")

The special ".Count:A:B:C" formats can be used to construct singular or plural forms to match one of the counters. For example:

        [Filter.Count] [Filter.Count:Game:Games] Selected

The second element translates to "Game" or "Games" as needed to match the count, so the overall messages would translate to "1 Game Selected", "2 Games Selected", and so on. The point is simply to make the wording more human-friendly by matching the singular and plural form to the actual number.

Note that we only specified two ":" alternatives in the example, not three. The third alternative is for the "zero" case, but in English, you can simply use the plural form with zero ("0 Games Selected" sounds right to most English speakers). If you omit the third ":" alternative, the system uses the plural form for zero. That saves you a little typing, but you could equally well have spelled it out in full:

        [Filter.Count] [Filter.Count:Game:Games:Games] Selected

## Message switch time

The switching time sets the length of time each individual message is displayed before switching to the next message. This is given in milliseconds. A millisecond is 1/1000 of a second; 1000 milliseconds equals one second.