Part 8 - Life & Score

At this point, the game should feel almost like a real game. The biggest thing missing is a way to track the player's life and score. Do this by creating life and score fields on the ArcadeFlyerGame class, and displaying the information in the game using a SpriteFont. All changes will take place in the ArcadeFlyerGame.cs class.

Adding Life

In almost every game, there is some concept of health. In this game, the player should lose a life whenever a projectiles with the sprite.

1. Add a private int field named life to the ArcadeFlyerGame class
2. After the declaration, set the life field to 3

    private int life = 3;
   

3. Find the Update method in the ArcadeFlyerGame class
4. Find the if statement that checks whether the player has collided with an enemy projectile

    if (!playerProjectile && player.Overlaps(p))
   

5. In the body of that if statement, decrement the value of life by 1

    life--;
   

Adding Score

Another thing that exists in almost every game is a score. In this game, the player should gain a point whenever an enemy is destroyed.

1. Under the life field, add a private int field named score to the ArcadeFlyerGame class
2. After the declaration, set the score field to 0

    private int score = 0;
   

3. Find the Update method in the ArcadeFlyerGame class
4. Find the if statement that checks whether an enemy has collided with a player projectile

    if (enemy.Overlaps(p))
   

5. In the body of that if statement, increment the value of score by 1

    score++;
   

Showing the Life & Score

Now the life and score are tracked, but they don't actually show up anywhere yet! To do that, it will be necessary to create a SpriteFont like this.

Creating a SpriteFont Asset

Just like all the image assets in the game, fonts are created with the Content Pipeline tool.

1. Open up the Content.mgcb file in the MonoGame Pipeline Tool
2. Click the "New Item" button
   
3. In the popup, select the "SpriteFont Description (.spritefont)" option
4. Change the name to "Text"
5. Click the "Create" button at the bottom
   
6. When the popup closes, click the "Build" button
   
7. Go back into VS Code, and make sure the Text.spritefont file appears in the Content directory
   

At this point, the Content.mgcb file should be updated, and there should be a Text.xnb file in the Content/bin/DesktopGL/ directory.

Using the SpriteFont to Write in the Game

Now that the asset has been created, it will be possible to use it in the game's code.

1. Under the spriteBatch field in the ArcadeFlyerGame class, add a new private SpriteFont field named textFont

    private SpriteFont textFont;
   

2. Find the ArcadeFlyerGame() constructor
3. Somewhere in the method, initialize the textFont field using Content.Load

    textFont = Content.Load<SpriteFont>("Text");
   

4. Find the Draw method
5. Toward the end of the method, call the spriteBatch.DrawString method
   • The first parameter should be a SpriteFont object - use textFont
   • The second parameter should be a string value - create a string that has both the life and score values
   • The third parameter should be a Vector2 object for position - use the Vector2.Zero for the upper left
   • The fourth parameter should be a Color object - use Color.Black
6. Add a semi-colon at the end, and it should be good to go

    spriteBatch.DrawString(textFont, $"Life: {life}\nScore: {score}", Vector2.Zero, Color.Black);
   

At this point, try running the game. The "Life" and "Score" values should update based on what happens in the game!

Final Code

The final code for this walkthrough is available on GitHub.