Making an arcade style high score name entry screen

The game I am working on will ultimately be in an arcade cabinet and using a joystick and buttons.

I have spent the last day and then some tinkering with making a name entry screen. The idea is something very classic in design. I thought it was about time that I gave something back to the TGB community. :-)

Here is what I mocked up some far:


This is really just something functional, it is bound to get some graphical flourishes later.

Basically, what I did was create a series of text objects and then when the level is loaded; I stored the objects in an array. I keep a position for the 'cursor' which is x, y pair which I use to get the text objects from the array. I have move maps set up for the direcitonal arrow key and when the space bar is pressed.

%this.letters[0, 0] = letter11;
	%this.letters[1, 0] = letter12;	
	%this.letters[2, 0] = letter13;
	%this.letters[3, 0] = letter14;	

       etc....

	// update position of cursor
	%letterObj = %this.letters[%this.cursorPosX, %this.cursorPosY];	
	echo("move cursor to" SPC %letterObj.getName() SPC "with position" SPC %letterObj.getPosition() SPC "letter" SPC %letterObj.text);
	%pos = %letterObj.getPosition();
	$cursor.setPosition(%pos);
	
	// Now for some fun, display the letter in the name text object.
	if(%letterObj.getName() !$= "delLetter" && %letterObj.getName() !$= "endName" )
	{
		%character = %letterObj.text;
		%this.nameLetters[%this.lettersUsed] = %character;
		HighScoreName.text = %this.nameLetters[0] @ %this.nameLetters[1] @ %this.nameLetters[2] @ %this.nameLetters[3] @ %this.nameLetters[4] @ %this.nameLetters[5];
	}

      etc...

There are two special text objects: one for deleting the last letter and the other for ending the high score entry. I check the name of the text object to see it is one of them.

/*
	Given the current cursor position use the letter.
*/
function  nameEntryClass::selectLetter(%this)
{
	%letterObj = %this.letters[%this.cursorPosX, %this.cursorPosY];

	if(%letterObj.getName() $= "endName")
	{
		// store the name in a global and switch to the high score table 
	}
	else if(%letterObj.getName() $= "delLetter") 
	{
		if(%this.lettersUsed > 0)
		{
			%this.nameLetters[%this.lettersUsed] = "-";
			%this.lettersUsed--;
			HighScoreName.text = %this.nameLetters[0] @ %this.nameLetters[1] @ %this.nameLetters[2] @ %this.nameLetters[3] @ %this.nameLetters[4] @ %this.nameLetters[5];						
		}
	}
	else if(%this.lettersUsed < 6)
	{
		%this.lettersUsed++;

		%character = %letterObj.text;
		%this.nameLetters[%this.lettersUsed] = %character;
		HighScoreName.text = %this.nameLetters[0] @ %this.nameLetters[1] @ %this.nameLetters[2] @ %this.nameLetters[3] @ %this.nameLetters[4] @ %this.nameLetters[5];			
	}
}

And here is the code:

TGB high score script
Level file download

Note: I make reference to an image map for the cursor and background shapes. Everything else are just text
objects.