What a counter is
A counter is a utility piece focused on displaying and adjusting a number.
How the system uses counters
- counters are pieces, not annotations, because they represent changing game state
- they expose value adjustment interactions directly on the table
- width and text styling support quick table-readable trackers
Full and compact
A counter is drawn one of two ways, set by the Compact switch in its settings.
The full counter is a wide bar carrying its name and four buttons: -10 and -1 down the left edge, +1 and +10 down the right. It is the readable choice for a score anyone at the table needs to find at a glance.
The compact counter is a plain square holding just the value. It has no buttons and no label, because the whole square is the button: click its top half to add 1 and its bottom half to subtract
- Hovering it lights the half under your pointer and shows a plus on the top and a minus on the bottom, so you can see which way each half will go before you click. Shift-click anywhere on it subtracts 1 as well, and dragging it moves it like any other piece. Use it when a table needs many small trackers and a row of full counters would eat the board.
The top-is-up split is what lets a compact counter work on a touch screen, where there is no shift key to hold.
Compacting never changes the counter's stored width, so the two forms are one switch apart in both directions. The compact square's side is the height the full counter already had, which is why compacting always makes a counter smaller and never larger.