Pygame

2.6.1 · active · verified Fri Apr 10

Pygame is a set of Python modules designed for writing video games. It leverages the Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) library, providing cross-platform access to your computer's multimedia hardware, such as sound, video, mouse, keyboard, and joystick. The current stable version is 2.6.1, with frequent minor and bugfix releases, often bundling updates to the underlying SDL library.

Warnings

gotcha Forgetting to call `pygame.init()` at the beginning of your script can lead to `pygame` modules being uninitialized, causing errors or unexpected behavior. Similarly, omitting `pygame.quit()` at the end can leave system resources tied up.
Fix: Always call `pygame.init()` before using any Pygame functions and `pygame.quit()` when your application is done to properly free resources.
gotcha Not regularly processing the event queue with `pygame.event.get()` or `pygame.event.pump()` inside your game loop will cause the window to become unresponsive and can lead to a "not responding" state, especially on Windows.
Fix: Ensure `pygame.event.get()` is called at least once per frame to process user inputs and system events.
gotcha After drawing to the screen, you must call either `pygame.display.update()` or `pygame.display.flip()` to make the changes visible to the user. Forgetting this will result in a blank or static screen.
Fix: End each frame of your game loop with `pygame.display.flip()` (for full screen update) or `pygame.display.update(rect_list)` (for partial updates).
gotcha For optimal performance, especially with frequently blitted images, loaded `pygame.Surface` objects should be converted to the display surface's pixel format using `.convert()` or `.convert_alpha()` (for images with transparency) immediately after loading.
Fix: After `image = pygame.image.load("my_image.png")`, call `image = image.convert()` or `image = image.convert_alpha()` depending on whether the image has transparency.

Install

pip install pygame Install stable version

Imports

pygame
```
import pygame
```
init
```
pygame.init()
```

display

pygame.display.set_mode((width, height))

event
```
for event in pygame.event.get():
```
image
```
pygame.image.load('path/to/image.png')
```
time
```
pygame.time.Clock()
```

Quickstart

This quickstart code initializes Pygame, creates a window, draws a red square on a white background, and handles the basic event loop for closing the window. It demonstrates essential components like initialization, display setup, event handling, drawing, and display updates.

import pygame

pygame.init()

WIDTH, HEIGHT = 800, 600
SCREEN = pygame.display.set_mode((WIDTH, HEIGHT))
pygame.display.set_caption("Pygame Quickstart")

WHITE = (255, 255, 255)
RED = (255, 0, 0)

running = True
clock = pygame.time.Clock()
FPS = 60

player_rect = pygame.Rect(WIDTH // 2 - 25, HEIGHT // 2 - 25, 50, 50)

while running:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            running = False

    # Drawing
    SCREEN.fill(WHITE) # Fill the background
    pygame.draw.rect(SCREEN, RED, player_rect) # Draw a red square

    pygame.display.flip() # Update the full display Surface to the screen

    clock.tick(FPS) # Control frame rate

pygame.quit()

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