pygame

the top level pygame package

pygame.init	—	initialize all imported pygame modules
pygame.quit	—	uninitialize all pygame modules
pygame.error	—	standard pygame exception
pygame.get_error	—	get the current error message
pygame.set_error	—	set the current error message
pygame.get_sdl_version	—	get the version number of SDL
pygame.get_sdl_byteorder	—	get the byte order of SDL
pygame.register_quit	—	register a function to be called when pygame quits
pygame.encode_string	—	Encode a unicode or bytes object
pygame.encode_file_path	—	Encode a unicode or bytes object as a file system path

The pygame package represents the top-level package for others to use. Pygame itself is broken into many submodules, but this does not affect programs that use Pygame.

As a convenience, most of the top-level variables in pygame have been placed inside a module named ‘pygame.locals’. This is meant to be used with ‘from pygame.localspygame constants import *’, in addition to ‘import pygame’.

When you ‘import pygame’ all available pygame submodules are automatically imported. Be aware that some of the pygame modules are considered “optional”, and may not be available. In that case, Pygame will provide a placeholder object instead of the module, which can be used to test for availability.

pygame.init()

initialize all imported pygame modules

init() -> (numpass, numfail)

Initialize all imported Pygame modules. No exceptions will be raised if a module fails, but the total number if successful and failed inits will be returned as a tuple. You can always initialize individual modules manually, but pygame.init()initialize all imported pygame modules is a convenient way to get everything started. The init() functions for individual modules will raise exceptions when they fail.

You may want to initalise the different modules seperately to speed up your program or to not use things your game does not.

It is safe to call this init() more than once: repeated calls will have no effect. This is true even if you have pygame.quit() all the modules.

pygame.quit()

uninitialize all pygame modules

quit() -> None

Uninitialize all pygame modules that have previously been initialized. When the Python interpreter shuts down, this method is called regardless, so your program should not need it, except when it wants to terminate its pygame resources and continue. It is safe to call this function more than once: repeated calls have no effect.

Note, that pygame.quit()uninitialize all pygame modules will not exit your program. Consider letting your program end in the same way a normal python program will end.

exception pygame.error

standard pygame exception

raise pygame.error(message)

This exception is raised whenever a pygame or SDL operation fails. You can catch any anticipated problems and deal with the error. The exception is always raised with a descriptive message about the problem.

Derived from the RuntimeError exception, which can also be used to catch these raised errors.

pygame.get_error()

get the current error message

get_error() -> errorstr

SDL maintains an internal error message. This message will usually be given to you when pygame.error()standard pygame exception is raised. You will rarely need to call this function.

pygame.set_error()

set the current error message

set_error(error_msg) -> None

SDL maintains an internal error message. This message will usually be given to you when pygame.error()standard pygame exception is raised. You will rarely need to call this function.

pygame.get_sdl_version()

get the version number of SDL

get_sdl_version() -> major, minor, patch

Returns the three version numbers of the SDL library. This version is built at compile time. It can be used to detect which features may not be available through Pygame.

get_sdl_version is new in pygame 1.7.0

pygame.get_sdl_byteorder()

get the byte order of SDL

get_sdl_byteorder() -> int

Returns the byte order of the SDL library. It returns LIL_ENDIAN for little endian byte order and BIG_ENDIAN for big endian byte order.

get_sdl_byteorder is new in pygame 1.8

pygame.register_quit()

register a function to be called when pygame quits

register_quit(callable) -> None

When pygame.quit()uninitialize all pygame modules is called, all registered quit functions are called. Pygame modules do this automatically when they are initializing. This function is not be needed for regular pygame users.

pygame.encode_string()

Encode a unicode or bytes object

encode_string([obj [, encoding [, errors [, etype]]]]) -> bytes or None

obj: If unicode, encode; if bytes, return unaltered; if anything else, return None; if not given, raise SyntaxError.

encoding (string): If present, encoding to use. The default is ‘unicode_escape’.

errors (string): If given, how to handle unencodable characters. The default is ‘backslashreplace’.

etype (exception type): If given, the exception type to raise for an encoding error. The default is UnicodeEncodeError, as returned by PyUnicode_AsEncodedString(). For the default encoding and errors values there should be no encoding errors.

This function is used in encoding file paths. Keyword arguments are supported.

Added in Pygame 1.9.2 (primarily for use in unit tests)

pygame.encode_file_path()

Encode a unicode or bytes object as a file system path

encode_file_path([obj [, etype]]) -> bytes or None

obj: If unicode, encode; if bytes, return unaltered; if anything else, return None; if not given, raise SyntaxError.

etype (exception type): If given, the exception type to raise for an encoding error. The default is UnicodeEncodeError, as returned by PyUnicode_AsEncodedString().

This function is used to encode file paths in Pygame. Encoding is to the codec as returned by sys.getfilesystemencoding(). Keyword arguments are supported.

Added in Pygame 1.9.2 (primarily for use in unit tests)

pygame.version

small module containing version information

pygame.version.ver	—	version number as a string
pygame.version.vernum	—	tupled integers of the version

This module is automatically imported into the pygame package and offers a few variables to check with version of pygame has been imported.

pygame.version.ver

version number as a string

ver = ‘1.2’

This is the version represented as a string. It can contain a micro release number as well, e.g., ‘1.5.2’

pygame.version.vernum

tupled integers of the version

vernum = (1, 5, 3)

This variable for the version can easily be compared with other version numbers of the same format. An example of checking Pygame version numbers would look like this:

if pygame.version.vernum < (1, 5):
    print 'Warning, older version of Pygame (%s)' %  pygame.version.ver
    disable_advanced_features = True