pygame

the top level pygame package

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.locals 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() -> (numpass, numfail)

initialize all imported pygame modules

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() is a convenient way to get everything started. The init() functions for individual modules will raise exceptions when they fail.

You may want to initialize the different modules separately 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() -> None

uninitialize all pygame modules

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() will not exit your program. Consider letting your program end in the same way a normal python program will end.

raise pygame.error(message)

standard pygame exception

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() -> errorstr

get the current error message

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

pygame.set_error(error_msg) -> None

set the current error message

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

pygame.get_sdl_version() -> major, minor, patch

get the version number of SDL

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() -> int

get the byte order of SDL

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(callable) -> None

register a function to be called when pygame quits

When pygame.quit() 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([obj [, encoding [, errors [, etype]]]]) -> bytes or None

Encode a Unicode or bytes object

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

Encode a Unicode or bytes object as a file system path

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)