Creating a simple pygame window

In this section we will create the most basic pygame program possible. It isn't even a game, it just displays an empty window, and waits for you to close it.

What is the point? Well it introduces the basic form that all pygame programs take, without any extra clutter or complexity. Pretty much every game you create will start off something like this.

Code structure

The basic structure of a pygame game is usually something like this:

initialise_the_game()

create_the_main_window()

# Main game loop
running = True
while running:

    check_user_input()
    update_game_state()

    if finished:
        running = false

close_pygame()

We start by initialising the pygame module, and anything else that our game needs - characters, props, sounds, number of lives and so on.

We then create the main window. Every game needs a window, just like any other UI program.

Next, we enter the main game loop. This loop will run forever, or until the user has had enough of it. It uses a boolean called running that controls the loop. If we set running to false anywhere in the loop, the game will end.

Inside the loop we basically do two main things:

• Check of any user input, such as pressing a key, or moving the mouse or joystick.
• Update the game state - the main part of the game where we move objects around, check for collisions, make sounds, and points to the score and everything else.

Minimal game

In this section we will be implementing a cut down version of the code above, that does this:

initialise_pygame()

create_the_main_window()

# Main game loop
running = True
while running:

    check_if_user_closes_window()

    if finished:
        running = false

There are no characters, props, sounds or anything else, for the time being. We will just display an empty window, and wait for the user to close the window using the close button on the title bar.

The code

Here is the code:

import pygame as pg

SCREEN_WIDTH = 640
SCREEN_HEIGHT = 480

# Initialise pygame
pg.init()

screen = pg.display.set_mode([SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT])

# Main loop, run until window closed
running = True
while running:

    # Check events
    for event in pg.event.get():
        if event.type == pg.QUIT:
            running = False


# close pygame
pg.quit()

Here is the result:

Here it is step by step. First some imports and definitions:

import pygame as pg

SCREEN_WIDTH = 640
SCREEN_HEIGHT = 480

We import the main pygame module. We import it as pg, which just means that everywhere in our code where we use pygame, we can call it pg. It is just a bit shorter, and since we are using pygame all over the place, there isn't much chance we will forget what pg means.

We also define the screen width and height in pixels.

Next we initialise pygame. That just lets pygame do anything it needs to before we start using it:

# Initialise pygame
pg.init()

The next line creates the window. We pass in the window size:

screen = pg.display.set_mode([SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT])

Now here is the main loop:

# Main loop, run until window closed
running = True
while running:

    # Check events
    for event in pg.event.get():
        if event.type == pg.QUIT:
            running = False

The main thing this loop does is to call pg.event.get(). This detects any "events" that might have happened. These are things like key presses and mouse clicks.

pg.event.get() actually returns a list of events. That is because it is possible that more than one event can happen at the same time - for example you could move the mouse and press the space key at the same time. So the get method returns a list of all the events, and our code loops over the events looking for a QUIT event. We ignore any other events.

The list will be empty if no event has happened.

Finally, we quit pygame. This gives pygame a chance to tidy up after itself:

# close pygame
pg.quit()

Running the code

When you run the code, you should just see a small window with a black background. If you close the window (by clicking the X button in the title bar) the window will close and the program will end.

The source code is available on github as simplewindow.py.