Pygame Cheat Sheet for Beginners

Pygame Cheat Sheet for Beginners

Pygame is a python framework for making 2D games. Creating games is a great fun and it's a great way to expand and implement your programming skills. If you know basics of python and know want to start with pygame, here is the Pygame Cheat Sheet for Beginners. I hope this will help you in your pygame learning journey. Share this article if you like our work.

Installing Pygame - Write and hit the following command in your command prompt or terminal.

pip install pygame

Pygame Basic Set Up

Import the pygame module

import pygame

Initialise Pygame

pygame.init()

Create game window

screen = pygame.display.set_mode((screen_width, screen_height))

Note that here we are passing a tuple as a parameter, that's why double parenthesis are used.

Fill Solid color in window

Fills the surface with solid color. Here the argument color is a tuple of RGB values. For example - (0,0,0) for Black.

screen.fill(color)

Update the game window

pygame.display.update()

Quit Pygame

pygame.quit()

Also Read - Digital Clock with Pygame

Using Images in Pygame

Loading Image

img = pygame.image.load("PATH_TO_IMAGE")

Draw image to game window

screen.blit(img, (img_x, img_y))

Here, the second parameter is a tuple in which we assign the position of image as coordinates of top - left corner of the image.

convert

Changes pixel format of the image to the format that is used by the main display. This increase the loading speed.

img.convert()

convert_alpha

Same as above, but when the surface has alpha transparency values to deal with.

img.convert_alpha()

Flip image

Here the first parameter is the image surface that has to be flipped. Second parameter is for horizontal flipping and third parameter is for vertical flipping. If you want to flip in both direction, set both the values True.

1) Flip image horizontally

img = pygame.transform.flip(img,True,False)

2) Flip image vertically

img = pygame.transform.flip(img,False,True)

3) Flip image both horizontally and vertically

img = pygame.transform.flip(img,True,True)

Resize Image

img = pygame.transform.scale(img,(new_width, new_height))

Rotate an image

Rotate the image counter clockwise by degrees.

img = pygame.transform.rotate(img,angle)

Get height and width of image

img_width = img.get_width()
img_height = img.get_height()

Get bounding rectangle that will tell you about the dimension and location of image

rect = img.get_rect()

Also Read - Brick Breaker Game with Pygame

Events in Pygame

Get list of events

events = pygame.event.get()

Check event type

for event in events:
    if event.type == EVENT_TYPE:

Event types

1) Key pressed on Keyboard

pygame.KEYDOWN

2) Key released

pygame.KEYUP

3) QUIT - When someone presses the quit button of game window.

pygame.QUIT

4) Detect Mouse motion

pygame.MOUSEMOTION

5) Mouse button press

pygame.MOUSEBUTTONDOWN

6) Mouse button release

pygame.MOUSEBUTTONUP

Mouse

Get mouse current position

x,y = pygame.mouse.get_pos()

Set the mouse cursor position

pygame.mouse.set_pos([x,y])

Hide mouse

pygame.mouse.set_visible(False)

Show mouse

pygame.mouse.set_visible(True)

Also Read - Digital Clock with Pygame

Time

Clock in pygame

Create a new clock object that can be used to track the amount of time. The clock also provide some function to control the frame rate of the game.

clock = pygame.time.Clock()

Set frame rate (FPS)

This method counts how many milliseconds have passed since the last call. For example if FPS = 60, the program will never run at more than 60 frames per second.

clock.tick(FPS)

Pause the game

Pauses the  game for the specified time.

pygame.time.delay(milliseconds)

Get time in milliseconds

Returns the number of milliseconds passed since pygame.init() was called.

pygame.time.get_ticks()

Text in pygame

Define Font color

color = (R,G,B)

Define Font

font = pygame.font.SysFont(name, size, bold = False, italic = False)

Set text co-ordinates

text_location = (x,y)

Draw text on screen

font.render creates a image object of text. It's second parameter is whether the text is anti-aliased or not. After rendering the font, we blit it on screen like an image.

screen.blit(font.render("Text",True,color), text_location)

Also Read - RGB Flashing Text with Pygame

Music

Load music

pygame.mixer.music.load("mymusic.mp3")

Play sound n times

pygame.mixer.music.play(loops = n)

Play music indefinitely

pygame.mixer.music.play(-1)

Stop music

pygame.mixer.music.stop()

Pause music

pygame.mixer.music.pause()

Unpause music

pygame.mixer.music.unpause()

Fade out before stopping

pygame.mixer.music.fadeout()

Restart music

pygame.mixer.music.rewind()

Set volume

The volume argument is a float between 0.0 and 1.0.

pygame.mixer.music.set_volume(volume)

Check if music playing

Returns True or False depending on whether music is playing or not.

pygame.mixer.music.get_busy()

Keys

Checking which key is pressed.

for event in pygame.event.get():
    if event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN:
        if event.key == *KEY*

Here, *KEY* can be replaced by the following to check which key is pressed.

*KEY*	Common Name
pygame.K_BACKSPACE	Backspace
pygame.K_ESCAPE	Escape
pygame.K_SPACE	Space
pygame.K_UP	Up
pygame.K_DOWN	Down
pygame.K_LEFT	Left
pygame.K_RIGHT	Right
pygame.K_HOME	Home
pygame.K_END	End
pygame.K_*letter*	*letter* = a,b,c...etc

I hope you liked the cheat sheet and it will prove very helpful for you. Please share the article on your social media accounts so that more people can reach the content.

Enjoy Coding!!!

Also Read 

How to Post on Instagram Using Python

Digital Clock with Python Pygame

RGB Flashing Text with Pygame

Interesting Python Programs - Question and Answers

Brick Breaker Game with Pygame