Introduction to Pygame

Sarper Makas
2 min readFeb 16, 2023

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Pygame is a popular Python library for game development. It provides a basic interface for designing games, including managing graphics, sound, and user interaction. We’ll look at what Pygame is, how it works, and how to get started with it in this post.

What is Pygame

Pete Shinners created Pygame after its development stagnated. It has been a community effort since 2000[8] and is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License for free software.

Installation of Pygame

Python must be installed on your machine before you can use Pygame. Pygame may be installed using pip, the Python package manager, once Python is installed. Type the following into a command prompt or terminal:

pip install pygame

Creating Simple Pygame Game Loop

import pygame

# Initialize Pygame
pygame.init()
# Set up the display
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((800, 600)) # width and height

# Load an image
image = pygame.image.load("image.png")
# Main game loop
running = True
while running:

# Event loop
for event in pygame.event.get():
# Check exiting from the app
if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
running = False

# Draw the image on the screen
screen.blit(image, (0, 0)) # surface, (x, y)

# Update the display
pygame.display.update()
pygame.quit() # quit from pygame

Coordinate System in Pygame

The coordinate system for drawing images in Pygame is based on the top-left corner of the display surface. As seen in the image below, the x-axis grows as you move to the right, while the y-axis increase as you move down.

(0, 0) --------------------------------------------------------------------> x
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Using OOP

Simple Pygame App

Conclusion

Pygame is a powerful Python game creation library. It provides an easy interface for developing games, including visuals, sound, and user interaction. Pygame allows you to build games fast and efficiently, as well as educate others how to do so. Pygame is a terrific tool to have in your arsenal whether you’re a newbie or an experienced game developer.

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