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How to make pygame print input from user:

I am trying to have the user type something and pygame prints it on the screen.

This is my current program:

import pygame, pygame.font, pygame.event, pygame.draw, string
from pygame.locals import *

def get_key():
  while 1:
    event = pygame.event.poll()
    if event.type == KEYDOWN:
      return event.key
    else:
      pass

def display_box(screen, message):
  "Print a message in a box in the middle of the screen"
  fontobject = pygame.font.Font(None,18)
  pygame.draw.rect(screen, (0,0,0),
                   ((screen.get_width() / 2) - 100,
                    (screen.get_height() / 2) - 10,
                    200,20), 0)
  pygame.draw.rect(screen, (255,255,255),
                   ((screen.get_width() / 2) - 102,
                    (screen.get_height() / 2) - 12,
                    204,24), 1)
  if len(message) != 0:
    screen.blit(fontobject.render(message, 1, (255,255,255)),
                ((screen.get_width() / 2) - 100, (screen.get_height() / 2) - 10))
  pygame.display.flip()

def ask(screen, question):
  "ask(screen, question) -> answer"
  pygame.font.init()
  current_string = []
  display_box(screen, question + ": " + string.join(current_string,""))
  while 1:
    inkey = get_key()
    if inkey == K_BACKSPACE:
      current_string = current_string[0:-1]
    elif inkey == K_RETURN:
      break
    elif inkey == K_MINUS:
      current_string.append("_")
    elif inkey <= 127:
      current_string.append(chr(inkey))
    display_box(screen, question + ": " + string.join(current_string,""))
  return string.join(current_string,"")

def main():
    screen = pygame.display.set_mode((320,240))
    print ask(screen, "Name") + " was entered"

if __name__ == '__main__': main()

I want it so when the user hits enter, it emptys the screen.

Help Me!

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  • 1
    So, what have you tried so far? Commented Jan 1, 2013 at 14:55

1 Answer 1

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Here is an example script that blits input to the screen. It shows how you can modify a name string while looping through the pygame event queue. Each frame, the screen is cleared and the name surface is rebuilt and blit.

import pygame
from pygame.locals import *

def name():
    pygame.init()
    screen = pygame.display.set_mode((480, 360))
    name = ""
    font = pygame.font.Font(None, 50)
    while True:
        for evt in pygame.event.get():
            if evt.type == KEYDOWN:
                if evt.unicode.isalpha():
                    name += evt.unicode
                elif evt.key == K_BACKSPACE:
                    name = name[:-1]
                elif evt.key == K_RETURN:
                    name = ""
            elif evt.type == QUIT:
                return
        screen.fill((0, 0, 0))
        block = font.render(name, True, (255, 255, 255))
        rect = block.get_rect()
        rect.center = screen.get_rect().center
        screen.blit(block, rect)
        pygame.display.flip()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    name()
    pygame.quit()

Here is a gist version

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3 Comments

Can you make it so the input is shown in a box titled "Name"?
I'd rather you try it yourself first. There's enough in this example to show you how to blit a Font.render surface with "Name" in it above the input. If you have any questions, I'm glad to answer them.
A user has been editing the script in this post because they receive an error on exit. I'm wondering if the error is the same mentioned in the pygame wiki. Please try the updated version and comment if it doesn't work so we can figure out what the issue is.