Pygame background not loading

Question

MacOSX 10.15.2, Python 3.8 and Pygame 2.0.0.

Hello! I am currently trying to make a dark purple (87,61,122) background in Pygame, but it only appears as a black background, seemingly frozen and loading forever.

Here is my code:

import pygame

bgcolor = [87,61,122]

pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((1600,900))
screen.fill(bgcolor)
pygame.display.flip

Is there anything wrong with the code or is Pygame just refusing to co-operate?

use `flip()` works for me, purpose screen briefly shows up fine. — James Lin, Dec 10 '20 at 21:10
Also the reason it's "freezing" is because you have no **event loop**. See: https://www.pygame.org/docs/tut/tom_games2.html — Random Davis, Dec 10 '20 at 21:11

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 10 '20 at 21:13

pygame.display.flip is not a function call. You missed the parentheses.

However, you have to handle the events in the application loop. See pygame.event.get() respectively pygame.event.pump():

For each frame of your game, you will need to make some sort of call to the event queue. This ensures your program can internally interact with the rest of the operating system. This will update the contents of the entire display.

The typical PyGame application loop has to:

handle the events by either pygame.event.pump() or pygame.event.get().
update the game states and positions of objects dependent on the input events and time (respectively frames)
clear the entire display or draw the background
draw the entire scene (draw all the objects)
update the display by either pygame.display.update() or pygame.display.flip()

import pygame

bgcolor = [87,61,122]

pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((1600,900))
clock = pygame.time.Clock()

run = True
while run:
    clock.tick(60)

    # handle events
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == QUIT:
            run = False

    # clear display
    screen.fill(bgcolor)

    # draw scene
    # [...]

    # update display
    pygame.display.flip()

pygame.quit()
exit()

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 10 '20 at 21:10

change pygame.display.flip by pygame.display.flip() or pygame.display.update()

not that without IDLE, this script will display a window and directly destroy it. To add like loop:

import pygame

bgcolor = [87,61,122]

pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((1600,900))
loop = True

while loop:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            loop = False #Quiting
    screen.fill(bgcolor)
    pygame.display.update()

Pygame background not loading

2 Answers2