Countdown timer in Pygame

Question

I started using pygame and I want to do simple game. One of the elements which I need is countdown timer. How can I do the countdown time (eg 10 seconds) in PyGame?

Answer 1

pygame.time.Clock.tick returns the time in milliseconds since the last clock.tick call (delta time, dt), so you can use it to increase or decrease a timer variable.

import pygame as pg


def main():
    pg.init()
    screen = pg.display.set_mode((640, 480))
    font = pg.font.Font(None, 40)
    gray = pg.Color('gray19')
    blue = pg.Color('dodgerblue')
    # The clock is used to limit the frame rate
    # and returns the time since last tick.
    clock = pg.time.Clock()
    timer = 10  # Decrease this to count down.
    dt = 0  # Delta time (time since last tick).

    done = False
    while not done:
        for event in pg.event.get():
            if event.type == pg.QUIT:
                done = True

        timer -= dt
        if timer <= 0:
            timer = 10  # Reset it to 10 or do something else.

        screen.fill(gray)
        txt = font.render(str(round(timer, 2)), True, blue)
        screen.blit(txt, (70, 70))
        pg.display.flip()
        dt = clock.tick(30) / 1000  # / 1000 to convert to seconds.


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()
    pg.quit()

Answer 2

Another easy way is to simply use pygame's event system.

Here's a simple example:

import pygame
pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((128, 128))
clock = pygame.time.Clock()

counter, text = 10, '10'.rjust(3)
pygame.time.set_timer(pygame.USEREVENT, 1000)
font = pygame.font.SysFont('Consolas', 30)

while True:
    for e in pygame.event.get():
        if e.type == pygame.USEREVENT: 
            counter -= 1
            text = str(counter).rjust(3) if counter > 0 else 'boom!'
        if e.type == pygame.QUIT: break
    else:
        screen.fill((255, 255, 255))
        screen.blit(font.render(text, True, (0, 0, 0)), (32, 48))
        pygame.display.flip()
        clock.tick(60)
        continue
    break

Answer 3

In pygame exists a timer event. Use pygame.time.set_timer() to repeatedly create an USEREVENT. e.g.:

timer_interval = 500 # 0.5 seconds
timer_event = pygame.USEREVENT + 1
pygame.time.set_timer(timer_event , timer_interval)

Note, in pygame customer events can be defined. Each event needs a unique id. The ids for the user events have to be between pygame.USEREVENT (24) and pygame.NUMEVENTS (32). In this case pygame.USEREVENT+1 is the event id for the timer event.
To disable the timer for an event, set the milliseconds argument to 0.

Receive the event in the event loop:

running = True
while running:

    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            running = False

         elif event.type == timer_event:
             # [...]

The timer event can be stopped by passing 0 to the time parameter.

---

See the example:

import pygame

pygame.init()
window = pygame.display.set_mode((200, 200))
clock = pygame.time.Clock()
font = pygame.font.SysFont(None, 100)
counter = 10
text = font.render(str(counter), True, (0, 128, 0))

timer_event = pygame.USEREVENT+1
pygame.time.set_timer(timer_event, 1000)

run = True
while run:
    clock.tick(60)
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            run = False
        elif event.type == timer_event:
            counter -= 1
            text = font.render(str(counter), True, (0, 128, 0))
            if counter == 0:
                pygame.time.set_timer(timer_event, 0)                

    window.fill((255, 255, 255))
    text_rect = text.get_rect(center = window.get_rect().center)
    window.blit(text, text_rect)
    pygame.display.flip()

Answer 4

There are many ways to do this and it is one of them

import pygame,time, sys
from pygame.locals import*
pygame.init()
screen_size = (400,400)
screen = pygame.display.set_mode(screen_size)
pygame.display.set_caption("timer")
time_left = 90 #duration of the timer in seconds
crashed  = False
font = pygame.font.SysFont("Somic Sans MS", 30)
color = (255, 255, 255)

while not crashed:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == QUIT:
            crashed = True
    total_mins = time_left//60 # minutes left
    total_sec = time_left-(60*(total_mins)) #seconds left
    time_left -= 1
    if time_left > -1:
        text = font.render(("Time left: "+str(total_mins)+":"+str(total_sec)), True, color)
        screen.blit(text, (200, 200))
        pygame.display.flip()
        screen.fill((20,20,20))
        time.sleep(1)#making the time interval of the loop 1sec
    else:
        text = font.render("Time Over!!", True, color)
        screen.blit(text, (200, 200))
        pygame.display.flip()
        screen.fill((20,20,20))




pygame.quit()
sys.exit()

Answer 5

This is actually quite simple. Thank Pygame for creating a simple library!

import pygame
x=0
while x < 10:
    x+=1
    pygame.time.delay(1000)

That's all there is to it! Have fun with pygame!

Answer 6

On this page you will find what you are looking for http://www.pygame.org/docs/ref/time.html#pygame.time.get_ticks
You download ticks once before beginning the countdown (which can be a trigger in the game - the key event, whatever). For example:

start_ticks=pygame.time.get_ticks() #starter tick
while mainloop: # mainloop
    seconds=(pygame.time.get_ticks()-start_ticks)/1000 #calculate how many seconds
    if seconds>10: # if more than 10 seconds close the game
        break
    print (seconds) #print how many seconds