Read console input using pygame

Question

Is there anyway to use pygame to get input from the console, rather than having to display a separate window to get input? I\'m using pygame to track how long the keys on th

Answer 1

Pygame is designed for making (graphical) games, so it only captures key presses when there is a window displayed. As Ignacio said in his answer, reading from the command line and from another window are very different things.

If you want to create a command line application, try curses:

http://docs.python.org/library/curses.html

Unfortunately, it only works on Linux and Mac OS X.

Answer 2

If you just plain don't want a window of any kind at all, you can use PyHook. If you just want a console application, get user input with the built-in Python command "raw_input(...)".

Answer 3

Console input comes in via stdin, which pygame is not prepared to handle. There is no reliable way to get press/release events via stdin since it's dependent on the terminal sending it keypresses.

Answer 4

If you just make the window really small using

screen = pygame.display.set_mode((1, 1))

you can't see it. So you are clicked into the window but you don't notice.

If you click anywhere of course it stops working. You have to click on the pygame window icon for it to work again.

Answer 5

Try pygame.display.iconify(). This will hide the pygame screen, and you will still be able to detect keypresses.