pygame-ce 2.5.7

Python Game Development

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Pygame is a free and open-source cross-platform library for the development of multimedia applications like video games using Python. It uses the Simple DirectMedia Layer library and several other popular libraries to abstract the most common functions, making writing these programs a more intuitive task.

This distribution is called ‘pygame - Community Edition’ (‘pygame-ce’ for short).

It is a fork of the upstream pygame project by its former core developers, and was created after impossible challenges prevented them from continuing development upstream. The new distribution aims to offer more frequent releases, continuous bugfixes and enhancements, and a more democratic governance model.

New contributors are welcome!

Installation

To install pygame-ce, first make sure you have Python (and pip) installed and available on your PATH. Then, run the following command in your terminal or command prompt:

pip install pygame-ce

Note that on some platforms you may need to use pip3 instead of pip.

Linux Note: “Breaking System Packages” Error

On some Linux distributions (like Ubuntu or Debian), installing Python packages with pip can trigger a message like the following:

error: externally-managed-environment
This environment is externally managed when system packages are installed.

This means your system Python is managed by the OS, and using pip3 globally might interfere with system packages.

Recommended Solutions

1. Use venv (Virtual Environment):

   You can create a virtual environment and install pygame-ce within it. This way you still use system Python but create a separate environment for installed packages so that they do not conflict with or break system ones.

   python3 -m venv venv      # create a venv named 'venv'
   source venv/bin/activate  # activate venv
   pip install pygame-ce     # install packages in venv

2. Use pyenv (User-level Python management):

   pyenv lets you install and manage your own Python versions at the user level without touching the system one. As a plus, you can install and use multiple Python versions side by side.

3. Use uv (Fast Modern Package Installer):

   uv is a modern, fast Python package and environment manager that can serve as a replacement for both venv and pyenv.

Help

If you are just getting started with pygame, you should be able to get started fairly quickly. Pygame comes with many tutorials and introductions. There is also full reference documentation for the entire library. Browse the documentation on the docs page. You can also browse the documentation locally by running python -m pygame.docs in your terminal. If the docs aren’t found locally, it’ll launch the online website instead.

The online documentation stays up to date with the development version of pygame on github. This may be a bit newer than the version of pygame you are using. To upgrade to the latest full release, run pip install pygame-ce --upgrade in your terminal.

Best of all, the examples directory has many playable small programs which can get you started playing with the code right away.

Building From Source

If you want to use features that are currently in development, or you want to contribute to pygame-ce, you will need to build pygame-ce locally from its source code, rather than pip installing it.

Installing from source is fairly automated. The most work will involve compiling and installing all the pygame dependencies. Once that is done, run the setup.py script which will attempt to auto-configure, build, and install pygame.

Much more information about installing and compiling is available on the Compilation wiki page.

Dependencies

Pygame is obviously strongly dependent on SDL and Python. It also links to and embeds several other smaller libraries. The font module relies on SDL_ttf, which is dependent on freetype. The mixer (and mixer.music) modules depend on SDL_mixer. The image module depends on SDL_image. Transform.rotozoom has an embedded version of SDL_rotozoom, and gfxdraw has an embedded version of SDL_gfx. Dependency versions:

CPython	>= 3.10 (Or use PyPy3)
SDL	>= 2.0.14
SDL_mixer	>= 2.0.4
SDL_image	>= 2.0.4
SDL_ttf	>= 2.0.15

How to Contribute

First of all, thank you for considering contributing to pygame-ce! It’s people like you that make pygame-ce a great library. Please follow these steps to get started:

1. Read the Contribution Guidelines and the Many Ways to Contribute wiki pages.

2. Read the documentation on Opening A Pull Request and Opening a Great Pull Request.

3. Read how to label and link reported issues.

4. Check the issue tracker for open issues that interest you or open a new issue to start a discussion about your idea.

There are many more resources throughout the wiki pages that can help you get started.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask in the Pygame Community Discord Server or open an issue.

License

License Identifier: LGPL-2.1-or-later

This library is distributed under GNU LGPL version 2.1, which can be found in the file docs/LGPL.txt. We reserve the right to place future versions of this library under a different license.

This basically means you can use pygame in any project you want, but if you make any changes or additions to pygame itself, those must be released with a compatible license (preferably submitted back to the pygame-ce project). Closed source and commercial games are fine.

The programs in the examples subdirectory are in the public domain.

See docs/licenses for licenses of dependencies.