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4.19: The Event Handling Loop

  • Page ID
    14453
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            for event in pygame.event.get(): # event handling loop
                if event.type == QUIT or (event.type == KEYUP and event.key == K_ESCAPE):
                    pygame.quit()
                    sys.exit()
                elif event.type == MOUSEMOTION:
                    mousex, mousey = event.pos
                elif event.type == MOUSEBUTTONUP:
                    mousex, mousey = event.pos
                    mouseClicked = True
    

    The for loop on line 1 [72] executes code for every event that has happened since the last iteration of the game loop. This loop is called the event handling loop (which is different from the game loop, although the event handling loop is inside of the game loop) and iterates over the list of pygame.Event objects returned by the pygame.event.get() call.

    If the event object was a either a QUIT event or a KEYUP event for the Esc key, then the program should terminate. Otherwise, in the event of a MOUSEMOTION event (that is, the mouse cursor has moved) or MOUSEBUTTONUP event (that is, a mouse button was pressed earlier and now the button was let up), the position of the mouse cursor should be stored in the mousex and mousey variables. If this was a MOUSEBUTTONUP event, mouseClicked should also be set to True.

    Once we have handled all of the events, the values stored in mousex, mousey, and mouseClicked will tell us any input that player has given us. Now we should update the game state and draw the results to the screen.


    This page titled 4.19: The Event Handling Loop is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Al Sweigart via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.