How to get keyboard input in pygame

Question

I am making a game in pygame 1 9 2  It s a faily simple game in which a ship moves between five columns of bad guys who attack by moving slowly downward  I am attempting to make it so that the ship moves left and right with the left and right arrow keys  Here is my code   keys pygame key get pressed   if keys K LEFT       location- 1     if location  -1          location 0 if keys K RIGHT       location  1     if location  5          location 4   It works too well  The ship moves too fast  It is near impossible to have it move only one location  left or right  How can i make it so the ship only moves once every time the key is pressed

User · Accepted Answer

You can get the events from pygame and then watch out for the KEYDOWN event, instead of looking at the keys returned by get_pressed()(which gives you keys that are currently pressed down, whereas the KEYDOWN event shows you which keys were pressed down on that frame).

What's happening with your code right now is that if your game is rendering at 30fps, and you hold down the left arrow key for half a second, you're updating the location 15 times.

events = pygame.event.get()
for event in events:
    if event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN:
        if event.key == pygame.K_LEFT:
            location -= 1
        if event.key == pygame.K_RIGHT:
            location += 1

To support continuous movement while a key is being held down, you would have to establish some sort of limitation, either based on a forced maximum frame rate of the game loop or by a counter which only allows you to move every so many ticks of the loop.

move_ticker = 0
keys=pygame.key.get_pressed()
if keys[K_LEFT]:
    if move_ticker == 0:
        move_ticker = 10
        location -= 1
        if location == -1:
            location = 0
if keys[K_RIGHT]:
    if move_ticker == 0:   
        move_ticker = 10     
        location+=1
        if location == 5:
            location = 4

Then somewhere during the game loop you would do something like this:

if move_ticker > 0:
    move_ticker -= 1

This would only let you move once every 10 frames (so if you move, the ticker gets set to 10, and after 10 frames it will allow you to move again)

User · Answer

Just fyi  if you re trying to ensure the ship doesn t go off of the screen with  location- 1 if location  -1      location 0   you can probably better use  location -  1 location   max 0  location    This way if it skips -1 your program doesn t break

User · Answer

Try this   keys pygame key get pressed   if keys K LEFT       if count    10          location- 1         count 0     else          count   1     if location  -1          location 0 if keys K RIGHT       if count    10          location  1         count 0     else          count   1     if location  5          location 4   This will mean you only move 1 10 of the time  If it still moves to fast you could try increasing the value you set  count  too

User · Answer

I think you can use   pygame time delay delayTime    in which delayTime is in milliseconds   Put it before events

User · Answer

To slow down your game  use pygame clock tick 10

User · Answer

pygame key get pressed   returns a list with the state of each key  If a key is held down  the state for the key is True  otherwise False  Use pygame key get pressed   to evaluate the current state of a button and get continuous movement  while True       pressed key  pygame key get pressed       x     keys pygame K RIGHT  - keys pygame K LEFT     speed     y     keys pygame K DOWN  - keys pygame K UP     speed  The keyboard events  see pygame event module  occur only once when the state of a key changes  The KEYDOWN event occurs once every time a key is pressed  KEYUP occurs once every time a key is released  Use the keyboard events for a single action or movement  while True       for event in pygame event get            if event type    pygame KEYDOWN              if event key    pygame K LEFT                  x -  speed             if event key    pygame K RIGHT                  x    speed             if event key    pygame K UP                  y -  speed             if event key    pygame K DOWN                  y    speed  See also Key and Keyboard event  Minimal example of continuous movement   repl it  Rabbid76 PyGame-ContinuousMovement  import pygame  pygame init   window   pygame display set mode  300  300   clock   pygame time Clock    rect   pygame Rect 0  0  20  20  rect center   window get rect   center vel   5  run   True while run      clock tick 60      for event in pygame event get            if event type    pygame QUIT              run   False         if event type    pygame KEYDOWN              print pygame key name event key        keys   pygame key get pressed            rect x     keys pygame K RIGHT  - keys pygame K LEFT     vel     rect y     keys pygame K DOWN  - keys pygame K UP     vel              rect centerx   rect centerx   window get width       rect centery   rect centery   window get height        window fill 0      pygame draw rect window   255  0  0   rect      pygame display flip    pygame quit   exit     Minimal example for a single action   repl it  Rabbid76 PyGame-ShootBullet  import pygame pygame init    window   pygame display set mode  500  200   clock   pygame time Clock    tank surf   pygame Surface  60  40   pygame SRCALPHA  pygame draw rect tank surf   0  96  0    0  00  50  40   pygame draw rect tank surf   0  128  0    10  10  30  20   pygame draw rect tank surf   32  32  96    20  16  40  8   tank rect   tank surf get rect midleft    20  window get height      2    bullet surf   pygame Surface  10  10   pygame SRCALPHA  pygame draw circle bullet surf   64  64  62   bullet surf get rect   center  bullet surf get width      2  bullet list       run   True while run      clock tick 60      current time   pygame time get ticks       for event in pygame event get            if event type    pygame QUIT              run   False          if event type    pygame KEYDOWN              bullet list insert 0  tank rect midright       for i  bullet pos in enumerate bullet list           bullet list i    bullet pos 0    5  bullet pos 1          if bullet surf get rect center   bullet pos  left  gt  window get width                del bullet list i               break      window fill  224  192  160       window blit tank surf  tank rect      for bullet pos in bullet list          window blit bullet surf  bullet surf get rect center   bullet pos       pygame display flip    pygame quit   exit

User · Answer

all of the answers above are too complexicated i would just change the variables by 0 1 instead of 1 this makes the ship 10 times slower if that is still too fast change the variables by 0 01 this makes the ship 100 times slower try this  keys pygame key get pressed   if keys K LEFT       location -  0 1  or 0 01     if location  -1      location 0 if keys K RIGHT       location    0 1  or 0 01     if location  5          location 4

User · Answer

The reason behind this is that the pygame window operates at 60 fps  frames per second  and when you press the key for just like 1 sec it updates 60 frames as per the loop of the event block  clock   pygame time Clock   flag   true while flag       clock tick 60   Note that if you have animation in your project then the number of images will define the number of values in tick    Let s say you have a character and it requires 20 sets images for walking and jumping then you have to make tick 20  to move the character the right way

User · Answer

You should use clock tick 10  as stated in the docs

User · Answer

import pygame pygame init   pygame display set mode   while True      for event in pygame event get            if event type    pygame QUIT              pygame quit     sys exit   if sys is imported         if event type    pygame KEYDOWN              if event key    pygame K 0                  print  Hey  you pressed the key   0                 if event key    pygame K 1                  print  Doing whatever           In note that K 0 and K 1 aren t the only keys  to see all of them  see pygame documentation  otherwise  hit tab after typing in      pygame     note the   after pygame  into an idle program  Note that the K must be capital  Also note that if you don t give pygame a display size  pass no args   then it will auto-use the size of the computer screen monitor  Happy coding

[keyboard] How to get keyboard input in pygame?

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