Pause

Lesson 16 of 41 in Coddy's Make Games with Pygame course.

There are two ways to read the keyboard. pygame.key.get_pressed() says what is held right now, every frame: right for moving. A KEYDOWN event arrives once, in the frame the key goes down, as MOUSEBUTTONDOWN does for a click: right for actions that happen once per press.

Pausing is a once per press action. With get_pressed, holding P for a moment would flip the pause on and off in every frame. With the event it flips once:

for event in pygame.event.get():
    if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
        running = False
    elif event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN:
        if event.key == pygame.K_p:
            paused = not paused

not paused turns True into False and back. Add the pause to the condition that runs the game, and show Paused while it is on.

Challenge

Medium

Let P pause the game.

Before the loop, set paused = False. In the event loop, flip it when a KEYDOWN event's key is pygame.K_p.
Run the game only when lives > 0 and score < 10 and not paused.
While paused, show Paused centred at (240, 160).

Press Play and tap P: the game freezes and shows Paused. Then Check.

Try it yourself

import random
import pygame

pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((480, 360))
pygame.display.set_caption("Catch the Blocks")
clock = pygame.time.Clock()
font = pygame.font.Font(None, 32)

basket = pygame.Rect(200, 330, 80, 16)
block = pygame.Rect(220, 0, 20, 20)
score = 0
lives = 3

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

    if lives > 0 and score < 10:
        keys = pygame.key.get_pressed()
        if keys[pygame.K_LEFT]:
            basket.x -= 8
        if keys[pygame.K_RIGHT]:
            basket.x += 8
        basket.clamp_ip(screen.get_rect())

        block.y += 3
        if block.top > 360:
            block.y = -20
            block.x = random.randint(0, 460)
            lives -= 1
        if block.colliderect(basket):
            block.y = -20
            block.x = random.randint(0, 460)
            score += 1

    screen.fill((30, 30, 46))
    pygame.draw.rect(screen, (80, 160, 255), basket)
    pygame.draw.rect(screen, (235, 80, 80), block)
    score_text = font.render(f"Score: {score}", True, (240, 240, 240))
    screen.blit(score_text, (10, 10))
    lives_text = font.render(f"Lives: {lives}", True, (240, 240, 240))
    screen.blit(lives_text, (370, 10))
    if lives == 0:
        message = font.render("Game over", True, (240, 240, 240))
        screen.blit(message, message.get_rect(center=(240, 160)))
    elif score == 10:
        message = font.render("You win!", True, (240, 240, 240))
        screen.blit(message, message.get_rect(center=(240, 160)))
    pygame.display.flip()
    clock.tick(60)

pygame.quit()