Keyboard without events

There are actually two different ways of checking if the player is pressing keys. One is with events, as we have seen. We'll see the second one next.

The function pygame.key.get_pressed() will get us a list of all keys that are pressed at the time. We use it like this:

keys = pygame.key.get_pressed()
if keys[pygame.K_LEFT]:
  print("The LEFT arrow is pressed")

This is how the above works:

1. We get the list of the keys that are pressed right now. We put it in the variable keys.
2. We look into this list using square brakets. With keys[pygame.K_LEFT] we check if the left arrow was pressed.
3. If this is true (if the left arrow was pressed), we print a message.

This example uses pygame.K_LEFT same as we were using it earlier with events. The same will work for any other key.

Challenges

• Use pygame.key.get_pressed to program the movement of a character (an image) on the screen.
• Ensure that you can also close the program by clicking on the "close" button of the window, or pressing Q, using events.
• Integrate the starfield of previous chapters on this game, so that the stars serve as background to your character.

Should we use keyboard events or not?

As you can see, there are two ways of reading the keyboard. Which one is better? The answer is "it depends". You will use one or the other depending on the situation.

• If the key can be kept pressed for a continuous action, use pygame.key.get_pressed(). For example, for movement.
• If the key should be pressed only once at a time, use events. For example, for a jump or a throw, or for pausing the game.