Most games do not throw the player directly into the game (like in all previous steps) but instead offer some kind of game menu. Inside a game menu, the player can usually access options (like changinging the screen resolution or toggling full-screen mode) ), he can view the highscore list, starting or leaving the game and sometimes watch an introduction or help screen.

Tasks like this are ideally done using a GUI (graphical User Interface but sadly, pygame is not shipped with any GUI. Instead, you can use an existing gui like Tkinter, EasyGui, wxpython to write your game menu and launch the whole pygame “game” from within. This can be done by programming the whole pygame game as a function, passing arguments to it and returning the score value.

#... inside gui...
import pygamegame
#... some gui code letting the player choose the screen resolution
score = pygamegame(screen_resolution) # start the pygame game and return the score to the menu
#... some gui code to add the score to the highscore

Alternatively you can write your own menu system using pygame. The source code example below includes several files:

Normally you do not want to have more than one executable program in the project folder, to avoid confusing the user. Instead, you want another folder (data) inside the project folder, and only a single executable program in the project folder calling all other necessary programs. For this example, it is necessary that the folder where easyguimenu.py is located has an subfolder called data. Inside this data folder must be the programs screensaver.py, easygui.py and one empty file named __init__.py.

To make this code example working, you need 4 files, 3 of them located inside a subfolder named data:

• easyguimenu.py (the game menu, see source code below)
• inside the subfolder data:
  • init.py (an empty file, just the filename is important)
  • easygui.py (see EasyGUI)
  • screensaver.py (the game itself, see source code below)

You best download and extract this archive, it contains all necessary files and folders:

• all files and folders in one archive

This is not even a game, just some sort of screensaver drawing random colored circles. Written as a function in pygame, it accepts a screenresolution tuple (x,y) as argument and returns the time in seconds the screensaver was watched.

screensaver.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
#
#       screensaver.py
import pygame
import random
 
def screensaver(screenresolution = (640,480)):
    # -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
    """very simple test "game" or screensaver.
       all the user have to do is press ESC or SPACE.
       the "game" paint random circles.
       the "game" accept a screen resolution tuple as argument.
       the "game" returns the time passed until the user pressed space"""
    pygame.init()                      #initialize pygame
    screen=pygame.display.set_mode((screenresolution[0],screenresolution[1])) # set screensize of pygame window
    background = pygame.Surface(screen.get_size())  #create empty pygame surface
    background.fill((255,255,255))     #fill the background white color (red,green,blue)
    background = background.convert()  #convert Surface object to make blitting faster
    screen.blit(background, (0,0))     #draw the background on screen
    clock = pygame.time.Clock()        #create a pygame clock object
    mainloop = True                    
    FPS = 30 # desired framerate in frames per second. try out other values !
    playtime = 0.0 # how many seconds the "game" is played
    while mainloop:
        milliseconds = clock.tick(FPS) # do not go faster than this framerate
        playtime += milliseconds / 1000.0 # add seconds to playtime
        # paint random circles
        color = (random.randint(0,255), random.randint(0,255), random.randint(0,255))
        pygame.draw.circle(screen, color, (random.randint(0,screenresolution[0]),
                                           random.randint(0,screenresolution[1])),
                                           random.randint(1, min(screenresolution[0], screenresolution[1])),
                                           random.randint(0,1))        
        for event in pygame.event.get():
            if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
                mainloop = False # pygame window closed by user
            elif event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN:
                if event.key == pygame.K_ESCAPE:
                    mainloop = False # user pressed ESC
                if event.key == pygame.K_SPACE:
                    mainloop = False # user pressed ESC
        pygame.display.set_caption("press ESC to quit. frame rate: %.2f fps, time: %.2f seonds" % (clock.get_fps(), playtime))
        pygame.display.flip()          # flip the screen like in a flip book
    print "This 'game' was played for %.2f seconds" % playtime
    pygame.quit() # this line is important so that the pygame window does not remain open.
    return playtime # in seconds
 
if __name__ == '__main__':
    screensaver()

Here is the code of a very simple menu system written in Easygui. It allows to change the screen resolution, to start the screensaver, and to quit. The number of seconds the screensaver was watched is returned from the screensaver.py program to this program and displayed.

easyguimenu.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
#
#       easyguimenu.py
#       
#       Copyright 2011 Horst JENS <horst.jens@spielend-programmieren.at>
#       license: gpl
#       part of http://ThePythonGameBook.com
#       needs easygui from http://easygui.sourceforge.net/ to work
 
# both easygui.py and screensaber.py must be located in a 
# subdirectory 'data'. In this subdirectory there have to exist an
# empty file with the name '__init__.py'
 
from data import easygui 
from data import screensaver 
 
def gamemenu():
    resolution = [640,480]
    watched = 0
    msg = "Welcome at screensaver game menu. please choose wisely:"
    buttons = ["watch screensaver", "change resolution", "quit"]
    picture = None # gif file
    while True: #endless loop
        title = "screensave will run with %ix%i resolution" % (resolution[0], resolution[1])
        selection = easygui.buttonbox(msg, title, buttons, picture)
        if selection == "quit":
            easygui.msgbox("bye-bye")
            break # leave loop
        elif selection == "watch screensaver":
            watched += 1
            playtime = screensaver.screensaver(resolution)
            msg += "\n you watched the screensaver for %i seconds" % playtime
        elif selection == "change resolution":
            resolution[0] = easygui.integerbox("Please enter the new value for the x resolution:", 
                                               title, resolution[0], 0, 4000)
            resolution[1] = easygui.integerbox("Please enter the new value for the y resolution:", 
                                               title, resolution[1], 0, 2000)
    return watched # returns how many times the screensaver was watched (if anybody ask)
 
if __name__ == '__main__':
    gamemenu()