Creating a window in pygame - pygame.display.set_mode()

Syntax#

pygame.display.set_mode(resolution=(0,0), flags=0, depth=0) # Returns a pygame.Surface representing the window on screen
flags = pygame.FULLSCREEN | pygame.OPENGL # Flags can be combined using the ”|” (bitwise OR or “pipe”) character.

Parameters#

parameter	explaination
resolution	a pair of numbers representing the width and height of the window
flags	additional options that change the type of window - see “Remarks” for avaliable flags
depth	amount of bits used for color

Remarks#

Possible values for the flag arguments are:

flag	description
pygame.FULLSCREEN	window is fullscreen
pygame.RESIZABLE	window is resizeable
pygame.NOFRAME	window has no border or controls
pygame.DOUBLEBUF	use double buffer - recommended for `HWSURFACE` or `OPENGL`
pygame.HWSURFACE	window is hardware accelerated, only possible in combination with `FULLSCREEN`
pygame.OPENGL	window is renderable by OpenGL

Other remarks:

Pygame can currently only handle one single window at a time. Creating a second window by calling pygame.display.set_mode((x,y)) a second time will close the first window.
Changing the depths argument is almost never required - pygame will select the best one by itself. In case a depth that is not supported by the system is set, pygame will emulate this depth, which can be very slow.
Things that are drawn onto the surface returned by pygame.display.set_mode() are not immediately visible on screen - the display first has to be flipped using pygame.display.update() or pygame.display.flip().

Create a pygame window

This creates a window in fullscreen with size 500x500 pixels:

pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((500, 500), pygame.FULLSCREEN)

screen represents from now on the window on screen; it is a pygame.Surface object. Anything that should be come visible to the user has to be drawn onto it using screen.blit.