How to freeze pygame window?

Question

When I want to freeze my pygame window for a few seconds I usually use time.sleep(). However, if I accidentaly press any key on my keyboard meanwhile it detects the key after the time has passed. Is there any way to freeze my pygame window so that the code won't consider the key pressed?

Answer 1

Here is an example where the screen will change color every frame. The title bar displays the last key pressed.

If the space bar is pressed, the color change is paused for three seconds. Key presses are ignored, but other events may be handled during this period.

This is accomplished by setting up a custom timer and using a variable to track the paused state.

import pygame
import itertools

CUSTOM_TIMER_EVENT = pygame.USEREVENT + 1
my_colors = ["red", "orange", "yellow", "green", "blue", "purple"]
# create an iterator that will repeat these colours forever
color_cycler = itertools.cycle([pygame.color.Color(c) for c in my_colors])

pygame.init()
pygame.font.init()
clock = pygame.time.Clock()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode([320,240])
pygame.display.set_caption("Timer Example")
done = False
paused = False
background_color = next(color_cycler)
while not done:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            done = True
        elif event.type == CUSTOM_TIMER_EVENT:
            paused = False
            pygame.display.set_caption("")
            pygame.time.set_timer(CUSTOM_TIMER_EVENT, 0)  # cancel the timer
        elif not paused and event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN:
            if event.key == pygame.K_SPACE:
                pygame.time.set_timer(CUSTOM_TIMER_EVENT, 3000)  
                pygame.display.set_caption("Paused")
                paused = True
            else:
                pygame.display.set_caption(f"Key: {event.key} : {event.unicode}")
    if not paused:
        background_color = next(color_cycler)
    #Graphics
    screen.fill(background_color)
    #Frame Change
    pygame.display.update()
    clock.tick(5)
pygame.quit()

EDIT: Change to ignore key-presses during the paused period as the question asked.

Answer 2

You have to use pygame.time.wait() rather than time.sleep(). Be aware that the input has to be set in millisecond.

See documentation: time.wait()