Jump back from a while-loop to another while loop

Question

I have two while-loops in my program. The first one is for the game-menu and the second one is for the actual game. If the "gameover-event" occurs I want to go back to the Menu. I don´t exactly know how to do this.

 # Keep window running (Infinite-Loop)
    running = 1
    
    # Menu-loop
    while running == 1:

        # Start game
        if event.key == pygame.K_SPACE:
             running = 2
    
        # Game While-Loop (Everything that takes place during the game is inside here)
        while running == 2:
    
            # Show gameover-messages when event occurs
            if gameover:
                obstacle_list.clear()
                speed_up = 0
                speed_down = 0
                show_gameover(go_textX, go_textY)
                show_gameover_message()

Answer 1

One way to do this is to use functions instead of nested while loops:

def game_loop():
    # do stuff

    while True:
        if gameover:
            # do other stuff

            return # returns back to main_loop

def main_loop():
    running = 1

    while running == 1:
        if event.key == pygame.K_SPACE:
            game_loop()

main_loop() # simply call the main_loop function to start window

Setting running = 1 would also work, but using functions keeps things cleaner and more organized.

Answer 2

How you can do this, Here it is:

running=1
while running == 1:
    # Do stuff as you want
   
    if event.key == pygame.K_SPACE:
         running = 2

    while running==2:
        # Do stuff for running the Game
        if event.key == 'exit': # Here you can take input any key for exit the game
            running = 1