Pygame_sdl2 is a reimplementation of the Pygame API using SDL2 and related libraries. The initial goal of this project are to allow games written using the pygame API to run on SDL2 on desktop and mobile platforms. We will then evolve the API to expose SDL2-provided functionality in a pythonic manner.

New code written for pygame_sdl2, including all compiled code, is licensed under the Zlib license. A number of pure-python modules are taken wholesale from Pygame, and are licensed under the LGPL2. Please check each module to determine its licensing status.

See the COPYING.ZLIB and COPYING.LGPL21 files for details - you'll need to comply with both to distribute software containing pygame_sdl2.

Pygame_sdl2 builds and runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux, with a useful subset of the pygame API working. The following modules have at least some implementation:

• pygame_sdl2.color
• pygame_sdl2.display
• pygame_sdl2.draw
• pygame_sdl2.event
• pygame_sdl2.font
• pygame_sdl2.gfxdraw
• pygame_sdl2.image
• pygame_sdl2.joystick
• pygame_sdl2.key
• pygame_sdl2.locals
• pygame_sdl2.mixer (inc. mixer.music)
• pygame_sdl2.mouse
• pygame_sdl2.sprite
• pygame_sdl2.sysfont
• pygame_sdl2.time
• pygame_sdl2.transform
• pygame_sdl2.version

Current omissions include:

• Modules not listed above.
• Blend modes other than the default (OVER) mode are not implemented.
• APIs that expose pygame data as buffers or arrays.
• Support for non-32-bit surface depths. Our thinking is that 8, 16, and (to some extent) 24-bit surfaces are legacy formats, and not worth duplicating code four or more times to support. This only applies to in-memory formats - when an image of lesser color depth is loaded, it is converted to a 32-bit image.
• Support for palette functions, which only apply to 8-bit surfaces.

There isn't much pygame_sdl2 documentation at the moment, especially for end-users. Check out the pygame documentation at:

http://www.pygame.org/docs/

There is one new api we should mention. Running the code:

import pygame_sdl2
pygame_sdl2.import_as_pygame()

Will modify sys.modules so that pygame_sdl2 modules are used instead of their pygame equivalents. For example, after running the code above, the code:

import pygame.image
img = pygame.image.load("logo.png")

will use pygame_sdl2 to load the image, instead of pygame. (This is intended to allow code to run on pygame_sdl2 or pygame.)

Building pygame_sdl2 requires the ability to build python modules; the ability to link against the SDL2, SDL2_gfx, SDL2_image, SDL2_mixer, and SDL2_ttf libraries; and the ability to compile cython code.

To build pygame_sdl2 on Ubuntu, install the build dependencies using the command:

sudo apt-get install build-essential python-dev libsdl2-dev libsdl2-image-dev \
    libsdl2-gfx-dev libsdl2-mixer-dev libsdl2-ttf-dev virtualenvwrapper

Open a new shell to ensure virtualenvwrapper is running, then run:

mkvirtualenv pygame_sdl2
pip install cython

Finally, build and install pygame_sdl2 by entering a checkout of this project and running:

python setup.py install

We're looking for people to contribute to pygame_sdl2 development. For simple changes, just give us a pull request. Before making a change that is a lot of work, it might make sense to send us an email to ensure we're not already working on it.

Pygame_sdl2 is written by:

• Patrick Dawson <pat@dw.is>
• Tom Rothamel <tom@rothamel.us>

It includes some code from Pygame, and is inspired by the dozens of contributors to the Pygame, Python, and SDL2 projects.