Cannot make my pause function work in Pygame 3.4

Question

I am making a Pong game but no matter what I try I just cannot implement a pause system that stops when CTRL + C is pressed.

I tried:

elif event.key == K_SPACE:
    try:
        hello = pygame.time.delay(1000) 
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        hello = pygame.time.delay(1)

And:

elif event.key == K_SPACE:
    try:
        pygame.time.get_ticks()
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        pass

And:

elif event.key == K_SPACE:
    try:
        time.sleep(10)
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        pass

How do I get my game to pause until CTRL + C is pressed?

Answer 1

I'm no pygame expert but I think CTRL + C will only generate a KeyboardInterrupt if the terminal window - not the pygame window - is focused. Since pygame captures all keystrokes while focused, you'll probably have to use pygame.key.get_mods() and pygame.KMOD_CTRL to capture CTRL + letter key.

Anyway, two while loops - one nested within the other - and a boolean seem to make a working pause function. This pauses and resumes on "p" and CTRL + C:

import pygame

def main():
    pygame.init()
    WIDTH=100
    HEIGHT=100
    SCREEN = pygame.display.set_mode((WIDTH, HEIGHT))
    CLOCK = pygame.time.Clock()
    FPS = 10
    running = True
    # outer loop
    while True:
        for event in pygame.event.get():
            if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
                pygame.quit()
                quit()
            if event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN:
                if event.key == pygame.K_p:
                    # resume
                    running = True
                if event.key == pygame.K_c:
                    if pygame.key.get_mods() & pygame.KMOD_CTRL:
                        # ctrl + z
                        running = True
        print "paused"
        CLOCK.tick(FPS)
        # game loop
        while running:
            for event in pygame.event.get():
                if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
                    pygame.quit()
                    quit()
                if event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN:
                    if event.key == pygame.K_p:
                        # pause
                        running = False
                    if event.key == pygame.K_c:
                        if pygame.key.get_mods() & pygame.KMOD_CTRL:
                            # ctrl + z
                            running = False
            # rest of game code
            print "running"
            CLOCK.tick(FPS)
main()