How to assign a pygame_gui Button to a specific surface

Question

I'm currently working on a project based on pygame. It is the first time I'm attempting a project like this. I choose to try the pygmae_gui library in order to (who wold have guessed) implement a GUI to the project.

I successfully added some buttons to the application without any problems. I wrote a part where a new surface pops up when a certain button is pressed (which works without issues).

I want to add buttons on this new surface, but i don't know how.

My code looks something like this:

def _set_up_surfaces():
    screen = pygame.display.set_mode((self.width, self.height))
    background = pygame.Surface((self.width, self.height))
    new_layer = pygame.Surface((440, 360))


def _set_up_click_button():
    start_button_rect = pygame.Rect(0, 0, 150, 30)
    bye_button_layout_rect = pygame.Rect(0, 0, 150, 30)
    bye_button_layout_rect.bottomright = (-30, -20)
    close_button_rect = pygame.Rect(320, 320, 150, 30)
    start_button = pygame_gui.elements.UIButton(relative_rect=start_button_rect, text="START",manager=gui_manager)
    new_layer_close_button = pygame_gui.elements.UIButton(relative_rect=close_button_rect, text='close', manager=self.gui_manager, container=new_layer)

active = True
# set up start display:
new_layer_visible = False
set_up_surfaces()
set_up_click_button()
# main game loop
while active:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
            active = False
        if event.type == pygame_gui.UI_BUTTON_PRESSED:
            if event.ui_element == self.start_button:
                self.machine_visible = True
            if event.ui_element == self.bye_button:
                print('Good Bye!')
                active = False
        self.gui_manager.process_events(event)

    if new_layer_visible:
        new_layer_visible.blit(imported_drawing, (0, 0))
        self.background.blit(new_layer, (140, 60))
    gui_manager.update(self.time_delta)

    screen.blit(self.background, (0, 0))
    gui_manager.draw_ui(self.screen)

    pygame.display.update()

I know that the code does not run as I wrote it here since I only included the part I thought is relevant.

I tried to set the container argument to the surface as I saw as a suggestion online but I got an Error as response:

ValueError: container parameter must be of type IContainerLikeInterface.

The objective is to put the "close-Button" on the new_layer surface. Is this possible using pygame_gui, should I use a different library?

You cannot add a button to a surface because a surface consists only of a grid of pixels and cannot contain objects. And anyway Pygame GUI is built on Pygame and not vice versa, so a Pygame object can't handle a Pygame GUI object. In short a `Surface` is not a `IContainerLikeInterface` — Rabbid76, Feb 01 '23 at 18:28

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 02 '23 at 21:00

You cannot add a Pygame GUI button to a pygame.Surface object because a pygame.Surface consists only of a grid of pixels and cannot contain objects. Also, the Pygame GUI is built on top of Pygame, not the other way around, so a Pygame object cannot handle a Pygame GUI object and no Pygame object implements the interface IContainerLikeInterface. You have to draw the Surface manually in the background and put the GUI on top of it.

How to assign a pygame_gui Button to a specific surface

1 Answers1