Capturing screenshots from games using Python results in a black screen

Question

I'm trying to write a program to take a screenshot of my game and detect the rgb values of the pixel in the middle, in a loop.

This was my initial code:

import pyautogui

def get_middle_pixel_color():
    screen_width, screen_height = pyautogui.size()
    middle_x = screen_width // 2
    middle_y = screen_height // 2

    pixel_func = pyautogui.pixel  # Assign the pixel function to a local variable

    while True:
        pixel_color = pixel_func(middle_x, middle_y)  # Use the local variable for pixel function
        print(f"Pixel color: {pixel_color}")

if __name__ == '__main__':
    get_middle_pixel_color()

While this worked when focused on the desktop or some other programs, as soon as I focus on the game, values turned to (0, 0, 0).

First thing I tried was to set the game to windowed mode, that didn't help.

Then I found these answers on stackoverflow:

• https://stackoverflow.com/a/21535254/19438234

• https://stackoverflow.com/a/21536713/19438234

The second answer has a working code snippet written in c++ so I tried converting that to python using chatgpt. This was the result:

import ctypes

def get_middle_pixel_color():
    user32 = ctypes.windll.user32
    gdi32 = ctypes.windll.gdi32

    screen_width = user32.GetSystemMetrics(0)
    screen_height = user32.GetSystemMetrics(1)
    middle_x = screen_width // 2
    middle_y = screen_height // 2

    # Get the device context for the entire screen
    screen_dc = user32.GetDC(None)

    # Create a compatible device context
    mem_dc = gdi32.CreateCompatibleDC(screen_dc)

    # Create a bitmap compatible with the screen device context
    bmp = gdi32.CreateCompatibleBitmap(screen_dc, 1, 1)

    # Select the bitmap object into the compatible device context
    gdi32.SelectObject(mem_dc, bmp)

    # Define the value of SRCCOPY manually
    SRCCOPY = 0xCC0020

    while True:
        # Copy the pixel color from the screen to the bitmap
        gdi32.BitBlt(mem_dc, 0, 0, 1, 1, screen_dc, middle_x, middle_y, SRCCOPY)

        # Retrieve the color value of the pixel
        pixel_color = gdi32.GetPixel(mem_dc, 0, 0)

        # Extract the individual color components (red, green, blue)
        red = pixel_color & 0xFF
        green = (pixel_color >> 8) & 0xFF
        blue = (pixel_color >> 16) & 0xFF

        print(f"Pixel color (R, G, B): ({red}, {green}, {blue})")

if __name__ == '__main__':
    get_middle_pixel_color()

This version worked well when focusing on both the desktop and the game, tough it only worked when the game was on the main menu and settings part.

The game I'm trying this on is valorant, the color becomes black when I start a match.