CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonubuntupygame
danielfrg
danielfrg

Reputation: 2837

Pygame error "Video system not initialized" on ubuntu server with only terminal

I'm using pygame on a PC (PC-104) with ubuntu server, for this reason it only has terminal, not UI.

On my laptop the code works perfecly, running the code on the terminal "eg: python game.py", but on the PC104 it gives "Video system not initialized", I read the error is shown because it is a way to use events on a system without UI?

Thanks.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2185

Answers (2)

danielfrg
danielfrg

Reputation: 2837

Thank for your answer jsbueno. I was able to found a solution a few weeks ago but forget to answer the question.

I wasn't able to run any pygame script with any other library than X11. But I found that one can run the script with no graphics library. Just setting the SDL_VIDEOLIBRARY enviroment variable to "dummy".

This is posible on bash but I prefer to do it on python:

os.environ["SDL_VIDEODRIVER"] = "dummy"

With this I was able to run the pygame script, detect joystick events, etc.

Upvotes: 5

jsbueno
jsbueno

Reputation: 110248

It is possible to run pygame programs in a system without X11 if you set it to use framebuffer or vgalib - the docs even talk about using aalib (which would display graphics using ascii art on the terminal.)

This part of the documentation has it:

Pygame will select from one of several internal display backends when it is initialized. The display mode will be chosen depending on the platform and permissions of current user. Before the display module is initialized the environment variable SDL_VIDEODRIVER can be set to control which backend is used. The systems with multiple choices are listed here.

Windows : windib, directx
Unix : x11, dga, fbcon, directfb, ggi, vgl, svgalib, aalib

So, what you have to do is set the SDL_VIDEODRIVER environment variable before starting your code. And being shure the proper lib. is installed.

For more information: http://www.pygame.org/docs/ref/display.html

Upvotes: 2

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