pygame.system — pygame-ce v2.5.3 documentation

pygame.system

pygame module to provide additional context about the system

pygame.system.get_cpu_instruction_sets	—	get the information of CPU instruction sets
pygame.system.get_total_ram	—	get the amount of RAM configured in the system
pygame.system.get_pref_path	—	get a writeable folder for your app
pygame.system.get_pref_locales	—	get preferred locales set on the system
pygame.system.get_power_state	—	get the current power supply state

New in pygame-ce 2.2.0.

pygame.system.get_cpu_instruction_sets()¶

get the information of CPU instruction sets

get_cpu_instruction_sets() -> instruction_sets

Returns a dict of the information of CPU instruction sets. The keys of the dict are the names of instruction sets and the values determine whether the instruction set is available.

Some of functions like Surface.blit can be accelerated by SIMD instruction sets like SSE2 or AVX2. By checking the availability of instruction sets, you can check if these accelerations are available.

Here is an example of the returned dict

{
     'ALTIVEC': False,
     'MMX': True,
     'SSE': True,
     'SSE2': True,
     'SSE3': True,
     'SSE41': True,
     'SSE42': True,
     'AVX': True,
     'AVX2': True,
     'AVX512F': False,
     'NEON': False,
     'ARMSIMD': False,
     'LSX': False,
     'LASX': False
}

Note

The values of LSX and LASX will be always False if SDL version < 2.24.0.

New in pygame-ce 2.3.1:

Changed in pygame-ce 2.4.0: removed RDTSC key, as it has been removed in pre-release SDL3

pygame.system.get_total_ram()¶: get the amount of RAM configured in the system

get_total_ram() -> ram_size

Returns the amount of RAM configured in the system in MiB.

New in pygame-ce 2.3.1.

pygame.system.get_pref_path()¶

get a writeable folder for your app

get_pref_path(org, app) -> path

When distributing apps, it's helpful to have a way to get a writeable path, because it's what apps are expected to do, and because sometimes the local space around the app isn't writeable to the app.

This function returns a platform specific path for your app to store savegames, settings, and the like. This path is unique per user and per app name.

It takes two strings, org and app, referring to the "organization" and "application name." For example, the organization could be "Valve," and the application name could be "Half Life 2." It then will figure out the preferred path, creating the folders referenced by the path if necessary, and return a string containing the absolute path.

For example:

On Windows, it would resemble
C:\\Users\\bob\\AppData\\Roaming\\My Company\\My Program Name\\

On macOS, it would resemble
/Users/bob/Library/Application Support/My Company/My Program Name/

And on Linux it would resemble
/home/bob/.local/share/My Company/My Program Name/

Note

Since the organization and app names can potentially be used as a folder name, it is highly encouraged to avoid punctuation. Instead stick to letters, numbers, and spaces.

Note

The appdirs library has similar functionality for this use case, but has more "folder types" to choose from.

New in pygame-ce 2.2.0.

pygame.system.get_pref_locales()¶

get preferred locales set on the system

get_pref_locales() -> list[locale]

Returns a list of "locale" dicts, sorted in descending order of preference set on the host OS (the most preferred locale is the first element). May also be an empty list if pygame could not find this information.

Each "locale" dict contains the language code which can be accessed by the key "language". This language code is an ISO-639 language specifier (such as "en" for English, "de" for German, etc). A "locale" dict may also optionally contain a "country" field, whose value is an ISO-3166 country code (such as "US" for the United States, "CA" for Canada, etc). If this field is not set or undetermined, it is None. A "locale" dict which looks like {'language': 'en', 'country': 'US'} indicates the user prefers American English, while {'language': 'en', 'country': None} indicates that the user prefers English, generically.

This might be a bit of an expensive call because it has to query the OS. So this function must not be called in a game loop, instead it's best to ask for this once and save the results. However, this list can change when the user changes a system preference outside of your program. pygame will send a LOCALECHANGED event in this case, if possible, and you can call this function again to get an updated copy of preferred locales.

New in pygame-ce 2.2.0.

pygame.system.get_power_state()¶

get the current power supply state

get_pref_power_state() -> PowerState

Experimental: feature available for testing and feedback. We don't anticipate it changing, but it might if something important is brought up. Please leave get_power_state feedback with authors

Returns a PowerState object representing the power supply state.

Returns None if the power state is unknown.

The PowerState object has several attributes:

battery_percent:
    An integer between 0 and 100, representing the percentage of
    battery life left.

battery_seconds:
    An integer, representing the seconds of battery life left.
    Could be None if the value is unknown.

on_battery:
    True if the device is running on the battery (not plugged in).

no_battery:
    True if the device has no battery available (plugged in).

charging:
    True if the device is charging battery (plugged in).

charged:
    True if the battery of the device is fully charged (plugged in).

plugged_in:
    True if the device is plugged in.
    Equivalent to `not on_battery`.

has_battery:
    True if the device has battery.
    Equivalent to `on_battery or not no_battery`.

You should never take a battery status as absolute truth. Batteries (especially failing batteries) are delicate hardware, and the values reported here are best estimates based on what that hardware reports. It's not uncommon for older batteries to lose stored power much faster than it reports, or completely drain when reporting it has 20 percent left, etc.

Battery status can change at any time; if you are concerned with power state, you should call this function frequently, and perhaps ignore changes until they seem to be stable for a few seconds.

It's possible a platform can only report battery percentage or time left but not both.

New in pygame-ce 2.4.0.

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