The MessageBoard widget provides a rectangular board for displaying text messages on the screen. It uses a Box widget with text rendered inside.
Constructor
MessageBoard(surface, rect, text, padding, font=('arial', 20),
font_color=Color('white'), bgcolor=Color('gray25'),
border_width=0, border_color=Color('black'))
Parameters
The pygame surface to which the widget will draw itself
The rectangle defining the location and size of the message board
The initial text of the message board as a list of lines
Padding in pixels between the text and the border
font
tuple
default:"('arial', 20)"
The font as a (name, size) tuple
font_color
pygame.Color
default:"Color('white')"
The color of the text
bgcolor
pygame.Color
default:"Color('gray25')"
The background color of the message board
Width of the border (same as Box widget)
border_color
pygame.Color
default:"Color('black')"
Color of the border (same as Box widget)
Properties
text
The text displayed on the message board. Can be retrieved and changed dynamically:
board.text = ['New line 1', 'New line 2']
Methods
draw()
Renders the message board to the surface. Draws the box first, then renders each line of text.
Usage Example
From the main game initialization:
self.tboard_text = ['This is a test.']
self.tboard_x = 120
self.tboard_y = 120
self.tboard_width = 125
self.tboard_height = 30
self.tboard_rect = pygame.Rect(self.tboard_x, self.tboard_y,
self.tboard_width, self.tboard_height)
self.tboard_bgcolor = pygame.Color(50, 20, 0)
self.tboard = MessageBoard(self.screen,
rect=self.tboard_rect,
bgcolor=self.tboard_bgcolor,
border_width=4,
border_color=pygame.Color('black'),
text=self.tboard_text,
padding=5,
font=('comic sans', 18),
font_color=pygame.Color('yellow'))
def draw(self):
self.draw_background()
if self.options['draw_grid']:
self.draw_grid()
self.tboard.draw()
for obj in self.world:
obj.draw()
Layout Validation
The MessageBoard validates that text fits within its bounds (including padding). If a line is too long or tall, it raises a LayoutError:
if (line_sf.get_width() + x_pos + self.padding > self.rect.right or
line_sf.get_height() + y_pos + self.padding > self.rect.bottom):
raise LayoutError('Cannot fit line "%s" in widget' % line)
Make sure your MessageBoard rect is large enough to accommodate your text with padding and borders, or you’ll get a LayoutError at runtime.
Implementation Details
The widget renders text line by line, positioning each line below the previous one:
x_pos = text_rect.left
y_pos = text_rect.top
for line in self.text:
line_sf = self.font.render(line, True, self.font_color, self.bgcolor)
self.surface.blit(line_sf, (x_pos+self.padding, y_pos+self.padding))
y_pos += line_sf.get_height()
To update the message board text dynamically, simply assign a new list to the text property. The changes will appear on the next draw() call.
- Box - The underlying container used by MessageBoard
- Text Entry - For capturing user input instead of displaying static text