How to install Pygame Zero on macOS

A few months ago I bought a book from Raspberry Pi Press called Code the Classics. It’s an awesome book that talks about some classic games, including Sensible Soccer and Centipede, and then proceeds to creating a clone of those games with Python. It’s a total of 5 games.

That’s a very nice book, you can download it for free at the link I provided above and you can find the code of the games built in the book on GitHub at https://github.com/Wireframe-Magazine/Code-the-Classics.

The book does not actually explain how to build those games, unfortunately. It just lists the source code.

Anyway, it’s a great way to start your Python game development adventure.

I finally found some time to dive into, and the first step was to install Pygame Zero, a library to create games on top of Pygame.

On modern macOS, install it in a virtual environment. Create one, activate it, then install from PyPI:

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
python3 -m pip install pgzero

That pulls the current stable release from PyPI (1.2.1 as of this update).

If the install fails while building and you see something like:

fatal error: 'SDL.h' file not found
#include "SDL.h"
         ^~~~~~~
1 error generated.

install the SDL2 headers with Homebrew, then retry the pip install:

brew install sdl2 sdl2_image sdl2_mixer sdl2_ttf
python3 -m pip install pgzero

You should not need to install from GitHub master for a normal setup. Stick to the PyPI package unless you are deliberately chasing an unreleased fix.

Want me to talk about your product? You can sponsor this site.