Stopping a PyRat Game

As you may have noticed, closing the game window (clicking the cross, or pressing the Esc key) does not stop the game. This is because the game runs in a separate process, allowing the game to continue even if the window is closed.

Default Behavior

By default, the game will continue running until one of the following conditions is met:

• It reaches an end condition.

• An error occurs in one of the players’ codes.

In the second case, the error of the player is printed, and the start() method of the game raises a PyRatPlayerException. Your program can catch it, for instance to skip that game and go on with the next one when running many games in a row:

from pyrat import Game, PyRatPlayerException

if __name__ == "__main__":

    game = Game()
    game.add_player(MyPlayer())
    try:
        stats = game.start()
    except PyRatPlayerException as error:
        print("A player caused an error:", error)

However, if you want to let the game run even in the event of a player error, you can set the continue_on_error parameter to True when creating the game instance. This is particularly useful when running matches with multiple players, as it does not penalize other players.

Stopping the Game

If you want to abort the game at any time, the best way is to click in the terminal in which the game is running and press Ctrl+C. The game then stops, its window closes, and the start() method of the game raises a PyRatException with the message The game was interrupted by the user. Unless your program catches this exception, it stops as well, even if it is running games in a loop.

Note

If your program catches PyRatException to go on with the next game (for instance in a loop of games), it will also go on after a Ctrl+C. To avoid this, catch PyRatPlayerException instead, which is only raised when a player causes an error.

In VSCode, you can also stop the game by clicking the red square at the top of the editor window.

Tip

If a game seems stuck, check the terminal first: a player that raises an error stops the game there, and the traceback tells you which one.