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How do I make a circle semi-transparent in pygame?

I want to make a partially transparent circle as an area of effect indicator, but I haven't found any way to do this in pygame.
I tried passing in an rgba 4-tuple as an argument (as suggested by this post), but it didn't change the transparency at all. On top of that, according to this other post, the method shouldn't work at all, since draw doesn't accept alpha values. That's conflicting information.
pygame.draw.circle(screen, (255, 0, 0, 100), (x, y), r)
I've also tried creating a new surface, drawing the circle onto that surface, and then blitting the new surface onto my game screen (as suggested by this post). It gives me a semi-transparent circle as requested, but since surfaces in pygame are rectangular, it also gives me a gray rectangle around the circle, which I don't want.
s = pygame.Surface((1000, 1000))
s.set_alpha(100)
pygame.draw.circle(s, (255, 0, 0), (x, y), r)
screen.blit(s, (0, 0))
Is there any way to make this circle semi-transparent without adding any other visible effects to my screen?

Here's a runnable version of the answer to the last question you linked to titled How to draw a semi-transparent circle in Pygame?. It seems to do what you want, as far as I can tell.
import pygame
width, height = 640, 480
pygame.init()
clock = pygame.time.Clock()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((width,height))
surface = pygame.display.set_mode((width,height), pygame.SRCALPHA)
while True:
msElapsed = clock.tick(100)
screen.fill((255,255,255))
pygame.draw.circle(surface,(30,224,33,100),(250,100),10)
screen.blit(surface, (0,0))
pygame.display.update()
for event in pygame.event.get():
if event.type==pygame.QUIT:
exit()

pygame - trying to move a rectangle

I am codding a drum game (based on dtx-Mania).
I got an issue on how to draw a rectangle and move it. I can make a static one, but not a moving one. I currently used a line but it seams pygame draw it as a rectangle so far if it as an impact i will change back to rectangle.
My goal is to draw the rectangle and move it at a slow enough pace so that it takes about 1 second to get to a line.
I know I still have a lot to learn, this is what I got to test so far.
#!/usr/bin/env python3
#-*- coding:utf-8 -*-
#small exemple of a moving rectangle
import pygame, sys
pygame.init()
fpsClock = pygame.time.Clock()
windowsSurfaceObj = pygame.display.set_mode((640, 480))
pygame.display.set_caption('moving rectangle test')
white = pygame.Color(255, 255, 255)
black = pygame.Color(0, 0, 0)
step = pygame.draw.line(windowsSurfaceObj, white, (233, 0), (269, 0), 6)
step
while True:
windowsSurfaceObj.fill(black)
#the coordonate are moved but the rectangle is now drew
step.move(0, -1)
#this is the target line (where the moving object must go to)
pygame.draw.line(windowsSurfaceObj, white, (90, 420), (390, 420), 6)
pygame.display.update()
fpsClock.tick(30)
Thank you for your help.

It is always good to read the docs. From the pygame docs:
line(Surface, color, start_pos, end_pos, width=1) -> Rect
Draw a straight line segment on a Surface. There are no endcaps, the
ends are squared off for thick lines.
In the description text of the whole module:
The functions return a rectangle representing the bounding area of changed pixels.
So you draw your first line, and move a rectangle representing a bounding are of changed pixels. Since you do not redraw your line, your first line disappears.
To solve this, you need to draw the line in the while loop after moving.
step.move(0, -1)
pygame.draw.rect(windowsSurfaceObj, white,step, 6)

How to draw to an off-screen display in PyGame

I'm doing a graphics test using PyGame to simulate the Dragon Curve being unfolded. I already made one successful version that keeps track of all the points as they rotate around each other, but obviously, this begins to slow down pretty substantially after a few iterations. In order to speed this up, I want to simply store the drawn segments into an image variable, and continually save a segment of the screen to a variable and draw those moving rather than keeping track of a lot of points. How can I do either of the following?
Draw to an off-screen image variable that then gets drawn to the screen in the correct place
Save a section of the visible display into an image variable
I tried reading through some of the PyGame documentation, but I didn't have any success.
Thanks!

Creating an additional surface object, and drawing to it is the solution. This surface object can then be drawn onto the display's surface object as shown below.
More information on the PyGame Surface object can be found here
import pygame, sys
SCREEN_SIZE = (600, 400)
BG_COLOR = (0, 0, 0)
LINE_COLOR = (0, 255, 0)
pygame.init()
clock = pygame.time.Clock() # to keep the framerate down
image1 = pygame.Surface((50, 50))
image2 = pygame.Surface((50, 50))
image1.set_colorkey((0, 0, 0)) # The default background color is black
image2.set_colorkey((0, 0, 0)) # and I want drawings with transparency
screen = pygame.display.set_mode(SCREEN_SIZE, 0, 32)
screen.fill(BG_COLOR)
# Draw to two different images off-screen
pygame.draw.line(image1, LINE_COLOR, (0, 0), (49, 49))
pygame.draw.line(image2, LINE_COLOR, (49, 0), (0, 49))
# Optimize the images after they're drawn
image1.convert()
image2.convert()
# Get the area in the middle of the visible screen where our images would fit
draw_area = image1.get_rect().move(SCREEN_SIZE[0] / 2 - 25,
SCREEN_SIZE[1] / 2 - 25)
# Draw our two off-screen images to the visible screen
screen.blit(image1, draw_area)
screen.blit(image2, draw_area)
# Display changes to the visible screen
pygame.display.flip()
# Keep the window from closing as soon as it's finished drawing
# Close the window gracefully upon hitting the close button
while True:
for event in pygame.event.get():
if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
pygame.quit()
sys.exit(0)
clock.tick(30)

How do I blit a PNG with some transparency onto a surface in Pygame?

I'm trying to blit a PNG image onto a surface, but the transparent part of the image turns black for some reason, here's the simple code:
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((800, 600), pygame.DOUBLEBUF, 32)
world = pygame.Surface((800, 600), pygame.SRCALPHA, 32)
treeImage = pygame.image.load("tree.png")
world.blit(treeImage, (0,0), (0,0,64,64))
screen.blit(world, pygame.rect.Rect(0,0, 800, 600))
What do I have to do to solve the problem?
The image has alpha transparency, I've opened it up in PhotoShop and the background turns transparent, not black or white or any other color.
Thank you for your support :)

http://www.pygame.org/docs/ref/image.html recommends:
For alpha transparency, like in .png images use the convert_alpha() method after loading so that the image has per pixel transparency.

You did not flip the doublebuffer.
import pygame
from pygame.locals import Color
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((800, 600))
treeImage = pygame.image.load("tree.png").convert_alpha()
white = Color('white')
while(True):
screen.fill(white)
screen.blit(treeImage, pygame.rect.Rect(0,0, 128, 128))
pygame.display.flip()
This should work for your problem.

Images are represented by "pygame.Surface" objects. A Surface can be created from an image with pygame.image.load:
my_image_surface = pygame.load.image('my_image.jpg')
However, the pygame documentation notes that:
The returned Surface will contain the same color format, colorkey and alpha transparency as the file it came from. You will often want to call convert() with no arguments, to create a copy that will draw more quickly on the screen.
For alpha transparency, like in .png images, use the convert_alpha() method after loading so that the image has per pixel transparency.
Use the convert_alpha() method for best performance:
alpha_image_surface = pygame.load.image('my_icon.png').convert_alpha()
A Surface can be drawn on or blended with another Surface using the blit method. The first argument to blit is the Surface that should be drawn. The second argument is either a tuple (x, y) representing the upper left corner or a rectangle. With a rectangle, only the upper left corner of the rectangle is taken into account. It should be mentioned that the window respectively display is also represented by a Surface. Therefore, drawing a Surface in the window is the same as drawing a Surface on a Surface:
window_surface.blit(image_surface, (x, y))
window_surface.blit(image_surface,
image_surface.get_rect(center = window_surface.get_rect().center))
Minimal example: repl.it/#Rabbid76/PyGame-LoadTransparentImage
import pygame
pygame.init()
window = pygame.display.set_mode((300, 300))
clock = pygame.time.Clock()
pygameSurface = pygame.image.load('Porthole.png').convert_alpha()
background = pygame.Surface(window.get_size())
ts, w, h, c1, c2 = 50, *window.get_size(), (160, 160, 160), (192, 192, 192)
tiles = [((x*ts, y*ts, ts, ts), c1 if (x+y) % 2 == 0 else c2) for x in range((w+ts-1)//ts) for y in range((h+ts-1)//ts)]
for rect, color in tiles:
pygame.draw.rect(background, color, rect)
run = True
while run:
clock.tick(60)
for event in pygame.event.get():
if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
run = False
window.blit(background, (0, 0))
window.blit(pygameSurface, pygameSurface.get_rect(center = window.get_rect().center))
pygame.display.flip()
pygame.quit()
exit()

Your code looks like it should be correct. The SDL library does not support alpha to alpha blitting like this, but Pygame added support for it awhile ago. In Pygame 1.8 support was added for custom blending modes, and I wonder if that removed Pygame's internal alpha-to-alpha blitter?
Alas, further investigation will be required.

Is there any way to "clear" a surface?

Is there any way to clear a surface from anything that has been blitted to it?

If what you want is to make a pygame Surface object "clean", that is erase all images blited to it, to blit new images to it every game loop and keep the peer pixel alpha without creating a new surface, you can fill it, but instead of a solid color, use a transparent color
from pygame import Color, Surface
empty = Color(0,0,0,0) #The last 0 indicates 0 alpha, a transparent color
field = Surface((width, height), flags=SRCALPHA)
#Inside the game loop
field.fill(empty)
*Sorry is my english is bad, still learning

When I dont care about performance, I use:
mysurface.fill((0,0,0))
Which will draw the specified color (black in this case) across the entire surface. Is that what you meant by "clear"?
Oh, and you need, of course, to "flip" the surface after doing this for it to be visible on the screen.

I don't know what API you're using, so here's a vague answer:
In virtually all cases "clearing" a surface simply blits a coloured quad of the same size as the surface onto it. The colour used is whatever you want your clear colour to be.
If you know how do blit, just blit a white quad of the same size onto the surface.

You can't undo one graphic written over the top of another graphic any more than you can undo one chalk illustration drawn over the top of another chalk illustration on the same board.
What is typically done in graphics is what you'd do with the chalkboard - clear the whole lot, and next time only redraw what you want to keep.

I had this problem too
To create the surface:
mask=pygame.Surface((180,100),pygame.SRCALPHA)
To clear the surface:
mask.fill
mask.set_alpha(255)
Draw your lines/images etc
Then blit this surface onto your main surface using the Alpha Blend flag
screen.blit(mask,(0,0),special_flags=(pygame.BLEND_RGBA_ADD))

.fill((255,255,255,0)) appears to work for me anyway.

I used the following in a game I made:
self.image = 0 #to empty it
self.image = pygame.image.load("image")

For pygame you can use Surface.fill

If you want to clear a surface before blitting, you can first fill the surface with a unlikely random color, set the alpha (colorkey) with that color, and then blit the original sprite with the transparent background back onto the surface.
idle_image = pg.image.load("sprite.png") #sprite with transparent background
temp_color = pg.Color(132, 23, 213, 255) #random unlikely replacement color
def clear_surface(surface):
surface.fill(st.temp_color)
surface.set_colorkey(st.temp_color)
surface.blit(idle_image, (0,0))

You can clear a surface by making it transparent.
Below is how I used the empty color RGB to make text blink by setting the surface to switch to a transparent version.
from __future__ import absolute_import, division, print_function
from itertools import cycle
import pygame
VISITOR_TTF_FILENAME = 'pixelFont.ttf'
BLINK_EVENT = pygame.USEREVENT + 0
empty = (255,255,255,0)
def main():
pygame.init()
try:
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((800, 600))
screen.fill((255,255,255))
screen_rect = screen.get_rect()
clock = pygame.time.Clock()
font = pygame.font.Font(VISITOR_TTF_FILENAME, 50)
on_text_surface = font.render(
'Press Any Key To Start', True, pygame.Color('green3')
)
blink_rect = on_text_surface.get_rect()
blink_rect.center = screen_rect.center
off_text_surface = pygame.Surface(blink_rect.size)
off_text_surface.fill(empty)
blink_surfaces = cycle([on_text_surface, off_text_surface])
blink_surface = next(blink_surfaces)
pygame.time.set_timer(BLINK_EVENT, 1000)
while True:
for event in pygame.event.get():
if event.type == pygame.QUIT:
return
if event.type == BLINK_EVENT:
blink_surface = next(blink_surfaces)
screen.blit(blink_surface, blink_rect)
pygame.display.update()
clock.tick(60)
finally:
pygame.quit()
if __name__ == '__main__':
main()

When I want to get rid of something I use
screen.fill("Gray")
every time I update! So it hides it behind the gray screen.
Gray is not the only color available, so here is a list of all of the available colors you can use for pygame
Hope it helped!

Fill the surface with fill, then make it transparent with set_alpha
surface.fill
surface.set_alpha(255)