PyGame Animation Flickering: Troubleshooting and Resolution

When running a PyGame program, you may encounter an issue where the animation flickers. This can be frustrating, especially if you are new to using the framework.

The underlying cause of animation flickering in PyGame is typically multiple calls to pygame.display.update(). Instead of updating the display at multiple points in the application loop, it should be refreshed only once at the end of the loop.

To resolve this flickering issue, remove all instances of pygame.display.update() from your code except for one call at the end of the loop:

while running:
    screen.fill((225, 0, 0))
    # pygame.display.update() <---- DELETE

    # [...]

    player(playerX, playerY)
    pygame.display.update()

By updating the display after screen.fill(), the background color will be briefly visible before the player is drawn on top of it. This creates the illusion of flickering. By updating the display only once at the end of the loop, you ensure that the screen is redrawn with all elements in their intended positions, eliminating the flicker.