Pygame Joystick event disturbed by something when simulating alt+tab

Question

I made a script with pygame and keyboard to simulate a keyboard press when a controller button is pressed and it worked perferctly, but when trying to simulate an alt tab, pygame is doing something weird. Here is an example showing the code used to try an simulate alt+tab by pressing A and B on a XBox controller:

import pygame
from keyboard import press, release

pygame.init()
pygame.joystick.init()

Joy = pygame.joystick.Joystick(0)
Joy.init()

xbox_A_button_index = 0  # PS alternative: 2 for X
xbox_B_button_index = 1  # PS alternative: 1 for O
xbox_BACK_button_index = 6  # PS alternative: 8 for SHARE

running = True
while running:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if (
            event.type == pygame.QUIT
            or (  # Quit if the user presses BACK on the controller or the window is closed
                event.type == pygame.JOYBUTTONDOWN
                and event.button == xbox_BACK_button_index
            )
        ):
            running = False

        if event.type == pygame.JOYBUTTONDOWN:
            if event.button == xbox_A_button_index:
                print("+ Alt")
                press("alt")

            if event.button == xbox_B_button_index:
                print("+ Tab")
                press("tab")

        if event.type == pygame.JOYBUTTONUP:
            if event.button == xbox_A_button_index:
                print("- Alt")
                release("alt")

            if event.button == xbox_B_button_index:
                print("- Tab")
                release("tab")

When pressing A, then B, then releasing A and finally B, the above script gives me the following:

pygame 2.4.0 (SDL 2.26.4, Python 3.10.11)
Hello from the pygame community. https://www.pygame.org/contribute.html
+ Alt
+ Tab
- Alt
- Tab
+ Alt
- Alt

We should get something like:

pygame 2.4.0 (SDL 2.26.4, Python 3.10.11)
Hello from the pygame community. https://www.pygame.org/contribute.html
+ Alt
+ Tab
-Tab
-Alt

We should note that we ‘alt tab’ from the window, but I don't think it is the origin of the problem. I've tried pressing and releasing key with win32api and win32com to see if it has something to do with keyboard module but nothing changed, I have no idea why this is happening and I did not find anything about this.

Any insight or suggestion would be helpful.

Answer 1

i think it is the problem of handling the events only once a frame. means, if you want to check for events that combine joystick and keyboard events, then you should store the event into a variable that can then be checked next frame, something like this:

class InputHandler:
  """ not tested, just as idea"""
  def __init__(self):
    self.joy_button_down = False
    self.alt_pressed = False
    self.tab_pressed = False
    ...ect

  def handle_events(self, events):
    if event.type == pygame.K_TAB:
      self.tab_pressed = True
            
    if event.type == pygame.JOYBUTTONDOWN:
      if event.button == xbox_A_button_index:
         self.joy_button_down = True
    ...ect
    # then, next frame it can check for:
    if self.joy_button_down and self.tab_pressed:
       do_something()