How can I close pygames without closing tkinter?

Question

So I am trying to use Tkinter to receive a text input, and then run pygames from that to do an animation. I get an error though when I close Pygames.

A simplified version of how I plan to use Pygames:

def the_program():
    if spot.get().strip() == "":
        tkMessageBox.showerror("X", "Y")
    else:
        code = spot.get().strip()
        pygame.init()
        pygame.display.set_caption('X')
        windowSurface = pygame.display.set_mode((WINDOWWIDTH, WINDOWHEIGHT), 0, 32)
        while True:
            for event in pygame.event.get():
                if event.type == QUIT:
                    pygame.quit()
                    sys.exit()
            pygame.display.update()

Running Tkinter:

root = Tk()
frame = Frame(root)
text = Label(frame, text='X')
spot = Entry(frame)
button = Button(frame, text = 'Ready?', command = the_program) "Starts Pygames"
frame.pack()
text.pack()
spot.pack()
button.pack()

root.mainloop()

Pygames opens up fine and runs well, but when I close it I get this error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python26\Practice\legit Battle Master.py", line 82, in <module>
    root.mainloop()
  File "C:\Python26\lib\lib-tk\Tkinter.py", line 1017, in mainloop
    self.tk.mainloop(n)
  File "C:\Python26\lib\lib-tk\Tkinter.py", line 1412, in __call__
    raise SystemExit, msg

How can I avoid this? I tried removing "sys.exit()", but python crashes.

Answer 1

You are trying to exit from the pygame mainloop with sys.exit(), which exits the whole running application, including the tkinter GUI you started before pygame. You should exit the pygame mainloop (the only while clause) with a conditional. e.g:

running = True
while running:
    for event in pygame.event.get():
        if event.type == QUIT:
            pygame.quit()
            running = False
...