How do I check for two keyboard keys being pressed at the same time with pygame?

Question

I'm trying to put some features into my pygame games that get executed when two keys (e.g. a + ESC) get pressed at the same time. I tried using

for event in pygame.event.get():
  if event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN and event.key == pygame.K_a and event.key == pygame.K_ESCAPE:
    # do something

But it doesn't recognize when I hit both keys at the same time

Answer 1

Use pygame.key.get_pressed() to get the state of all keyboard buttons.

keys = pygame.key.get_pressed()
if keys[pygame.K_a] and keys[pygame.K_ESCAPE]:
    # [...]

Check the state of the keys when the KEYDOWN event occurs on one of the keys (a or ESC):

for event in pygame.event.get():
    # [...]

    if event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN:
        if event.key == pygame.K_a or event.key == pygame.K_ESCAPE: # <--- or 

            keys = pygame.key.get_pressed()
            if keys[pygame.K_a] and keys[pygame.K_ESCAPE]:
                print("a and ESC")

The same combined in a single condition:

event_list = pygame.event.get()
keys = pygame.key.get_pressed()
for event in event_list:
    # [...]        

    if event.type == pygame.KEYDOWN and \
        ((event.key == pygame.K_a and keys[pygame.K_ESCAPE]) or \
        (event.key == pygame.K_ESCAPE and keys[pygame.K_a])):
        
        print("a and ESC")

Note: pygame.event.get() must be called before pygame.key.get_pressed(), since the states of the keys returned by pygame.event.get() are set when the events are evaluated.