ValueError: unsupported colormasks for alpha reference array

gcewing on 2010/04/02 09:30

I'm getting the following exception from pygame 1.9.1 when trying to use pixels_alpha():

ValueError: unsupported colormasks for alpha reference array

The surface was created using Surface((w, h), SRCALPHA).

The masks it's using are: 00ff0000 0000ff00 000000ff ff000000

I can't see why this should cause it any problem. Anyone have any ideas?

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Comments

neko on 2010/04/02 12:18:

I think you meant to use surfarray.pixels2d instead of surfarray.pixels_alpha. surfarray.pixels_alpha ONLY includes the alpha data, not the full ARGB data. Demonstration:

$ cat tmp.py
import pygame
pygame.init()
surface = pygame.Surface((2,2), pygame.SRCALPHA)
surface.fill((0,56,0))
print pygame.surfarray.pixels_alpha(surface)
print pygame.surfarray.pixels2d(surface)
$ python tmp.py
[[255 255]
[255 255]]
[[4278204416 4278204416]
[4278204416 4278204416]]

neko on 2010/04/02 12:23:

Maybe I should learn to read before I respond to messages. Ignore what I just said.

neko on 2010/04/02 12:39:

surfarray.pixels_alpha() uses the Surface.get_shifts() method to determine if it's able to create the array for a given surface. Is it possible that Surface.get_shifts() has become desynchronized with Surface.get_masks()? What is the output of get_shifts() for that surface?

gcewing on 2010/04/03 13:01:

I tracked this down to a bug in pygame 1.9.1. Essentially whoever wrote it left big-endian machines out in the cold. The relevant code is pure Python, so I've incorporated a fixed version of pixels_alpha into my code for now.