[pygame] cx_Freeze and non-BMP images: my possible solution

[Rastagong <rayman3640@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I have been struggling for a while with cx_Freeze to have my Windows executables handle PNG images, and more generally non-BMP images. So far, I have always got the following error when I tried to load one: "File is not a Windows BMP file". It seemed that a dependency was not correctly loaded and that it prevented Pygame from handling any non-Bitmap image (and indeed, pygame.image.get_extended returned 0). But I think that I eventually solved this problem. I know I could have avoided it using py2exe, but I am a Python 3 user, so cx_Freeze is the only accurate tool for me.

So here's my solution, copied from Stack Overflow Q&A where I've just answered a question about it. Hope that it can help, it is really annoying to be obliged to use BMP…

The problem It seems that there is a conflict between two possible dependencies. The file jpeg.dllis included from the JRE (on Windows, something like C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\), but it is the wrong one. It should be included from the Pygame directory, located within your Python installation, at C:\Python31\lib\site-packages\pygame\. Don't know why cx_Freeze prefers the one from the JRE, though…

How to fix it? It is quite easy. Just copy the correct file (the one from Pygame) to the directory in which you execute the cx_Freeze script. When you will start it, the script will look in the current directory first, and will find the correct jpeg.dll. Your executable should be able to import PNG images now.

Does it work for you too?

Rastagong