pygame.image.load not working

Question

I'm trying to create a world map for a game, but when I try to load the world map to the screen, the command line tells me I'm unable to do so. Here is the code:

import sys 
import pygame
from pygame.locals import * 
pygame.init ()

Surface = pygame.display.set_mode ((1000, 775), 0, 32)
pygame.display.set_caption('World Map')

WorldMap = pygame.image.load('WorldMap.jpg')
white = (255, 255, 255)
while True:
    Surface.fill (white)
    Surface.blit (WorldMap, (900, 675))
    for event in pygame.event.get():
       if event.type == QUIT:
            pygame.quit ()
            sys.exit (0)
    pygame.display.update()

The error looks something like this ----

Traceback (most recent call last)
  File "C:\Users\The Folder\WorldMap.py", line 9, in <module> 
    WorldMap = pygame.image.load ('WorldMap.jpg')
  pygame.error: Couldn't open WorldMap.jpg

Answer 1

The error message is pretty clear: pygame can't find your image in the place you said it would be.

You have to make sure that the image WorldMap.jpg exists in your current working directory (CWD).

If you double-click your .py file, the CWD is the directory containing the .py. So WorldMap.jpg must be there. If you execute it from the command line from a different directory, add code for that or put the image in the other directory.