Typewriter Effect Pygame

Sorry if I don’t answer your question directly, because your code is too confusing for me now, so I took the liberty to rewrite your code to get done what you want.

The idea is to have two sprites:

• the cursor, which is a) displayed on the screen and b) keeps track of what text to write and where

• the board, which is basically just a surface that the text is rendered on

Note how all the writing logic is on the Cursor class, and we have a nice, simple and dumb main loop.

import pygame
import os

#Sets the width and height of the screen
WIDTH = 320
HEIGHT = 240

#Importing the external screen
os.putenv('SDL_FBDEV', '/dev/fb1')
os.putenv('SDL_MOUSEDRV', 'TSLIB')
os.putenv('SDL_MOUSEDEV', '/dev/input/touchscreen')

#Initializes the screen - Careful: all pygame commands must come after the init
pygame.init()
clock = pygame.time.Clock()

#Sets mouse cursor visibility
pygame.mouse.set_visible(False)
#Sets the screen note: must be after pygame.init()
screen = pygame.display.set_mode((WIDTH, HEIGHT))


class Board(pygame.sprite.Sprite):
    def __init__(self):
        pygame.sprite.Sprite.__init__(self)
        self.image = pygame.Surface((WIDTH, HEIGHT))
        self.image.fill((13,13,13))
        self.image.set_colorkey((13,13,13))
        self.rect = self.image.get_rect()
        self.font = pygame.font.SysFont("monospace", 18)

    def add(self, letter, pos):
        s = self.font.render(letter, 1, (255, 255, 0))
        self.image.blit(s, pos)

class Cursor(pygame.sprite.Sprite):
    def __init__(self, board):
        pygame.sprite.Sprite.__init__(self)
        self.image = pygame.Surface((10, 20))
        self.image.fill((0,255,0))
        self.text_height = 17
        self.text_width = 10
        self.rect = self.image.get_rect(topleft=(self.text_width, self.text_height))
        self.board = board
        self.text=""
        self.cooldown = 0
        self.cooldowns = {'.': 12,
                        '[': 18,
                        ']': 18,
                        ' ': 5,
                        '\n': 30}

    def write(self, text):
        self.text = list(text)

    def update(self):
        if not self.cooldown and self.text:
            letter = self.text.pop(0)
            if letter == '\n':
                self.rect.move_ip((0, self.text_height))
                self.rect.x = self.text_width
            else:
                self.board.add(letter, self.rect.topleft)
                self.rect.move_ip((self.text_width, 0))
            self.cooldown = self.cooldowns.get(letter, 8)

        if self.cooldown:
            self.cooldown -= 1

all_sprites = pygame.sprite.Group()
board = Board()
cursor = Cursor(board)
all_sprites.add(cursor, board)

text = """[i] Initializing ...
[i] Entering ghost mode ...

done ...

"""

cursor.write(text)

#Main loop
running = True
while running:

    for e in pygame.event.get():
        if e.type == pygame.QUIT:
            running = False

    all_sprites.update()
    screen.fill((0, 0, 0))
    all_sprites.draw(screen)
    pygame.display.flip()
    clock.tick(60)