Game Programming Using Qt: Beginner's Guide

A complete guide to designing and building fun games with Qt and Qt Quick 2 using associated toolsets

About This Book

• Learn to create simple 2D to complex 3D graphics and games using all possible tools and widgets available for game development in Qt
• Understand technologies such as QML, Qt Quick, OpenGL, and Qt Creator, and learn the best practices to use them to design games
• Learn Qt with the help of many sample games introduced step-by-step in each chapter

Who This Book Is For

If you want to create great graphical user interfaces and astonishing games with Qt, this book is ideal for you. Any previous knowledge of Qt is not required, however knowledge of C++ is mandatory.

What You Will Learn

• Install Qt on your system
• Understand the basic concepts of every Qt game and application
• Develop 2D object-oriented graphics using Qt Graphics View
• Build multiplayer games or add a chat function to your games with Qt's Network module
• Script your game with Qt Script
• Program resolution-independent and fluid UI using QML and Qt Quick
• Control your game flow as per the sensors of a mobile device
• See how to test and debug your game easily with Qt Creator and Qt Test

In Detail

Qt is the leading cross-platform toolkit for all significant desktop, mobile, and embedded platforms and is becoming more popular by the day, especially on mobile and embedded devices. Despite its simplicity, it's a powerful tool that perfectly fits game developers' needs. Using Qt and Qt Quick, it is easy to build fun games or shiny user interfaces. You only need to create your game once and deploy it on all major platforms like iOS, Android, and WinRT without changing a single source file.

The book begins with a brief introduction to creating an application and preparing a working environment for both desktop and mobile platforms. It then dives deeper into the basics of creating graphical interfaces and Qt core concepts of data processing and display before you try creating a game. As you progress through the chapters, you'll learn to enrich your games by implementing network connectivity and employing scripting. We then delve into Qt Quick, OpenGL, and various other tools to add game logic, design animation, add game physics, and build astonishing UI for the games. Towards the final chapters, you'll learn to exploit mobile device features such as accelerators and sensors to build engaging user experiences. If you are planning to learn about Qt and its associated toolsets to build apps and games, this book is a must have.

Style and approach

This is an easy-to-follow, example-based, comprehensive introduction to all the major features in Qt. The content of each chapter is explained and organized around one or multiple simple game examples to learn Qt in a fun way.

Witold Wysota

Witold Wysota is a software architect and developer living in Poland. He started his adventure with Qt in 2004 when he joined QtForum.org and started answering questions about programming with Qt. Shortly afterwards, he became part of the moderator group of the forum. In 2006, together with the moderator team, he established QtCentre.org, which quickly became the largest community-driven support site devoted to Qt. For a number of years, he conducted commercial, academic, and public trainings and workshops and has been giving lectures on Qt, Qt Quick, and related technologies. He is a certified Qt developer and was a member of Qt Education Advisory Board with Nokia, where he helped prepare materials in order to use Qt in educational activities. Witold was also a technical reviewer for Foundations of Qt Development, Johan Thelin, Apress Publishing, a book about Qt 4, and an author of a couple of articles on programming with Qt. In real life, he is a passionate adept of Seven Star Praying Mantis, a traditional style of Chinese martial arts.