Book Image

Game Programming using Qt 5 Beginner's Guide - Second Edition

Book Image

Game Programming using Qt 5 Beginner's Guide - Second Edition

Overview of this book

Qt is the leading cross-platform toolkit for all significant desktop, mobile, and embedded platforms and is becoming popular by the day, especially on mobile and embedded devices. It's a powerful tool that perfectly fits the needs of game developers. This book will help you learn the basics of Qt and will equip you with the necessary toolsets to build apps and games. The book begins by how to create an application and prepare a working environment for both desktop and mobile platforms. You will learn how to use built-in Qt widgets and Form Editor to create a GUI application and then learn the basics of creating graphical interfaces and Qt's core concepts. Further, you'll learn to enrich your games by implementing network connectivity and employing scripting. You will learn about Qt's capabilities for handling strings and files, data storage, and serialization. Moving on, you will learn about the new Qt Gamepad module and how to add it in your game and then delve into OpenGL and Vulcan, and how it can be used in Qt applications to implement hardware-accelerated 2D and 3D graphics. You will then explore various facets of Qt Quick: how it can be used in games to add game logic, add game physics, and build astonishing UIs for your games. By the end of this book, you will have developed the skillset to develop interesting games with Qt.

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Download the example code files

Free Chapter

Introduction to Qt

Introduction to Qt

A journey through time

The cross-platform programming

Structure of Qt framework

Choosing the right license

Installation

Installing the Qt SDK

Qt GUI Programming

Qt GUI Programming

Creating GUI in Qt

Signals and slots

Creating a widget for the tic-tac-toe board

Advanced form editor usage

Polishing the application

Custom 2D Graphics with Graphics View

Custom 2D Graphics with Graphics View

Graphics View architecture

Coordinate systems

Overview of functionality

Widgets inside Graphics View

Animations in Graphics View

Animations in Graphics View

The jumping elephant or how to animate the scene

The Animation framework

Property animations

Adding gamepad support

Item collision detection

Finishing the game

Qt Core Essentials

Qt Core Essentials

Networking

QNetworkAccessManager

Connecting to Google, Facebook, Twitter, and co.

Controlling the connectivity state

Communicating between games

Custom Widgets

Raster and vector graphics

Raster painting

Creating a custom widget

Working with images

Optimizing widget painting

Implementing a chess game

OpenGL and Vulkan in Qt applications

OpenGL and Vulkan in Qt applications

Introduction to OpenGL with Qt

Using OpenGL in immediate mode

Modern OpenGL with Qt

Vulkan in Qt applications

Combining OpenGL or Vulkan with Qt Widgets

Scripting

Evaluating JavaScript expressions

Exposing C++ objects and functions to JavaScript code

Creating a JavaScript scripting game

Python scripting

Introduction to Qt Quick

Introduction to Qt Quick

Declarative UI programming

Overview of QML types provided by Qt

Qt Quick Designer

Qt Quick and C++

Bringing life into static user interfaces

Customization in Qt Quick

Customization in Qt Quick

Creating a custom QML component

Creating advanced QML components

Dynamic and lazy loading of QML objects

Imperative painting on Canvas using JavaScript

Using C++ classes as QML components

Animations in Qt Quick Games

Animations in Qt Quick Games

Animation framework in Qt Quick

Quick game programming

Advanced Visual Effects in Qt Quick

Advanced Visual Effects in Qt Quick

Making the game more attractive

Custom OpenGL-based Qt Quick items

Using QPainter interface in Qt Quick

3D Graphics with Qt

3D Graphics with Qt

Rendering 3D objects

Handling user input

Performing animations

Integration with 3D modeling software

Working with Qt 3D using C++

Integration with Qt Widgets and Qt Quick

Pop quiz answers

Pop quiz answers

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Vulkan in Qt applications

OpenGL has undergone significant changes as graphics cards hardware has evolved. Many old parts of OpenGL API are now deprecated, and even up-to-date API is not ideal for utilizing the capabilities of modern hardware. Vulkan was designed as an attempt to create an API more suitable for this purpose.

Vulkan is a new API that can be used instead of OpenGL to perform hardware-accelerated rendering and computation. While Vulkan is more verbose and complex than OpenGL, it closely represents the actual interaction between CPU and GPU. This allows Vulkan users to achieve better control over utilizing GPU resources, which can lead to better performance. The first stable version of Vulkan API was released in 2016.

While Vulkan is a cross-platform solution, a Vulkan application still needs to contain a bit of platform-specific code, mainly related to window creation...