Eastfist's C++ Tutorials For Windows

It’s actually a little more advanced than SNES Mode 7 because it’s real 3D. Yes, Nintendo’s Mode 7 was 3D, but the limitation was to the ground plane. I needed to have better understanding of how a 3D engine worked so that mapping of objects went smoothly. So where ever I place a 3D object into the world, is also where I can place a 3D “plane” that I can use a 2D texture as a 3D sprite. For example, say I wanted to put a tree or stop sign on the map for a racing game similar to F-Zero.

Qt 4.8.7 differs greatly from Qt 4.8.5 in that they’ve wanted to provide more access to Windows 7 and later API. This makes the versions’ dependencies incompatible when you distribute your apps. So pay attention.

Downloads (For Distribution/Standalone Runtime):

Required

libgcc_s_dw2-1.dll	48 KB (UPX compressed)
libstdc++-6.dll	409 KB (UPX compressed)
libwinpthread-1.dll	25 KB (UPX compressed)
QtCore4.dll	1.1 MB (UPX compressed)
QtGui4.dll	4.1 MB (UPX compressed)

And for image format support:

/imageformats/

2.3 MB (UPX compressed)

And for Phonon to work:

phonon4.dll	121 KB (UPX compressed)
QtXml4.dll	143 KB (UPX compressed)
QtDBus4.dll	182 KB (UPX compressed)
/phonon_backend/	1.5 MB (UPX compressed)
/codecs/	1.4 MB (UPX compressed)

qt487_dependencies_upx.zip – contains all minimum dependencies to run my Qt 4.8.7 apps

NOTE: Not available yet, I’ll update this when I have working demo

Downloads (For Developing):

Qt 4.8.7 SDK	qt-opensource-windows-x86-mingw482-4.8.7.exe (337MB)
minGW 64 + GCC 4.8.2 compiler	i686-4.8.2-release-posix-dwarf-rt_v3-rev3.7z (46MB)
QtCreator 2.8.0	qt-creator-windows-opensource-2.8.0.exe (52MB) Note: there is newer version 2.8.1 but I don’t need it, so I cannot guarantee ver 2.8.1 will work or is compatible myself

IMPORTANT: If you can’t get Qt 4.8.7 to work for Windows, follow these instructions if you are upgrading from previous version, ie 4.8.5.

UPDATE!!!!

Is it getting more obvious this is going to work? 😛

Continue reading “Update: Real 3D in Qt 4.8.7 without third-party libraries DirectX or OpenGL”

Here’s a demo of “real” 3D in pure Qt. It doesn’t rely on third party 3D libraries like OpenGL, DirectX, or even Qt’s own convenience class QTransform. It’s actually very simple. It uses a very simple trigonometry function for rotating a point you can get off of Wikipedia. Everything else has to be calculated manually, but it works. The geometry is accurate. But so far this is only a work-in-progress and I haven’t quite figured out the texture mapping. But the fact that the faces can have textures mapped to them, yes with QTransform, means it’s ready for Mode 7 if you just want to put up single plane “sprites” as obstacles in an F-Zero or Mario Kart-like game. But I want to have full 3D boxes or buildings or platforms.

So we’ll see. It’s all a learning process for me.

The Phonon documentation provided by Qt isn’t thorough because Qt stopped providing support for it after awhile. So you’ll have to do extensive scouring of the Internet to make even your most basic Phonon app work. Here’s how:

When you’re coding, you can add the #includes, but you’ll notice the compiler may give errors. That’s because you have to dig pretty deep in the Phonon documentation provided by Qt in order to find out how to use their moc system. So make sure you add:

Qt += phonon

to the line in your QCreator *.pro file before you compile your application.

So when it’s time to deploy, make sure when you distribute your Phonon-based application to copy these folders to be distributed with your final Windows self-executable (*.exe format), which can be found in your Qt 4.8.7 installation folder %Qt%/plugins/

/phonon_backend
/codecs

You’ll also need the following DLLs to be distributed too, so copy them from Qt installation folder %Qt%/bin/

-QtDBus4.dll
-QtXml4.dll
-phonon4.dll

So once these folders and files have been distributed with your Windows self-executable, you should be able to play basic media files such as WAV and AVI formats. Other formats like MPG, MP3, MP4, AAC, MIDI, WMV, MOV, OGG, FLV may require additional codecs and programming. But the only way you’ll know for sure is to test them. Otherwise stick with formats you know for sure Windows (or your target deployment operating system) supports.

Hope that helps!

Upgrading to Qt 4.8.7 on Windows

By Chongchen Saelee

I’m upgrading from Qt 4.8.5 to Qt 4.8.7. I’m also using QtCreator 2.8.0. This a step-by-step guide on how I successfully upgraded.

NOTE: Qt 4.8.7 requires newer minGW 64 compiler, so if you don’t install that correctly, it won’t work. Qt 4.8.7 SDK Installer does not come with minGW 64 compiler, so you have to download that separately. Continue reading “Upgrading to Qt 4.8.7 from Qt 4.8.5”

Don’t get me wrong, I love Qt, but they do make the disclaimer when you download and use their software. Just note that unless you have money to burn, if you keep pushing the limits of your hardware and operating system, odds are Qt will make it all crash and burn. For example, I’ve been able to compile and run “simple” programs endlessly without a problem. But once I start experimenting with QTransform or other heavy image processing things, my harddrive goes on the fritz or memory issues or graphics card chugs. It’s just not worth it if I have to replace these hardware. Therefore, just to put it out there for the hobbyists who might be curious: DO NOT RISK HAVING TO REPLACE YOUR HARDWARE BY EXPERIMENTING WITH QTRANSFORM OR QIMAGE IF, that’s IF YOU’RE GOING TO PUSH THE SYSTEM WITH 3D PROCESSING.

Mind you, that’s only if you’re messing with 3D stuff. You can mess with QPixmap and QImage for 2D stuff, but don’t mess with QTransform or QImage when it comes to 3D. It’s just too brutal on my hardware. I think it has to do with the nature of how Qt is designed: to do everything as fast as possible. And I’m assuming that include “unsafe” methods. I recall working with DirectX a bit and that’s why Microsoft wants you to use their “safe” DirectX functions vs “unsafe”, even though unsafe methods may yield faster results.

And I’m developing on a Windows 7, Pentium i5 3.4GHz Quad Core processor, new hard drive, new RAM, the works. So just be extra careful and aware. It’s not maliciously designed, it’s like that for a reason. Machine cannot regulate itself and always needs human intervention.

You can embed a True Type font or Open Type font into your Qt application using QFontDatabase. You can link to an external font file or link to a font embedded as a resource.

First, make sure you include a reference to the QFontDatabase class:

#include <QFontDatabase>;

To link to an external font, do this:

QFontDatabase database;
int result = database.addApplicationFont("/path/to/font.tff");

Or for a more reliable way, embed the font as a resource. Create a Qt resource file and add a reference to the font file you want embedded. Then use the path to the embedded resource font:

QFontDatabase database;
int result = database.addApplicationFont(":/resource/path/to/font.tff");

If the returned integer is greater than -1, then the font has successfully loaded into the font database. It’s essentially storing the font in memory at the application’s runtime. You can check your operating system’s installed fonts and if the font hasn’t already been installed, that using QFontDatabase doesn’t install the font on your system. So this is a cool way of having specific fonts just for your Qt app without messing with the end-user’s fonts.

And to use the font, you would call it from the font database:

QFont f = database.font("myFont", "normal", 12);
myWidget.setFont(f);

Of course, be mindful of the font you choose for your app. As graphic designers, we are taught that for digital screens, you want to use sans-serif fonts (vs serif fonts for print). There needs to be good whitespace. Since users will be staring at the fonts for long periods of time, it needs to look nice and balanced overall. Then there’s also the issue of visual consistency and compatibility across operating systems. In this case, you don’t have to embed a custom font, but make sure you choose a web-safe font.

You can mix any color you want nowadays with 32-bit colors. But sometimes, it’s just so much more convenient if the color palette already exists. And unfortunately, Qt only provides users with the most basic of colors. Therefore, it’s up to you to come up with a snazzy pre-mixed color palette yourself, but also to name those custom colors. But you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. The X Windows system and W3 web standard for colors and names already exists.

Unfortunately, if you’re using Qt on Windows, you won’t be able to access that color palette.

So this is what I did: I simply took the names and RGB values and created a wrapper class in Qt. That way I can easily access the colors via their names. Ain’t that a trip? It seems so simple to implement, but I haven’t found any tutorials out there on the Interwebs. It could save a lot of time for those that deal with a lot of colors.

Also, I whipped up a quick demo that displays the colors all nice and purdy.

Feel free to use this X11 color name wrapper class in your Qt project. Enjoy!

You can download the Qt 4.8.5 project files here:
X11_colors_qt