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I know there is already a thread asking for example 3d games written using Qt. What I'd like to have a discussion about is whether or not Qt is a good framework for game development.

In my experience Qt is a joy to work with and thanks to QML and QML/3d it's looking like it could be a viable framework for game development. The thought of using signals and slots for gamedev is exciting.

I'd like to hear some opinions on Qt in general as a game development platform. What are it's limitations? What are it's advantages?

Edit: I found an official Qt game development forum.

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Hello, and welcome to the Game Development StackExchange. Generally, we discourage discussion style questions, as they are not the best fit for the Q&A format. We ask that you ask Practical, answerable questions based on problems that you face – Noctrine♦ Aug 10 '11 at 20:58
@Noctrine Would a rewording be acceptable? I really just want to know the pros and cons of Qt for game development, if anyone has tried it. – Gagege Aug 10 '11 at 21:06
There's an active meta topic on the subject of pro/con questions. In its current form, I think this question should be closed a "discussion" isn't really appropriate here. – Josh Petrie Aug 10 '11 at 21:10

2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

If used properly, Qt can be great for games. It has good OpenGL support if you want hardware acceleration, and if you're dealing with 2D elements or custom widgets, the QPainter class and its friends have decent performance (just stay away from QPainter::SetOpacity, that'll kill your performance).

The other great thing about Qt for games is Qt Style Sheets. You can create a custom look-and-feel for your GUI using a CSS-like syntax, so your game's GUI won't look like a boring gray platform-specific interface.

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Well usually a game's buttons are just sprites/textures, but I suppose in an early prototype you could be using a toolkit's widgets – bobobobo Aug 11 '11 at 13:38
up vote 1 down vote

I've been working with Qt and it is quite nice, defenitely OK for a not too complicated game, for a 2D game it would be perfect I'd say.

The pros I found:

  • integrated translation
  • simplicity when creating menus

The cons I've stumbled into:

  • no draw calls from other threads than the main thread.
  • complicated to debug signals
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