I am really happy to be part of Nokia Developers Workshop which was jointly organized by Nokia Pakistan and Telenor, in Telenor’s premises in Islamabad.
It was a two day workshop (28-29 Feb 2012) where I talked about Qt Quick runtime and QML for designing and developing great looking apps and games, with focus on game development for Symbian and Meego based Nokia devices, such as Nokia N8, E7, X7 and the recently announced Nokia PureView 808.
The 2nd day of the workshop was even more fun as we explored the Box2D engine APIs using QML. One interesting thing I’d like to share was that I did not practiced making Ping Pong using Box2D before the workshop. But I was confident enough as I’ve been playing with Box2D and QML for some time, to do it live ;)
Below is the slide deck of my talk. You are free to download and modify it and use it for your own presentations. I will appreciate if you include my name in credits as original author.
[slideshare id=11822582&doc=gamedevelopmentwithqml-chall3ng3r-120301152703-phpapp02]
And here’s the project for Ping Pong game we developed at workshop. PingPong-QML.zip
As we figured out on the first day of the workshop that Box2D was not getting compiled with default MSVC2008/2010 compiler Qt SDK uses. Box2D compiles correctly with MinGW 4.4 compiler for Desktop and Simulator targets, which is an optional component in Qt SDK.
For Box2D development using QML, install Qt SDK in custom mode and check all components to be installed. When you open the Ping Pong project, remember to check if you have selected MinGW 4.4 as the compiler as shown in screenshot below.
There were few things that I needed to skip due to time constraints. One of them was making icons for your applications. If you are targeting Meego OS then you can safely use a PNG file as an icon. But if you are targeting Symbian OS you need to make your icon in SVG-Tiny format. It’s a vector format, and you need to draw again in Inkscape or Illustrator if you have done it in Photoshop.
The easy workaround for you is that we have developed an online icon making tool specific to cover this issue for beginners. Use our popular SVG Icon Maker tool to make SVG-Tiny icons from any image.
- SVG Icon Maker “€œ 5500 icons made and counting!
The second thing I skipped to discuss was, the Ping Pong game is hardware accelerated. Yes, it uses OpenGL to draw the graphics. So you can use heavy graphics in your game and it will never lag. To find out how I have enabled this take a look in main.cpp file of the project ;)
And finally here are some photographs taken on the last day of the workshop.
It was a great experience for me and I hope all the participants enjoyed developing with QML and publish a game or an app soon on Nokia Store.
Another great news for all the participants of the workshop is Nokia have announced a global competition for developers who will develop an app or game using Qt Quick components can win a free Nokia PureView 808 device which features a 41 megapixels camera!!! More details here.
It’s a great opportunity and perfect timing for you to develop and publish a new Qt Quick app in Nokia Store and win a great new Nokia PureView 808.
Nokia Pakistan is planning to do more workshops in coming months, so join Nokia Pakistan Developers group on LinkedIn for updates and share your feedback.
// chall3ng3r //
Attending this workshop was awesome.
Thanks Yousif, glad you liked it.
// chall3ng3r //