Hey everyone... I've committed myself to programming in Linux now and I'just wondering what you guys do for creating your game tools. I'm thinking that I should read a bit about QT (I'm a KDE user) and learn how to use that for creating windows, menus, etc.... Is that the right approach? Or is there another option that I'm not aware of? Also, if this is the right approach, does anyone have any links to tutorial sites that show how to have OpenGL windows within their QT tools. Thanks everyone :)

You can check out fltk at http://www.fltk.org/ .

Here is an example of some one who coded a map editor in FLTK.

http://legion.gibbering.net/golem/images/editor_screen1.jpg


Hope this helps.

GTK is another option.

The one thing to be aware of is that Qt is dual licensed. If you are willing to release your code under the GPL, you can use it for free - if you want your app to be closed source and distribute it you'll need to purchase a Qt Commercial License.

Also, here's a OpenGL in Qt tutorial.

If you are interesting in portability on Unix/Linux X-windows systems without need for the client having external libs installed then using Xlib is a good option. The main problems with using Xlib will be learning the somewhat long winded and often convoluted functions that it uses.

Depending on how deep you want to get involved with a toolkit you may want to consider something more high level like GTK or Qt. if you want something that will do everything for you then something like Qt would be great as it has so many functions and classes for doing pretty much anything you could want. If you want to be a bit more involved in what is happening then using something lighter like fltk/motif would probably give you more control over the enviroment.

Personally I prefer to know what is going on at a low level and get my hands dirty so I have put myself through the effort of learning Xlib, which is great for making very low resource hungry applications.

I would go with Qt. It has been by far the easiest toolkit to learn and it is crossplatform. On the other hand, KDE "extensions" are bit trickier, but just a bit. Qt4 is something you should try (it's gpl under windows too).

And also try out the QtDesigner. (integrates to the KDevelop pretty well)

True, Qt has the double licensing issue, but what I've heard they are quite fair with it. Meaning that you don't need to license the whole toolkit if you don't want to use GPL for some reason. (Note, I'm not 100% sure about this)

Tutorials and references for KDE libs are here and here are reference docs for Qt3 and Qt4.

if you want to fast create tools without worring too much with the gui toolkit programming, just go with mono (a free .net framework implementation) and Gtk# (.net binds to gtk), its easy and fast.

that way you can worry about what the tool is design for, instead of how to create the ui.

Thanks for the advice guys.... I think that I may do as BBB suggests.... Like he says, I could integrate the editor into the game negine itself which could make for some interesting capabilities.

Also, I would prefer not to have a dependance on one toolkit.... I think just using an SDL / OpenGL combo would be just fine :)


Thanks,

Mike

Yeah; if you have to create GUI controls for your game anyways (so they integrate with OpenGL for quick rendering) you might as well use them for the editor too.

BBB:
That would be great if you done mind me checking it out :) Any code examples will help a lot..

my email is mrhodes@hfx.eastlink.ca

Thanks