mdwh

It would be pretty stupid for someone to start complaining if they had made a model available for download and then introduced restrictions on how you can use it.

Being available for download doesn't mean free to redistribute.

If it has a licence, the licence will tell you what can be done with it (and the good thing about licences like the Creative Commons ones are that they're well documented, with plenty of info on them, so you don't need to consult lawyers). If it doesn't have a licence, you can't use it unless you get permission from the author.

If you already have something running on both these platforms, then it would seem odd not to release on both.

If you don't, then I'm confused, as you say "ready to ship out". Or if you mean it only runs on PC (I presume this means Windows specifically) (because you later say it doesn't have touchscreen controls), then right now you only have the one option. The question then might be which other platforms to port to, of which there are plenty to consider ("as many as possible" is the ideal answer, though it may depend on what hardware you already have/use/know). And yes, there are more options than just Steam for Windows.

Mobile, you just need to purchase the developer packge via apple (100$) and you can drop your game on the app store. I believe android doesnt require a dev package....i could be wrong about that though.

Note that's $99 a year for IOS, not one off, I believe. Android needs the SDK, but it's free. To publish on Google Play is a one off fee of $25, and you are free to publish anywhere else that you like.

Just to clarify, note that commercial use is always allowed with any Free and Open Source licences - by definition. But the issues are more to do with using with software that is released under a non-Open licence (e.g., closed source).

Also have a look at http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html .

My problem is that the "open source" definition according to the "Open Source Initiative" requires "no discrimination against persons or group of persons", and by making a difference between academia and non-academia, I can't find an appropiate license model that is "open source" according to the OSI.

Indeed, you've answered the question - you won't find an Open Source licence like this, because it isn't Open Source by definition (Well sure, there's the debate about who gets to define the term, but AIUI, the term "Open Source" was popularied by OSI, and the licences that fit that definition, so it would be best not to potentially mislead people by claiming something is "open source". Saying the code is viewable, available, or whatever as you suggest, seems absolutely fine to me however)

Note that there's also another problem than the discrimination clause - Open Source also requires allowing people to sell the software, so preventing that would be another reason why you won't find an Open Source licence.

That doesn't mean there might not be an off-the-shelf licence that suits your needs, so it is worth asking. Though all the off-the-shelf licences for software that I've seen tend to full under the umbrella of the OSI's or FSF's definitions.

It's not clear to me that charging money implies quality results - indeed, it's an insult to the idea of free software. Though at least the money goes to charity.

Publishing on iOS requires a $99/year developer membership fee.  Although user ratings and reviews help to a certain extend, Google's Play marketplace for Android is full of low-quality and poorly functioning apps.  You're not really worse off with Steam than you are with iOS, and as cowsarenotevil says, "works" is a term than can loosely be applied to both the iOS app store and the Android marketplace.

Firstly, I disagree - not had problems with Android software, and claiming one platform has poor quality is just POV and going the way of OS flamewars... But also, you're conflating charging money, with the review process that IOS requires. Plus, Google Play costs money too, albeit $25 instead of $99/year. Nokia Store OTOH is only 1 euro, but also has a review process like IOS to prevent non-functioning applications. These are separate issues.

Not that this should matter here, if a game is so bad it doesn't even function, it's not going to get support.

What platforms is the playtest for? Your page mentions IOS - how easy is it to install from a zip? (I didn't think Apple even allowed that?) If your playtest is for different platforms (e.g., non-mobile), then that might be part of the confusion, so mentioning that might be better.

Sadly there is a lot of competition out there - even for free. You want to start small with letting people play the game - but I guess this shows that you still need to advertise more widely if you don't want that small

One step in the right direction may be to rethink the decision to use Qt for your game. I'm a Qt user myself, and am currently using it on my game - but my game is a 2D RPG where performance isn't critical.
Qt isn't really designed with games in mind, and as such, has some performance issues that pop up at unpredictable times - in particular I'm thinking about a blog post I read recently, where someone was making a Minecraft clone using OpenGL and Qt, and showed performance measurements for his game where Qt was eating the lion's share of it.

If that's the post I'm thinking of, it was specifically only to do with using the Qt GUI, overlayed with the graphics scene.

It's still perfectly fine to use Qt as an API for game development on a similar level to say SDL and SFML. Qt provides far more than a GUI - it provides windowing, input, sound, 2D graphics (or 3D via OpenGL/D3D, like with SDL), networking, SMP and so on, all the things you'd want in a cross-platform game API.

The key thing that's an issue for performance is if you want to have a GUI rendered as part of your scene, on the GPU. But say SDL doesn't provide any support for that whatsoever, but that's not a reason to not use SDL. As always, you either have to roll your own, or get a game UI toolkit that's built specifically for that job. (OOI, is there an open source cross-platform toolkit that does provide all the low level things like windowing, input, sound, networking, *and* a fast GUI toolkit as well?)

(This is a few times I've seen references to that blog post now - I fear it's starting a "Qt can't be used for games" myth, which completely misses the point of what Qt can provide, and what that blog post was measuring. Even without fast OpenGL/D3D based GUI, Qt still provides plenty for game development, and does just as well as the likes of SDL IMO.)

Now yes, Qt is perhaps most well known for its GUI engine and it perhaps seems a waste to not use that at all - but if we've decided that the GUI shouldn't be used, that doesn't mean there's nothing left to offer when it comes to low level game APIs like SDL etc. I'm not saying Qt is necessarily better than SDL, but they're both viable choices. Also a well written game/engine shouldn't necessarily be restricted to one or the other, and it shouldn't be the constraining choice in developing a game - I have a game that uses SDL for Windows/Linux/OS X, but I added Qt support for Symbian and Android (on Android, the Qt port seems better supported and easier to use than SDL or anything else I could find for C++). Nothing in my game code has signals/slots forced upon it, apart from a small amount of Qt specific code.

I'm also using it in a game where I use the Qt GUI elements in separate windows (and RPG, where the UI surrounds the main game window), and so I'm not sure if the performance criticisms apply there(?) since the GUI won't be rendered every frame.

Also Qt kinda enforces it's own programming paradigm on you, forcing you to use signals and slots whether you want to or not, and takes complete control of the main loop of the application.

Signals and slots are great things, though yes it does mean you aren't writing "pure" C++. Though as I say, you don't have to use signals and slots everywhere, only where your game/engine interfaces with the Qt API.

The latter is a good thing, particularly for mobile development (it means the programmer doesn't have to be trusted when it comes to things like sleeping, not wasting battery life on unnecessary CPU and so on). E.g., you don't get a main loop in Android at all - see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1099640/main-loop-in-android .

Why not be explicit about it? If someone sends you a level, ask for permission to distribute it according to whatever licence seems best. Or if say you had a website for people to upload, state it clearly on the upload site.

(It is indeed a good thing to think about these issues. It's a pet hate of mine that whilst there are many talented people creating mods for commercial games, and seem happy for their work to be distributed, they hardly ever explicitly state what terms or licence this can be done under - meaning that whilst they might upload it to a website, it's not possible for say the original game creators to package these mods into a "mod pack" unless they track down every single author and get permission; it also means that all this freely available content is useless for being reused in say open source games, because none of it has licences.)

See http://en.wikipedia....kipedia_content .

However... though even if it's quite clear even to every non-lawyer, it's not all that easy. As always.

• Attribution goes to the respective authors of the pages, not to Wikimedia Foundation. Which means you must look them up in the edits page first, and this leaves you with "names" like Pmsyyz, Andyvn22, 122.176.67.53, 76.68.45.34, 70.171.247.181, 67.187.213.172 and 200 others.
• You can be rather sure that Wikimedia Foundation sees (1.) differently. Even if they are rather obviously wrong, they can still sue you, at least in the USA. They may not win, but it will cost you thousands even before the first hearing.

They say that a list of authors is fine. Though they say it's also fine to instead attribute by linking to the Wikipedia page (which contains the list of authors already).

Qt is fine for games - the only possible problems come to the question of using the UI code in a game, and having it overlayed/intermixed in with the 3D graphics. Of course since that's what you're asking for, the responses have been relevant - but some of the linked negative Qt blog posts seem to write Qt as a whole off for games altogether, which isn't fair.

Qt is more than just a UI toolkit - it provides cross-platform windowing, networking, input, sound, fonts etc, all in a single library. So that's all the stuff useful for games, and at least as good as what you get in libraries like SDL. Qt can certainly be used for games in this sense. It is also fine for mobile, indeed, that's what Nokia used it for, to provide the primary API for the popular Symbian platform (I've used Qt for Symbian, Android, Windows and Linux). That Qt manages the main loop shouldn't be a problem - indeed, there are arguments in favour of this, for example it means the API/OS can manage better for battery life, rather than having to trust the programmer to get that right, which is important for mobile use. Why do you need control of the main loop?

It is incorrect to say that Qt wasn't built with games in mind, when it does have plenty of classes clearly geared towards that purpose. Whether it's the best API or not for games is another matter of course, but it's not that it was never intended for games.

So the problem isn't whether Qt can be used for games, but whether you can take advantage of the UI within the OpenGL window. I'm not sure if any UI designed for "OS friendly" UIs will work as well as the UIs that are designed to work with 3D engines - but on the flip side, you've got the cost that the latter don't tend to be as good in terms of the UI offered (which often isn't a problem for most games). This isn't a flaw with Qt, but something that no standard "OS friendly" API seems to offer.

Indeed, the blog post notes "So the real overhead of using Qt is only ~1ms per frame. That’s reasonable." He also notes that SDL would be no better - Qt still provides all the benefits of cross-platform windowing, network, input, fonts and so on, without having to need all the add-ons that SDL needs. Yet people still happily use and recommend SDL for games. The bottom line is that there doesn't seem to be a single API that can be used for non-game "OS friendly" application UIs, as well as being good for games (or is there?) - and the OP may well be better off with an API that is targetted towards in-game rendering.

(Another approach is to arrange your UI so that the UI surrounds the main 3D window, rather than having to be overlayed. For some kinds of games, this is fine - e.g., role-playing games, adventure; and anything you need to overlay can be left to more simple elements that you can roll your own. But if this isn't suitable, I'm not sure if any standard OS toolkit will be useful.)

If you choose not to use Qt for the UI, what are you going to use for all the other things you need (windowing, input, etc)? Qt is still a viable choice there

Qt 5 is bringing in a new UI system that should be better designed for GPU rendering, but I wouldn't hold my breath, especially since Nokia's gone Microsoft now.

Qt is open source, and is not dependent on Nokia's future direction.

I'm using Qt for Windows/Linux/Symbian/Android 2D game development - it's not a toolkit often associated with games, but as a full application toolkit it does the job (including some higher level functionality for graphics than say you'd get with SDL).

Qt for Android is an unofficial port, but already works for deploying to Google Play, and IMO is actually already easier to use than faffing around with the official Google NDK.

I have a GUI system in place for my own app that I am working on. Rolled it in less than a day. There is nothing that I can't do with it. So, it is good for what I want (currently games programming).

Nothing? I'm not convinced you have anything near the full functionality of a UI toolkit in a day Though it is indeed possible to roll something good enough for a simple game.

Thats fine to go negative rep me mdwh. But, as I said, (for the reading impaired) there is nothing I can not do with it.

That wasn't me. It was already negative when I read your post.

So, I would not have a clue what 'UI Toolkit' can do, as thus far, I have not needed a 3rd party GUI.

Its a GUI for F*#K sake, it is not that hard.

Either that or that fact that I have been coding for 23 years and trivial stuff doesn't phase me.

A UI toolkit will do whatever you see in Windows, basically. Listboxes, text areas (with scrolling and editing)? Tabs? A UI that dynamically positions and sizes the elements for you? Drag and drop from the OS? Multiple movable windows? I'm impressed Given that the OP is a beginner, I'm not sure implementing a whole UI will be quite so easy as it is for you though. And how do you make it work so your application plays nicely with Windows (i.e., appearing and behaving as a native application)?

I too think Qt is great, and use it for Windows, Linux and Symbian. (Have no experience of WxWidgets to compare though.) You can even use it for game programming, which I'm doing for my current Nokia project (though for desktops, things like SDL seem more commonly used).

Isn't MFC about a decade out of date? Well personally I think it was dreadful even back then, but even if you want to do it the "Microsoft official" way, they've moved on to newer APIs (presumably with the recommendation of using C#).

It's true that Qt works with a modified C++, but it works well I find (and Microsoft have made their own modifications to C++ to get it working with managed code for their more recent APIs anyway, which in my opinion looks messier than what's done in Qt).

I have a GUI system in place for my own app that I am working on. Rolled it in less than a day. There is nothing that I can't do with it. So, it is good for what I want (currently games programming).

Nothing? I'm not convinced you have anything near the full functionality of a UI toolkit in a day Though it is indeed possible to roll something good enough for a simple game.

It depends what the OP is asking for. If he wants to make graphical games, then the next stop is not a GUI toolkit - or indeed, a GUI at all. He's better off learning writing simple games before worrying about that. If he is asking about non-game applications, then he is certainly better off learning to use a standard GUI toolkit.

Similarly with Nokia (Symbian), I'm getting 50-100 downloads daily with a simple niche application, and ~13,000 downloads daily with another simple more useful application. Don't know about games yet (have one in the pipeline waiting to be approved though).

So yes, I agree that giving mobile platforms is worth a try; all of them (except Apple) can be developed for without buying a Mac But as someone says, it's probably useful to have a real device for testing, as emulators aren't always perfect, also there might be deployment or UI issues that aren't obvious when testing. (Nokia have a cool thing that I sometimes use, Remote Device Access where you can use any of their phones remotely - but even there, it's useful to have an actual smartphone to test on.) I'm considering picking up a cheap Android tablet just to port games to.

But it is interesting - on Windows, I'm happy to get something like 10 a day for my games, a vastly lower rate. I think a big part is that there's simply less competition on mobile platforms at the moment, as well as less in the way of established games (compared with Windows, where almost everything you can think of has been done for free, and there are also well known versions, so no one's going to even care about some new version). (Also probably that there will always be less competing distractions on a mobile - if you're out somewhere with your phone, playing games is one of a few ways to pass the time; but if you're at home, there are a million other things people can do to pass the time, be it web, watching videos/TV, or something else altogether.) Of course it could also be that my mobile apps really did stumble on something useful, where as my Windows games are just rubbish I'll know better soon, as my next mobile release is a port of one of my desktop games, so it will be interesting to compare...

Are you in this to make money, or just for fun/free? If you don't need to handle payments, you can put in on your own website if you like, and there are various download sites/stores. MS will soon have their own download site, but it's unclear how good that will be at driving traffic to new software.

It would be interesting to hear what other people's experiences are. The best I've found at generating interest to my software has been Freecode (previously Freshmeat) (sadly not for Windows-only software). I've also tried download.com, but despite it being one of the most popular Windows download sites, for me at least it doesn't do well at driving traffic to new software (of course there's software on there with millions of downloads, but these seem to be ones that people already know about).

I noticed a similar with with You Tube, for videos rather than software. It's one of the most popular sites on the web, and it's also in practice the one standard place to go to for videos - so it has the same "one place to download" effect that you get with the various mobile platforms. But is it the case that simply uploading a video guarantees 100s or 1000s of hits a day with little effort (as with my experience on Nokia's store, and presumably other mobile stores as well)? From what I can see, the answer is no - whilst some popular videos rise up to the millions, I've come across many that just have a few hundred views in total, never mind daily. And even more interesting when you consider that surely simply clicking on a video must be less effort for viewers than deciding you want to download/install a mobile application.

There's also SDL_mixer if you're using SDL.

Wow, I hadn't realised that OpenAL had turned proprietary - this is also a problem with open source development (since even if you personally aren't trying to make money, commercial use is a requirement for anything to pass as open source), and for similar reasons, OpenAL was one of the popular libraries for doing sound on Linux. I wonder what is typically recommended for Linux programming these days?

Wikipedia mentions OpenAL Soft as an open source alternative, but I don't have any experience of that myself.