/**************************************************************************** ** ** Copyright (C) 2010 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies). ** All rights reserved. ** Contact: Nokia Corporation (qt-info@nokia.com) ** ** This file is part of the documentation of the Qt Toolkit. ** ** $QT_BEGIN_LICENSE:FDL$ ** No Commercial Usage ** This file contains pre-release code and may not be distributed. ** You may use this file in accordance with the terms and conditions ** contained in the Technology Preview License Agreement accompanying ** this package. ** ** GNU Free Documentation License ** Alternatively, this file may be used under the terms of the GNU Free ** Documentation License version 1.3 as published by the Free Software ** Foundation and appearing in the file included in the packaging of this ** file. ** ** If you have questions regarding the use of this file, please contact ** Nokia at qt-info@nokia.com. ** $QT_END_LICENSE$ ** ****************************************************************************/ /*! \example statemachine/rogue \title Rogue Example The Rogue example shows how to use the Qt state machine for event handling. \image rogue-example.png This example implements a simple text based game. Do you see the \c{@} in the screenshot? That's you, the rogue. The \c{#} characters are walls, and the dots represent floor. In a real game, other ASCII characters would represent all kinds of objects and creatures, for instance, ancient dragons (\c{D}s) or food rations (\c{%}s). But let's not get carried away. In this game, the rogue is simply running around in an empty room. The rogue is moved with the keypad (2, 4, 8, 6). That aside, we have implemented a \c quit command that triggers if the player types \c {q}. The player is then asked if he/she really wants to quit. Most games have commands that need more than one key press (we think of consecutive presses, i.e., not of several keys being pressed at the same time). In this game, only the \c quit command falls under this category, but for the sake of argument, let's imagine a fully-fledged game with a rich set of commands. If we were to implement these by catching key events in \l{QWidget::}{keyPressEvent()}, we would have to keep a lot of class member variables to track the sequence of keys already typed (or find some other way of deducing the current state of a command). This can easily lead to spaghetti, which is--as we all well know, I'm sure--unpleasant. With a state machine, on the other hand, separate states can wait for a single key press, and that makes our lives a lot simpler. The example consists of two classes: \list \o \c Window draws the text display of the game and sets up the state machine. The window also has a status bar above the area in which the rouge moves. \o \c MovementTransition is a transition that carries out a single move of the rogue. \endlist Before we embark on a code walkthrough, it is necessary to take a closer look at the design of the machine. Here is a state chart that shows what we want to achieve: \image rogue-statechart.png The input state waits for a key press to start a new command. When receiving a key it recognizes, it transitions to one of the two commands of the game; though, as we will see, movement is handled by the transition itself. The quit state waits for the player to answer yes or no (by typing \c y or \c n) when asked whether he/she really wants to quit the game. The chart demonstrates how we use one state to wait for a single key press. The press received may trigger one of the transitions connected to the state. \section1 Window Class Definition The \c Window class is a widget that draws the text display of the game. It also sets up the state machine, i.e., creates and connects the states in the machine. It is the key events from this widget that are used by the machine. \snippet examples/statemachine/rogue/window.h 0 \c Direction specifies the direction in which the rogue is to move. We use this in \c movePlayer(), which moves the rogue and repaints the window. The game has a status line above the area in which the rogue moves. The \c status property contains the text of this line. We use a property because the QState class allows setting any Qt \l{Qt's Property System}{property} when entered. More on this later. \snippet examples/statemachine/rogue/window.h 1 The \c map is an array with the characters that are currently displayed. We set up the array in \c setupMap(), and update it when the rogue is moved. \c pX and \c pY is the current position of the rogue. \c WIDTH and \c HEIGHT are macros specifying the dimensions of the map. The \c paintEvent() function is left out of this walkthrough. We also do not discuss other code that does not concern the state machine (the \c setupMap(), \c status(), \c setStatus(), \c movePlayer(), and \c sizeHint() functions). If you wish to take a look at the code, click on the link for the \c window.cpp file at the top of this page. \section1 Window Class Implementation Here is the constructor of \c Window: \snippet examples/statemachine/rogue/window.cpp 0 \dots \snippet examples/statemachine/rogue/window.cpp 1 The player starts off at position (5, 5). We then set up the map and statemachine. Let's proceed with the \c buildMachine() function: \snippet examples/statemachine/rogue/window.cpp 2 We enter \c inputState when the machine is started and from the \c quitState if the user wants to continue playing. We then set the status to a helpful reminder of how to play the game. First, the \c Movement transition is added to the input state. This will enable the rogue to be moved with the keypad. Notice that we don't set a target state for the movement transition. This will cause the transition to be triggered (and the \l{QAbstractTransition::}{onTransition()} function to be invoked), but the machine will not leave the \c inputState. If we had set \c inputState as the target state, we would first have left and then entered the \c inputState again. \snippet examples/statemachine/rogue/window.cpp 3 When we enter \c quitState, we update the status bar of the window. \c QKeyEventTransition is a utility class that removes the hassle of implementing transitions for \l{QKeyEvent}s. We simply need to specify the key on which the transition should trigger and the target state of the transition. \snippet examples/statemachine/rogue/window.cpp 4 The transition from \c inputState allows triggering the quit state when the player types \c {q}. \snippet examples/statemachine/rogue/window.cpp 5 The machine is set up, so it's time to start it. \section1 The MovementTransition Class \c MovementTransition is triggered when the player request the rogue to be moved (by typing 2, 4, 6, or 8) when the machine is in the \c inputState. \snippet examples/statemachine/rogue/movementtransition.h 0 In the constructor, we tell QEventTransition to only send \l{QEvent::}{KeyPress} events to the \l{QAbstractTransition::}{eventTest()} function: \snippet examples/statemachine/rogue/movementtransition.h 1 The KeyPress events come wrapped in \l{QStateMachine::WrappedEvent}s. \c event must be confirmed to be a wrapped event because Qt uses other events internally. After that, it is simply a matter of checking which key has been pressed. Let's move on to the \c onTransition() function: \snippet examples/statemachine/rogue/movementtransition.h 2 When \c onTransition() is invoked, we know that we have a \l{QEvent::}{KeyPress} event with 2, 4, 6, or 8, i.e., the event is already unwrapped. \section1 The Roguelike Tradition You might have been wondering why the game features a rogue. Well, these kinds of text based dungeon exploration games date back to a game called, yes, "Rogue". Although outflanked by the technology of modern 3D computer games, roguelikes have a solid community of hard-core, devoted followers. Playing these games can be surprisingly addictive (despite the lack of graphics). Angband, the perhaps most well-known rougelike, is found here: \l{http://rephial.org/}. */