After a busy month, I have finally had some time to focus on Tetzle again. The first issue I decided to tackle was the “Add Image” dialog. There were a couple of things about it that bothered me, the biggest being that I could only preview one image at a time. Here is what the dialog looks like in the currently released version:

The hardest thing about solving the file preview issue was that I couldn’t figure out how to get a QDirModel to allow me to set the icon for each file after it was shown. I tried creating a QFileIconProvider that created previews from the files, but that blocks the interface while the previews are loading. Not good. After several unfruitful hours of searching for other solutions, I switched the file list to a QListWidget. It was so much easier to work with! I don’t understand how anyone can like the new Model-View classes, I find them incredibly annoying.

The other issues were a lot simpler to solve (as I was expecting), and I finished up the new dialog yesterday. Here is what it will look like in the next release:

Unfortunately, I’m going to be quite busy over the next few weeks; because of this, I’m not sure when I will be able to work on Tetzle. Don’t let this stop you from downloading it and reporting any bugs, I’ll get to them as soon as I can.

After much work, I am finally taking the wraps off of my current project: Tetzle. The concept is simple: a jigsaw puzzle that uses tetrominoes for pieces. It’s been in development for two months now, and even though the game came along reasonably quickly I encountered some issues along the way.

The biggest issue was once again working with QGraphicsView. In the end, I gave up on it and switched to using OpenGL for rendering. Despite the hype, I’ve never had QGraphicsView perform well for me. Yes, my computer is not a very powerful machine, but it is plenty fast enough to play the things I’ve written with it! QGraphicsView is a wonderful API, but the performance is subpar. My current project translated quite well into OpenGL, so in the end it wasn’t too big of a deal.

I wasn’t expecting Tetzle to take very long to write, so I figured I would hurry up and make a playable version before talking about it. Unfortunately, it took me longer than I was expecting to write it, and I haven’t been able to devote all of my free time to it. Anyway, I’ve released a playable version. Go, enjoy! And tell me about any bugs!