Scaling items and rendering - c++

Question

I am making a small game in C++11 with Qt. However, I am having some issues with scaling.
The background of my map is an image. Each pixel of that image represents a tile, on which a protagonist can walk and enemies/healthpacks can be.
To set the size of a tile, I calculat the maximum amount like so (where imageRows & imageCols is amount of pixels on x- and y-axis of the background image):
QRect rec = QApplication::desktop()->screenGeometry();
int maxRows = rec.height() / imageRows;
int maxCols = rec.width() / imageCols;
if(maxRows < maxCols){
pixSize = maxRows;
} else{
pixSize = maxCols;
}
Now that I have the size of a tile, I add the background-image to the scene (in GameScene ctor, extends from QGraphicsScene):
auto background = new QGraphicsPixmapItem();
background->setPixmap(QPixmap(":/images/map.png").scaledToWidth(imageCols * pixSize));
this->addItem(background);
Then for adding enemies (they extend from a QGraphicsPixMapItem):
Enemy *enemy = new Enemy();
enemy->setPixmap(QPixmap(":/images/enemy.png").scaledToWidth(pixSize));
scene->addItem(enemy);
This all works fine, except that on large maps images get scaled once (to a height of lets say 2 pixels), and when zooming in on that item it does not get more clear, but stays a big pixel. Here is an example: the left one is on a small map where pixSize is pretty big, the second one has a pixSize of pretty small.
So how should I solve this? In general having a pixSize based on the screen resolution is not really useful, since the QGrapicsScene is resized to fit the QGraphicsView it is in, so in the end the view still determines how big the pixels show on the screen.
MyGraphicsView w;
w.setScene(gameScene);
w.fitInView(gameScene->sceneRect(), Qt::KeepAspectRatio);

Answer 1

I think you might want to look at the chip example from Qt (link to Qt5 but also works for Qt4).
The thing that might help you is in the chip.cpp file:
in the paint method:
const qreal lod = option->levelOfDetailFromTransform(painter->worldTransform());
where painter is simply a QPainter and option is of type QStyleOptionGraphicsItem. This quantity gives you back a measure of the current zoom level of your QGraphicsView and thus as in the example you can adjust what is being drawn at which level, e.g.
if (lod < 0.2) {
if (lod < 0.125) {
painter->fillRect(QRectF(0, 0, 110, 70), fillColor);
return;
}
QBrush b = painter->brush();
painter->setBrush(fillColor);
painter->drawRect(13, 13, 97, 57);
painter->setBrush(b);
return;
}
[...]
if (lod >= 2) {
QFont font("Times", 10);
font.setStyleStrategy(QFont::ForceOutline);
painter->setFont(font);
painter->save();
painter->scale(0.1, 0.1);
painter->drawText(170, 180, QString("Model: VSC-2000 (Very Small Chip) at %1x%2").arg(x).arg(y));
painter->drawText(170, 200, QString("Serial number: DLWR-WEER-123L-ZZ33-SDSJ"));
painter->drawText(170, 220, QString("Manufacturer: Chip Manufacturer"));
painter->restore();
}
Does this help?