Quote Originally Posted by Borghal View Post
1) does Qt offer any elements suited for creating these custom GUIs or does everything have to be handled by manual painting? e.g. graph scene
Yes. Have a look at QtQuick.

2) could you recommend some literature suited for this purpose? I have C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4 (2nd Edition), is it relevant to this kind of project?
I'm afraid currently you're forced to use online materials. There is no book on QtQuick, I'm afraid.

3) Is it possible to make the game window scaleable within reasonable effort? Say I choose a fixed ratio, probably 16:9, and then let the user resize the game window as he wishes... failing that, what would it take to make such a simple game able to switch between a few select resolutions?
Yes. QtQuick will take care of all that.