How far can you push Processing?

alphanerd132

My friend challenged me to make Diablo 4 in Processing. Of course I would not call it Diablo 4 or have anything look like Diablo 4 but it would have a lot of the same mechanics of Diablo. My question is, can Processing handle it? My other friend who has had tones of coding experience in the past told me that Processing would not handle a top down 3D rendered game. Again the question is, is he right? Can Processing handle a top down 3D game?

asimes

Processing probably would not be able to handle something like that although I have never played Diablo 4. I'm guessing from a Google search this is the game: http://kingofgng.com/media/20080920_diablo_iii_screenshot_4.jpg

The image suggests that the game has a good bit of 3D geometry, lighting for that geometry, and several particle effects (fire, smoke, fog, etc) which would be too much in Processing

However, if you can live with making something like the game that doesn't have those kinds of "fancy" graphics then sure, you probably could get the logic for enemies and the player to work in real time. Simplify the geometry a lot and ignore the particle effects

If you really wanted the fancier graphics then Processing does give you control over individual pixels, you would have to come up with your own specialized drawing functions to do it quickly enough

alphanerd132

asimes < oh god no. I would not have the patiants or skill for making that level of graphics. I would be using a art style close to the game heavy bullet. I would also be using a lot less particle effects and I defiantly do not need control over every pixel for a particle effect. Assuming you don't know about heavy bullet, here is the link for it and yes that is Diablo that you linked and the joke was that Diablo 4 has not been released yet by the maker Blizzard so my friend thought it would be funny to make it and send a copy to Blizzard

static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/3/31685/2635689-heavybullets03.jpg

asimes

That sounds a lot more plausible, just keep the amount of geometry per frame to a minimum. Things like only drawing sections of the level that are currently visible to the camera, only enemies that are visible as well, etc.

alphanerd132

@asimes thanks!

Chrisir

in general, game engines are build for this kind of stuff.

You can then have a level editor and the engine handles the sprites etc.

look at the library site (quark has a sprite lib)

or here http://forum.processing.org/two/discussion/comment/42267/#Comment_42267

;-)

quark

Sprite library link

You might also look at my AI for Games library. Look at the City Patrol and Simple Soccer examples , they are my favourites.

Both of the libraries can be installed through the PDE and are designed for Java mode.

KevinWorkman

The short answer is that yes, Processing could handle this type of rendering.

Processing uses JOGL, which is a Java wrapper of OpenGL. OpenGL is what most 3D games use. If you can do it in OpenGL, you can do it in JOGL, and you can do it in Processing.

The thing holding you back isn't really a technical limitation, it's a purposeful philosophical limitation: Processing was designed to make it really easy to get basic animations up and running. The library was kept simple on purpose, so creating a full 3D game is going to require a lot of manual labor.

So, it's going to be a lot of work to get that level of polish working. You need animation, good art, lighting, etc. All of that is possible in Processing, but any one of them is a full-time job by itself. Keep in mind that most games are created by entire teams of professionals over the course of several months.

These teams often develop frameworks or libraries that handle a lot of the heavy lifting- that way you can write code once and reuse it for subsequent games. You might be better off using one of those existing libraries, such as libGDX, JMonkeyEngine, or LWJGL.

alphanerd132

@Chrisir thanks for the library site! @quark thanks for the info as well. to you both, I kind of new at processing but I am sure I can figure out how to use the library. I learned what I know so far by using my Ipad in my free time to make a small 2D game that uses no classes or music or .jpg files because on mobile version you can not use any of those.