Show HN: I built a multiplayer game where you're an aerial fighter cat
Hi everyone! I had the idea for catcopter on my mind for a long time (got the domain ~13 years ago). It's a web multiplayer game where you can fly a dangerous cat and engage in competition with other players and critters (pterodactyls, chickens and angry penguins). I made it initially for me and my friends but it was quite fun so I thought I'll share it here too. The game is intentionally dorky and it was fun to develop. The tools I used were mostly Opus 5.5 (objects / rigging / motion), Tripo3d for some elements I struggled with and Fable for optimisation (cpu / networking). Backend physics are done with Rapier. Luckily I had a lot of elements / game dynamics done before from another project of mine ( https://flat.social ) so the actual iteration here took me around a week.
Discussion Highlights (18 comments)
luxpsycho
Owning a domain for 13 years before actually doing the project is the most relatable thing.
mtford
Immediately eaten by a Pterodactyl... lol
BatmansMom
yeah i like it
jnellis
Doesn't seem to work in firefox. Probably my old pc. CPU pegged on chrome version.
gosen
It's pretty fun! I can see a lot of "AI-markers" in the assets, but these things can be improved over time. The concept and mechanics are quite cool, keep it going!
adzm
Please add a full screen button for mobile!
rishi_devan
Was a lot of fun. What's the server backend built in? NodeJS?
Fraterkes
Miss the days where these kinds of posts were a jumping off point for technical discussions about gamedev. Guess learning that people use a whole stack of LLMs for these kinds of projects now is also interesting.
geooff_
This is absolutely ridiculous. I love it.
avereveard
Popups popups everywhere
adzm
Would be cool if the default game mode changed when there were enough players; I think everyone goes into the catnip mode just because it is default, no one is ever in the other modes!
modinfo
This is fun and nice idea for a multiplayer game, but will be cool if you open sourced it. But, still good work.
atakmim
I tried and played it, but I died so many times :) It's a lot of fun btw!
akman
Team Fortress for cats. Nice!
algorr
How were the cat’s movements such as its flight the motion of its wings or propeller and its head movements created? did the ai generate pre-made animation clips or are the movements calculated in realtime via code?
tracerbulletx
Was kind of hoping this would be more like SWAT Kats
andai
Fun game. It works on my phone too. You said it took a week? Would love to hear more about the development and how it works, I've been struggling with a 2D browser game for a while (especially the netcode), there's so much that goes into it!
RugnirViking
Very busy ui. Mmo levels of stuff vying for the players attention