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Show HN: I built a multiplayer game where you're an aerial fighter cat

71 points • by pawelwentpawel • today at 3:29 PM • 34 comments • view on HN

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.


Comments

Fraterkes • today at 5:41 PM

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.

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luxpsycho • today at 3:33 PM

Owning a domain for 13 years before actually doing the project is the most relatable thing.

algorr • today at 8:46 PM

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?

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gosen • today at 5:30 PM

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!

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tracerbulletx • today at 8:54 PM

Was kind of hoping this would be more like SWAT Kats

rishi_devan • today at 5:40 PM

Was a lot of fun. What's the server backend built in? NodeJS?

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adzm • today at 7:06 PM

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 • today at 7:15 PM

This is fun and nice idea for a multiplayer game, but will be cool if you open sourced it. But, still good work.

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akman • today at 8:33 PM

Team Fortress for cats. Nice!

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atakmim • today at 7:24 PM

I tried and played it, but I died so many times :) It's a lot of fun btw!

avereveard • today at 6:59 PM

Popups popups everywhere

adzm • today at 5:32 PM

Please add a full screen button for mobile!

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jnellis • today at 5:21 PM

Doesn't seem to work in firefox. Probably my old pc. CPU pegged on chrome version.

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cfontes • today at 5:05 PM

Loved it

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alator21 • today at 4:47 PM

pretty fun

BatmansMom • today at 5:21 PM

yeah i like it

geooff_ • today at 6:22 PM

This is absolutely ridiculous. I love it.

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mtford • today at 3:39 PM

Immediately eaten by a Pterodactyl... lol

jdw64 • today at 5:46 PM

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