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.

▲

Fraterkes 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

	▲	xnx 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I was never interested in gamedev, but I am interested in gameplay design. GenAI lets me toy with gameplay design without having to first spend a lot of time mucking with code or assets.

▲

luxpsycho 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

	▲	19 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		[deleted]
	▲	thisislife2 35 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		And unfortunately also a smart move - it is so difficult to find a good domain name now because domain reselling has become such a huge business now. I wouldn't be surprised to find every word in the english dictionary is now a parked domain with ads, and a link to buy or bid for the domain.
	▲	jonwinstanley an hour ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Hahaha I’ve recently been looking at a few domains I’ve owned forever too. But do I really want to start more projects?!?

▲

gosen 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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!

▲

pawelwentpawel 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Yep the assets were all generated, cat faces were the hardest one to get "right". Glad you had fun & thank you!

	▲	gosen an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Building creative parts of games is actually the most difficult part with AI, it's usually very sloppy and I had to do many iterations to make it less "AI-looking" because AI can't be creative :D

▲

adzm an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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!

▲

rishi_devan 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

	▲	pawelwentpawel 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think I flew next to you haha, happy you liked it! Yep it's all Node.js + Websockets + Rapier, front-end is mostly Three.js

▲

modinfo an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

	▲	throwitaway222 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		OP: Keep your IP. Keep building it.

▲

atakmim an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

▲

adzm 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Please add a full screen button for mobile!

	▲	pawelwentpawel 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Roger that, thanks for feedback!

▲

jnellis 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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

▲

SwiftyBug 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Works fine for me in Firefox.

▲

pawelwentpawel 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Firefox is my nemesis, will test thanks for letting me know!

	▲	jnellis an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Here's the console output. It get's stuck at 72%... "painting or something" on progress bar. THREE.BufferGeometry.toNonIndexed(): BufferGeometry is already non-indexed. 3mykc1x1fjgyq.js:5:331 WEBGL_debug_renderer_info is deprecated in Firefox and will be removed. Please use RENDERER. 1ydg98ua2yutx.js:2:5381 WebGL context was lost. 1ydg98ua2yutx.js:2:5532 THREE.WebGLRenderer: KHR_parallel_shader_compile extension not supported. 3mykc1x1fjgyq.js:5:331 Script terminated by timeout at: ld@https://catcopter.com/_next/static/chunks/2d2hov5bowo-5.js:2... L@https://catcopter.com/_next/static/chunks/2d2hov5bowo-5.js:2... lU/this.getUniforms@https://catcopter.com/_next/static/chunks/2d2hov5bowo-5.js:2... this.renderBufferDirect/y<@https://catcopter.com/_next/static/chunks/2d2hov5bowo-5.js:2... this.renderBufferDirect@https://catcopter.com/_next/static/chunks/2d2hov5bowo-5.js:2... i@https://catcopter.com/_next/static/chunks/2d2hov5bowo-5.js:2... i@https://catcopter.com/_next/static/chunks/2d2hov5bowo-5.js:2... i@https://catcopter.com/_next/static/chunks/2d2hov5bowo-5.js:2... i@https://catcopter.com/_next/static/chunks/2d2hov5bowo-5.js:2... i@https://catcopter.com/_next/static/chunks/2d2hov5bowo-5.js:2... l1/this.render@https://catcopter.com/_next/static/chunks/2d2hov5bowo-5.js:2... this.render@https://catcopter.com/_next/static/chunks/2d2hov5bowo-5.js:2... render@https://catcopter.com/_next/static/chunks/2d2hov5bowo-5.js:5... render@https://catcopter.com/_next/static/chunks/2d2hov5bowo-5.js:5... render@https://catcopter.com/_next/static/chunks/2d2hov5bowo-5.js:4... warm@https://catcopter.com/_next/static/chunks/0_l59d-9nj-se.js:2... 2d2hov5bowo-5.js:2319:8599