The ct.js game engine we first covered back in 2020 then revisited in 2023 has advanced a great deal since then. Catnip is a free and open source 2D game engine available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Since we last looked at Ct.js they have released version 4.0 with several new features, although today we are looking at an exciting new feature currently only available in the development branch, the new Catnip visual scripting language.
Catnip is a project started all the way back in 2022 with the following goals:
- Make it extendable — modules must be able to provide their own blocks
- Make it localizable
- Make it fast both to type and compose with D&D
- Keep the linear grammar (this should be easy) — the converter should be blazingly fast and linear. Each block corresponds to a determined string of JS code.
- Variable management. Remember that JS variables can be of any type.
- Ideally produce properly formatted code, add comments to the output so it can be traced back to the visual scripts.
- Clearly communicate about asynchronous methods and their effects.
- Make examples of great games!
In the end its actually rather remarkable how much the finished project actually resembles the initial proposal!
Key Links
Nightly Builds (Currently Required for Catnip Support)
You can learn more at CtJS and see the new catnip visual programming language in action in the video below.