The ct.js game engine, which we first reviewed in 2020 and then revisited in 2023, has come a long way 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’ve released version 4.0 with several new features, although today we’re looking at an exciting new feature that’s currently only available in development, the new visual scripting language Catnip.
Catnip is a project that was started back in 2022 with the following goals:
- Make it extensible — modules should be able to provide their own blocks
- Make it localized
- Make it fast to both type and create with D&D
- Keep the grammar linear (it should be easy) – the converter should be extremely fast and linear. Each block corresponds to a specific line of JS code.
- Managing Variables. Remember that JS variables can be of any type.
- Ideally, generate well-formatted code, comment out the output so it can be traced back to visual scripts.
- Clearly communicate asynchronous methods and their effects.
- Make examples of great games!
In the end, it’s quite surprising how much the finished project really resembles the original proposal!
Key links
Ct.js home page
Ct.js GitHub repository
Nightly builds (currently required for Catnip support)
You can learn more about CtJS and see the new catnip visual programming language in action in the video below.