[HN Gopher] Rats Play Doom
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Rats Play Doom
Author : ano-ther
Score : 93 points
Date : 2025-12-12 20:15 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ratsplaydoom.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ratsplaydoom.com)
| takira wrote:
| I did not expect this to be as thoughtful as it is. Kudos to the
| thought put into the setup and training. Building custom hardware
| for the rat is amazing.. I need something like this for my own
| setup.
| gpderetta wrote:
| Well, the most cyberpunk thing I have read today. No video of
| rats killing Daemons though, only a promising but broken link.
| k0ba wrote:
| bUt liNk wOrks On mY cOmpUteR (seriously its not broken) ..but
| if so, check out this thread, tldr of the whole rodent VR
| setup:
| https://x.com/yolorun_capital/status/1996632980903620886?s=2...
| quasarj wrote:
| How can he not include a video of it working? D:
| raldi wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0wjaeEiin8&t=17s
| camtarn wrote:
| That's the previous setup from four years ago, where the rats
| just run down a straight corridor.
| purplecats wrote:
| i think its just people being out of touch with reality.
| perhaps engineering minds not thinking enough product. its too
| commonplace for me to even complain about. someone builds
| something primarily visual - a robot, a GUI application, etc.
| and links to their github/etc but they ensure that there are no
| visuals included.
| why_at wrote:
| In the results section it looks like there's supposed to be an
| image of it but the link "placeholder_rat_playing.png" returns
| a 404 :(
| ginkoleaf wrote:
| For those afraid to click: This does not appear to hurt the rats
| or involve doing any surgery on them.
| escapecharacter wrote:
| Is it ethical to turn rats into gamers?
| ginkoleaf wrote:
| Gamers: no, hot-tub streamers: yes
| apgwoz wrote:
| I think it might be _unethical_ to not spread the joy of
| playing Doom for the first time? Though, I'm not entirely
| sure there's been enough research done about the effects of
| violent video games in rat gamer populations.
| autoexec wrote:
| I'd be more worried about the health effects of all that
| sugar water. We've been putting rats in skinner boxes for a
| lot longer than we've been subjecting human gamers to them.
| chinabot wrote:
| It was tested on humans first
| actionfromafar wrote:
| I first read doing any _sugary_ to them. Well, that 's nice.
| apgwoz wrote:
| I was very happy to see this. I'm fairly against live animal
| testing, but giving rats the joy of playing Doom??? I think I
| _may_ have to be OK with this.
| shmeeed wrote:
| _checks notes_ I 'm sorry, this doesn't qualify to run in the
| category "running DOOM on <device>"
| a3w wrote:
| Yet. 2035: running Doom on rat brains.
| shmeeed wrote:
| Would fit right in with LLMs' recent HN front page
| predictions.
| cogman10 wrote:
| running rats on doom?
| shmeeed wrote:
| >We reached the point of rat habituation but didn't start
| training. Our rats (Todd, Kojima, Gabe) aged out before full
| testing. The setup works, but behavioral validation is pending.
|
| Ah man, what a pity. That VR rig is awesome, but it doesn't
| really seem to me they are planning to continue these
| experiments, or do they?
| delegate wrote:
| I wonder if the team at id considered this when they released
| Doom: In 30 years rats will be forced to play it in exchange for
| sugar water.
| shmeeed wrote:
| I don't think they considered it, but I'm positive they would
| have found it absolutely hilarious
| neilv wrote:
| Treat those rats well, now that you've trained them for combat.
| saltwatercowboy wrote:
| That's such a fun project. Some really excellent Show HN items
| this week, but this is my favourite.
| k0ba wrote:
| thx. :3 years of hard work. you might check out yolorun.capital
| for similar projects.
| chickenhun wrote:
| Sorry guys, no video of them playing on this setup, just on the
| previous version. We iterated on v2 too long, our pet rats grew
| old and couldn't be trained. We open-sourced the hardware and
| software so others can build upon it. Here's a cute video though
| of Todd being habituated to the setup:
| https://x.com/yolorun_capital/status/1999598643339227564 Here's
| my personal X, dm me if you have any questions, or would want to
| build it for a lab or for yourself: https://x.com/viktor_thoth
| observationist wrote:
| I was worried this was going to be one of the petri dish of
| neurons type things, but the reality of it was awesome. More
| gaming rigs for rats need to be developed - it looked like Todd
| was actually enjoying it, and you toned down the potentially
| scary bits in a good way.
|
| Kudos for the experiment and giving your pet an awesome
| enriching environment!
| k0ba wrote:
| <<< just to verify, yes, he is The Rat Coach. Reach him out if
| you want to build something cool. (first post we made on the
| project: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46151150 )
| skluug wrote:
| This isn't true of all rats
| ge96 wrote:
| > It maximizes immersion without obstructing whisker space
|
| hehe very important
|
| although... if the walls moved and touched the whiskers in
| conjunction with the game could be something
| chickenhun wrote:
| yeah good point! we actually have air puffs for that. we
| extracted from DOOM when a wall is hit in-game. when that
| happens, the corresponding side puff activates.
| ge96 wrote:
| that's cool, I assume the sound doesn't scare the rat/does
| its purpose, sounds like a better solution than a physical
| wall moving
| LightBug1 wrote:
| I'm a little conflicted on the ethics of this ... but this would
| have made a kickass youtube channel.
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