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Posted by ano-ther 3 days ago

Rats Play DOOM(ratsplaydoom.com)
421 points | 157 commentspage 3
shmeeed 3 days ago|
checks notes I'm sorry, this doesn't qualify to run in the category "running DOOM on <device>"
a3w 3 days ago||
Yet. 2035: running Doom on rat brains.
ValdikSS 3 days ago|||
Growing Living Rat Neurons To Play... DOOM? | Part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEXefdbQDjw

shmeeed 2 days ago||
Thanks! Just yesterday I was thinking it's high time for me to check if there's any progress on the Torrent Nexus, and here we are
shmeeed 3 days ago|||
Would fit right in with LLMs' recent HN front page predictions.
cogman10 3 days ago||
running rats on doom?
chickenhun 3 days ago||
Good news: Here's a cute video of Todd being habituated to the setup: https://x.com/yolorun_capital/status/1999598643339227564

Bad news: 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. You can TLDR the whole thing in this thread: https://x.com/yolorun_capital/status/1996632980903620886?s=2...

...Also, 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 3 days ago||
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!

zelphirkalt 3 days ago||
From now on every future Doom game will have to contain a "rat" difficulty.
Traubenfuchs 2 days ago|||
How can you go through this immense effort and not have and show a video of the rats playing?
k0ba 3 days ago||
<<< 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 )
takira 3 days ago||
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.
chickenhun 3 days ago|
Thank you, we really appreciate it! <3
ginkoleaf 3 days ago||
For those afraid to click: This does not appear to hurt the rats or involve doing any surgery on them.
escapecharacter 3 days ago||
Is it ethical to turn rats into gamers?
chinabot 3 days ago|||
It was tested on humans first
apgwoz 3 days ago||||
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 3 days ago||||
We've been putting rats in skinner boxes for a lot longer than we've been subjecting human gamers to them. I'd be more worried about the health effects of all that sugar water.
stephenlf 3 days ago||
10 microliter doses though. Pretty teeny tiny. But it is a valid concern.
chickenhun 3 days ago||
Giving them slightly acidic water off-rig and normal water while playing is another option - not the best either. I opted for sugar in the end, because they didn't spend much time on the setup; but this should be reconsidered if they on-rig for hours daily.
shawn_w 3 days ago||
The trick is to save the treats till the end. They can learn to do a lot if they know they'll be rewarded later.

Check out Shadow The Rat on YouTube; she has a whole series on training them.

neom 3 days ago||
Gotta love Shadow!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV9z0c1hjnA

efskap 3 days ago||||
It's more like locking humans up in the matrix. Note lines like "preventing it from leaving the apparatus" in the build guide. Would an ordinary gamer be restricted from exiting such a contraption?
duskwuff 3 days ago||||
I mean-- how do you think they made gaming mice? :)
ginkoleaf 3 days ago|||
Gamers: no, hot-tub streamers: yes
actionfromafar 3 days ago|||
I first read doing any sugary to them. Well, that's nice.
apgwoz 3 days ago|||
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.
tempodox 3 days ago||
“No animals were harmed in the making of this blog”.
zeristor 3 days ago||
Has anyone 3D printed the levels, VR headsets are one thing but IRL is above that.

Perhaps I’ve just done too much miniature wargaming.

LouisSayers 3 days ago||
Do the rats enjoy it and if so, will the rats teach other rats how to play?

This could give a whole new meaning to "the rat race"

QuiCasseRien 2 days ago||
Crazy insane, I love it !

Guys, you should do it with a cockroach ^^ https://makeagif.com/gif/fifth-element-remote-controlled-coc...

hashstring 2 days ago|
What about your first newborn? Can’t wait! xx
blobbers 2 days ago||
Very cool... but why not use something with higher res graphics, if you're going to go through the trouble of building the mechanical system. You could go ultra 4K and see if a rat begins to see... reality.
basket_horse 2 days ago|
Is this related to the Tank lab experiments at Princeton?

I’ve seen this before with the practical application being that you can keep the animal stationary while it thinks it’s moving, in order to record brain activity.

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