[HN Gopher] Show HN: Can you beat my dad at Scrabble?
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Show HN: Can you beat my dad at Scrabble?
Author : danieltait
Score : 183 points
Date : 2023-03-16 09:34 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dadagrams.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (dadagrams.com)
| [deleted]
| jo6gwb wrote:
| I play the NYT mini puzzle against my dad every day.
|
| We don't really like wordle but this is super fun!
| almara wrote:
| I love the different computer characters, Elefata? haha! The
| different difficulty levels are really well made. Fun game.
| marymkearney wrote:
| I really love that I spent more time on this, than on the 3 HN
| articles I read about amping your productivity and forming good
| habits.
| darkerside wrote:
| Instead of just click and drag, I would make the tiles pop up
| into the next available spot when you click on them. It would
| make the game a lot more effortless and fun to play.
| sebstefan wrote:
| That's really fun, it's somehow totally doing something to know
| I'm in competition with someone's dad
|
| Two suggestions, you need to put an actual URL in the "share"
| text in the clipboard. With https:// before the domain. It's so
| that people can click the link on instant messaging platforms for
| viral traffic
|
| Then, I need some dad lore
| itslennysfault wrote:
| Well... I'm kinda a jerk for this, but it's also a free lesson on
| why global variables are baaaaad.
|
| Also, I wrote this in seconds and I know it could be more
| efficient / cleaner. don't @ me.
|
| Toss this in your browser's dev console to get the best word
| available for each puzzle instantly function
| solvePuzzle(puzzle, words) { const letters = {};
| puzzle.forEach(l => { if (!letters[l]) {
| letters[l] = 0; } letters[l]++;
| }); let best = '';
| words.forEach(word => { if (word.length >
| puzzle.length) { return; }
| const has = { ...letters }; for (let i = 0; i <
| word.length; i++) { if (!has[word[i]]) {
| return; } has[word[i]]--;
| } if (word.length > best.length) {
| best = word; } }); return
| best; } // lettersarray and wordlist are
| both globally available solvePuzzle(lettersarray,
| wordlist);
| pstorm wrote:
| > don't @ me
|
| I'm @ing you :) This code only checks for the longest word, not
| the highest scoring word. It neglects the x3 and x2 tile
| spaces.
| layer8 wrote:
| Maybe add to the "how to play" that you don't have to use all
| letters. I thought you have to use all and gave up after a while,
| before reading comments here discussing actual solution words.
| dunefox wrote:
| For me it was pretty obvious.
| airza wrote:
| It's missing the 50 point bonus for playing all 7 letters :(
| helsinki wrote:
| Yes
| marymkearney wrote:
| This is really cute. Addictive, even. Which dictionary does it
| use? Official Scrabble Players Dictionary? Could it say which one
| in the instructions?
|
| There are words in OSPD (ex. fab) that aren't accepted. It also
| accepts words (ex. oonts, accas) that aren't in OSPD.
|
| Can you tell I tried it, um, several times? It's fun.
| danieltait wrote:
| The Collins Scrabble Words 2019 dictionary!
| marymkearney wrote:
| Oh cool thanks :)
| marymkearney wrote:
| Can I charge you my hourly rate for the last hour I just
| spent? Bookmarking this, more hours will give their lives for
| the worthy quest of beating your dad.
| danieltait wrote:
| This was a really fun game to make.
|
| We've been playing scrabble together for years so it's nice I'm
| finally competent enough to code this online version.
|
| I posted it on reddit and now over 1000 people are playing
| against my dad everyday haha.
| erickhill wrote:
| So are you like Desmond on LOST where every day, after you and
| your dad play, you have to run to the computer to type in the
| latest Dad-Word to keep the machine alive?
| JeanMarcS wrote:
| Well, this is very frustrating. I really wanted to play, I like
| the idea of competiting with your dad. But as a non native
| english speaker, my vocabulary is too low to give me a chance.
| Anyway, great idea !
|
| (I don't know if you are aware, but in French speaking
| countries, competition are mostly played this way, everyone
| with the same letters. At the end everybody got its own points
| and the best word is placed on the board)
| playingalong wrote:
| It's called Duplicate Scrabble:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duplicate_Scrabble
| danieltait wrote:
| Send me a french dad and a french dictionary and I can add it
| this afternoon haha!
|
| Wow no I didn't know that is how the french play. I believe
| it is a much fairer version of the game and better tests the
| players skill
| anentropic wrote:
| It's nice!
|
| My only gripe is: any time you click away from the tab, when
| you click back to it it resets the screen (shuffles the pile
| and clears any letters you had placed)
| danieltait wrote:
| Hmm yes ok I just removed the refresh now.
|
| The reason it was there is some days I opened the tab on my
| iphone and for some reason it still showed the yesterdays
| result rather than the new day's letters.
|
| Will have a think of a better way to force the refresh of the
| letters on a new day.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| setTimeout() with a timeout calculated to fire after
| midnight?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| > _The reason it was there is some days I opened the tab on
| my iphone and for some reason it still showed the
| yesterdays result rather than the new day 's letters._
|
| This'll be the Cache-Control header interacting with tab
| resume: rather than setting that to expire after X time has
| elapsed, set it to expire at time=T, and the browser will1
| fetch the new page instead. You'd increase the
| effectiveness of this technique (and reduce your bandwidth
| requirements for repeat players) if you made `/daily` a
| static page, and factored out those JavaScript variables
| into a separate file, fetched with `fetch` or
| `XMLHttpRequest` (or even a `<script>` tag, like
| `wordlist.js` is).
|
| If I've configured my browser to behave otherwise (e.g. it
| takes me longer than a day to solve each puzzle), I
| _really_ don 't want it overriding that and resetting on
| me: that would make me very sad.
|
| 1: _usually_. Firefox Session Restore behaves differently -
| but that 's expected behaviour. Every website _ever_
| behaves like that: it 's what I expect, because I expect to
| be able to close my browser and open it again and still
| have more-or-less the same pages available. After all, I've
| got a refresh button, but no un-refresh button.
| jfindley wrote:
| This is still happening btw - if I quickly switch to
| another tab it resets the board completely, giving me a
| different puzzle in practice mode. This makes it sadly
| unusable for me.
| danieltait wrote:
| Sorry! I had only changed for the daily. Removed from
| practice and play now as well
| anentropic wrote:
| A couple more ideas:
|
| - could be nice to have it calculate and show the score of the
| word you have currently placed
|
| - when you place a tile on the DL or TL you can't see where the
| DL and TL are any more (I think on Scrabble board they have
| little triangles that stick out past the edges?)
|
| - I found myself wanting to know the 'target' score, but I
| guess that would change the experience a bit
| danieltait wrote:
| 1. It shows the score just above the word if it is valid! 2.
| Yes agree thats a good idea. 3. I could add a new game mode
| where it shows you the target score, but I'm going to keep
| dad's score hidden for my own entertainment haha
| TheHumanist wrote:
| Could just do a minimal outer box shadow/glow around the
| tile in the color of the DL or TL to remind people where
| they are once letters are laid down.
| Symbiote wrote:
| It wasn't clear to me that I needed to start from the
| leftmost box.
| anentropic wrote:
| same here :)
| Tade0 wrote:
| I can't hope to beat an experienced native speaker at this game,
| but it might be useful for expanding my vocabulary.
|
| Case in point: my language doesn't really have a word for
| "almonry" - there's usually no dedicated space for
| collecting/dispensing alms.
|
| By far the best Scrabble player I ever encountered was a former
| corporate drone in his 50s, who hiked 40km+ daily in the
| Carpathians and was in charge of maintaining a mountain shelter
| there.
|
| When he wasn't out hiking, chopping wood or collecting water he
| would be sitting in the common room absolutely dominating the
| Scrabble board. I don't know his story and he didn't talk much
| about himself, but with age I increasingly get the appeal of such
| a life.
| Symbiote wrote:
| Without context, I doubt many native English speakers would
| know the meaning of "almonry".
|
| From [1], they seem obsolete well before any colonization, so
| it's probably only British people with an interest in church
| history.
|
| "Alms" is already fairly obscure, [2] puts it at word frequency
| 44625. Almonry is not in the top 333,333 words.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Almonry
|
| [2] http://norvig.com/ngrams/
| danieltait wrote:
| You can also play against an easier ai here -
| https://dadagrams.com/play
| nebulous1 wrote:
| Be wary of the top answers it will give you. Quite a lot of the
| top answers will technically be words in English but are
| essentially completely unused and most people won't even know
| or understand them.
|
| For instance, today's top words:
|
| Obvert - I know this one but it isn't too common.
|
| Overt - This was my answer, it's not uncommon.
|
| Over - Common
|
| Evo - I've never seen this used as a word other than a name.
|
| Bevor - Apparently this is medieval neck armour. Uncommon.
|
| Ouvert - From ballet according to the internet. Uncommon,
| although I know it as a French word.
|
| Note this isn't the game's fault, they're all in the scrabble
| dictionary it's using. These words are only useful if you want
| to win scrabble, not if you want to speak English.
| cdelsolar wrote:
| I found obvert in the daily puzzles.. and tabanid in the
| practice puzzle. There's nothing wrong with learning
| "Scrabble" words.
| FujiApple wrote:
| This is great, good luck with the inevitable NYT buyout :)
|
| One nit, the letters could snap the grid a bit more aggressive, I
| found I frequently had letter "miss" the grid and have to drag
| them again (on an iPad).
| codethief wrote:
| > This is great, good luck with the inevitable NYT buyout :)
|
| How much do you think will his dad make at NYT?
| dbg31415 wrote:
| It's really cute!
|
| I'd change up the UX a bit.
|
| 1 - For the drag and drop, I'd keep the original letter in place,
| and just make the original slightly transparent as you drag.
| Reason being, as you drag on a phone you can't see the original
| letter since your finger is on it... so leaving the original as
| an indicator is good.
|
| https://master--5fc05e08a4a65d0021ae0bf2.chromatic.com/?path...
|
| 2 - For the drag and drop, I would add a a "drop indicator" as
| you mouse over each square.
|
| https://master--5fc05e08a4a65d0021ae0bf2.chromatic.com/?path...
|
| 3 - For things like "Triple Letter" I would change it up... "x3"
| -- I know you're going for "Scrabble" but frankly the text is a
| bit small for older people, who I think make up the "Dads" in
| your audience.
|
| 4 - Instead of "Delete" I would change the word to "Recall" for
| recalling letters you placed on the board.
|
| 5 - For the Colors I would go more vibrant.
|
| 6 - For font sizes, bigger is better. https://imgur.com/a/kduZzwl
|
| 7 - For buttons, I would suggest having different colors for
| different buttons. Having them all black means you have to read
| through them all... having one as a clear "primary" color helps.
| gowld wrote:
| > Dadagrams is a variation of Scrabble I play with my Dad where
| we both play the same letters each turn.
|
| It's also the "newspaper puzzle" version of Scrabble, that your
| Dad played when he was a child.
| aardvark179 wrote:
| The colouring of the double and triple letter squares confused me
| because they are like the colours on a scrabble board but don't
| share the same meaning. I thought TROVE would get me 27 points in
| today's puzzle but it was only 11. :-(
|
| Edit: 27, not 24. Another useful thing would be the ability to
| view the puzzle and your answer. I had to reverse engineer the
| squares from the possible scores. :-)
| gareve wrote:
| i cannot find an explanation of the TL & DL tiles
| logicallee wrote:
| Me neither. Can someone explain the rules? (What do the red and
| blue tiles mean? How do you play?)
| Gasp0de wrote:
| Double Letter, Triple Letter (I think). It triples the amount
| of points you get for the letter that is on it. So try to put
| valuable letters on that spot.
| IanCal wrote:
| Tap the letter to place them down. If what you put down is a
| real word it should tell you how many points you score.
|
| Each letter has a number on, that's the score for using it.
|
| DL and tl are double and triple letter tiles respectively.
| You get double or triple the points.
|
| I'm not sure if they added it but in the real game you'd get
| 50 bonus points if you use all your letters.
| danieltait wrote:
| I haven't added the bonus 50 points but maybe I should?
| logicallee wrote:
| Thanks for the fix (TL & DL changed to double letter and
| triple letter), now it's much clearer.
| IanCal wrote:
| Those I expect will be double letter and triple letter tiles.
| You get double or triple the points for the letter on the tile.
| mcsniff wrote:
| Triple Letter score and Double Letter score.
|
| https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Scrabble/Rules
|
| A simple search on your search engine of choice would have
| yielded the answer.
| [deleted]
| cx0der wrote:
| TL - Triple Letter. Letter value x 3 DL - Double Letter. Letter
| value x 2
|
| Is this what you were looking for?
| danieltait wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback! Triple and double letter score. I've
| just changed now so it says it explicitly
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Cute! But doesn't work in Firefox Focus. The submit button on a
| round can't be pressed.
| dmarlow wrote:
| I absolutely love it! Thanks for making it so simple and clean.
| ManiAbod wrote:
| [dead]
| sircastor wrote:
| I enjoyed that. And I enjoy that there's a specific competitor
| (and an abstract "Dad" at that)
| mandmandam wrote:
| [dead]
| whoomp12342 wrote:
| any way I could send this TO my dad and see how he does?
| amenghra wrote:
| Nice game!
|
| nit: I found the sentence "you found the nth highest scoring
| word" a little confusing since there can be >n words with a
| higher score (e.g. there could be 6 words scoring 12 and you
| found the 2nd highest scoring word with a score of 11).
| danieltait wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| Hmm yes what do you think could be a better way? Just the
| number of points?
| amenghra wrote:
| You could just drop the sentence since the top scoring words
| are shown below.
|
| Other nits:
|
| - Gray the submit button until the word is valid, otherwise
| it's unclear why clicking on the submit button doesn't do
| anything.
|
| - If you are trying to find a word and switch tabs, things
| get reset when you come back.
|
| - If you place tiles forming a word, a space, random tiles:
| you can submit the first set of letters. IMHO, it shouldn't
| let you submit if you have spaces between tiles.
|
| - Display the best word I have found so far, but let me keep
| trying other tiles.
| the_imp wrote:
| "You found the Nth highest word score"
| taejo wrote:
| The usual thing in this case is to call it the 7th highest-
| scoring word (but call all of those above it the highest-
| scoring)
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| I much prefer how it is currently
|
| The important thing is not that there are 6 better words,
| but there is 1 better score (i.e. you got the second best
| score possible)
| GNOMES wrote:
| Really fun! I beat your dad by 2 points lol.
|
| Feature that is missing vs actually playing Scrabble is the
| ability to play a fake word if other players do not call you out
| on it.
|
| I wonder if you could find a list of common misspelled words or
| fake words to allow, or could have some logic that compares the
| percentage word is misspelled by, and have the computer call it
| out as fake if it is over say 25% misspelled or something.
| sverona wrote:
| I have never met an AI that doesn't have the dictionary built
| in. If you want to play phonies check Woogles.
| Lapsa wrote:
| no
| komali2 wrote:
| Anybody got a better word than overt for 17 points for today's?
| Also I would love to play that IRL against my own dad immediately
| after him placing "over," he'd be furious lol
| Symbiote wrote:
| When you submit it tells you the "top words today".
|
| ROT13: Pheeragyl gur irel orfg jbeq vf boireg sbe na nqqvgvbany
| cbvag.
|
| Terccvat /hfe/funer/qvpg/jbeqf V qb abg frr nalguvat orggre.
| mordae wrote:
| It does not accept VTUBER for todays letters. Those "official"
| dictionaries are super boring. Pass.
| capitainenemo wrote:
| After trying a few practice rounds. I don't know if the generator
| is the same for the daily, but I feel like bonus tiles should be
| left biased since the board requires starting at the left. Many
| times with the letters given it was impossible to reach any
| bonuses which reduces the fun a little I feel.
|
| Or... perhaps allow starting on any tile to try and arrange
| letter scoring optimally? That might add something as well.
| danieltait wrote:
| Hmm yes it is just random right now and agree often they are
| impossible to reach!
|
| Will have a think how and if it should be more weighted
| nyerp wrote:
| Love it!! But you've GOT to improve the sharing feature. This is
| a great, accessible daily game. Connect it with Facebook, or at
| least give people something they can cut-and-paste without having
| to open an email client!
|
| And the information you provide below is good (it provides a bit
| of "braggy" info without giving the answer away) but I would make
| it more conversational, e.g., "I beat Dad!" and then "I beat Dad
| again!" and then "I'm on a roll... I beat Dad 3 times in a row!"
| and add a call to action like "Can you beat Dad too? Try here:
| https://dadagrams.com".
|
| The "Dad" emoji is _chef 's kiss_. Definitely keep that in the
| share message.
|
| For reference, here's the current share message (minus the great
| emoji, which apparently HN does not support):
|
| #dadagrams14
|
| Today: Won by 2 points
|
| All time: Winning by 2 points
|
| Daily streak: 1
|
| https://dadagrams.com
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| > But you've GOT to improve the sharing feature. This is a
| great, accessible daily game. Connect it with Facebook, or at
| least give people something they can cut-and-paste without
| having to open an email client!
|
| They're using the "Wordle" share method which worked insanely
| well, precisely due to the fact it _didn 't_ try to share with
| facebook or anything annoying, you just copy paste into an IM
| client
| nyerp wrote:
| That's not correct, based on my experience. Yes, you could
| copy-and-paste the "results" page, but that contains the
| answer, so it's no good for sharing. To get the actual
| "share" text (using Chrome on Windows 11), I had to open an
| email client when prompted and then cut-and-paste the text
| from the email the game created.
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| weird, for me it copied the sharing text
| llimllib wrote:
| same on mac - I had to open it in Notes
| netterminalgene wrote:
| Dope game, turned it into a prompt, its been fun trying to
| optimize it.
|
| You are a scrabble word master. The rules of the game are as
| follows. -- Create the highest scoring word you can with the 7
| letters! The word must start in the first square of the board and
| be at least 2 letters long. 2x and 3x squares double and triple
| the value of that letter. The total points for your word will
| appear above a valid word.
|
| The letters to point values are represented as a string where the
| point value follows the letter --- E1R1B3U1O1V4T1
|
| The second square is 3x points, the fifth square is 2x points and
| the 7th square is 3x points.
|
| The word must be a real english word. Lets think step by step.
| m4tthumphrey wrote:
| I just tried this and was blown away. Maybe I should start
| giving this ChatGPT some attention...
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| [dead]
| PeterWhittaker wrote:
| Nit: it indicated I had chosen the 3rd highest scoring word, and
| listed a Latin word as first.
|
| Don't normal scrabble words preclude foreign words?
| PeterWhittaker wrote:
| In another case, one word it proposed as higher scoring was
| "vizy", with the wiktionary page being their "this page doesn't
| exist yet" 404...
| Symbiote wrote:
| The top word for today's puzzle is an English word.
|
| http://norvig.com/ngrams/ says it's the 28462-most-frequent
| English word, slightly more frequent than pronounce, lactating,
| aquamarine, sedimentation and slime.
| PeterWhittaker wrote:
| Which word was that? I encountered this particular word
| (sadly, I do not remember the word) doing practice rounds.
| PeterWhittaker wrote:
| Also, I just noticed that the practice rounds and the daily
| dadagram use different tiling.
| [deleted]
| meganlawson wrote:
| [dead]
| whutno wrote:
| I tried playing "VERB" with the "V" on the first triple letter
| tile, but when I tapped Submit, nothing happened. This was on the
| current daily puzzle. Is this a bug or am I doing it wrong?
| sebstefan wrote:
| Yeah you did it wrong, dad's gonna wipe the floor with "verb"!
|
| But also you have to start on the first square
| charlesharvey wrote:
| I think you have to start the word on the first tile.
| danieltait wrote:
| You have to start the word in the first square. I've just added
| an error message to highlight that when you try submit. Thanks
| for the feedback!
| TheHumanist wrote:
| Oh so it doesn't have to use all seven squares. Interesting
| Karellen wrote:
| The error message doesn't appear to show up on practice mode
| yet? I do see it on the regular mode though.
| danieltait wrote:
| Updated now thanks!
| tobr wrote:
| Some unstated things that I didn't understand, if it helps
| make the game better:
|
| - You don't have to use all letters.
|
| - You _do_ have to start the word all the way to the left.
|
| - It has to be a valid scrabble word before you get any
| feedback at all.
|
| I think you should try to give much more feedback when the
| player tries different things, so they have a chance to
| figure out the rules.
| danieltait wrote:
| I've added an instructions page now, thanks!
| noduerme wrote:
| Like, this is neat. And fun. Small, simple and chill.
|
| So what I'm about to say is not specifically a knock against your
| game.
|
| What I've noticed lately on HN is this weird split where
| everything has to either be _super_ basic - like, this game could
| have been literally written with BASIC in 1984 - or else it has
| to be an abstract conversation about the future of AI. With very
| little in the middle.
|
| What would be in the middle? I don't know, like, games that
| people spent a couple years making. Things with awesome graphics.
| Or small games that showcased interesting new game mechanics. The
| rise (resurrection?) of the one-shot HTML game, I get it, it's a
| rebuke of all the overly complicated stuff. Concept over
| execution. Wordle got bought up, right? But aren't we already on
| the long tail of that?
|
| Again, this is not a knock - this would be fun to make in spare
| time, and it would be fun to play if I had spare time. I'm just
| wondering why there's this decisive move away from tacking up
| things that took a long time to make. And I'll be willing to
| sound bitter: For example, I posted a project here not too long
| ago that I worked on for a year. It was too complicated or posted
| at the wrong time. I have several others that are more
| sophisticated, that I know now are just too much for anyone here
| to look at and upvote.
|
| On the other side, discussion (practically worship) of higher-
| level usage of enormously complicated things like GPT seem to
| drastically outpace discussion of the underlying mechanics.
|
| If every little piece of code you put on the internet is a card
| trick (and it is) then this is a forum about magic, and we should
| stop being proud that we can do a trick, and start talking about
| how tricks work and how to make them better.
| skrebbel wrote:
| I think the abstract conversations about the future of AI are
| in the same ballpark as this. Thing is, there's only two kinds
| of makers you see on HN:
|
| - People who make small simple things and put them on HN
|
| - People who make bigger nontrivial stuff
|
| The latter stuff also shows up on HN but less often because the
| amount of time spent making is so much more, like if something
| takes 3 years it's a single Show HN and if it takes a day to
| make it's also a single Show HN. Also note that a decent blog
| post takes about as long to make as a basic game, ie "thought
| leadership" is in box 1.
|
| The people working at OpenAI and related are empathically _not_
| spending all their time doing Show HNs, nor even blogging on
| the AI future. They 're actually making stuff, just like indie
| gamedevs or the average Microsoft employee. They're all in box
| 2.
|
| Lots of people are doing nontrivial stuff all the time, but
| most of it isn't big enough for other people to write blog
| posts and huge HN comment threads about, yet also not small
| enough to make a new HN submission every few days.
| ahoya wrote:
| In the middle is the vast majority of HN content: serious
| businesses.
| jerrre wrote:
| Interesting observation about the split of subjects
|
| One similarity is: both don't take too long to create. The AI
| it self might, but the thought about it don't
| noduerme wrote:
| > both don't take too long to create
|
| That's what I've been noticing, and why I gravitate toward
| those comments about AI which are like, "have you thought
| about using an if/then for this thing?"
| cosmojg wrote:
| You should check out https://lobster.rs! It's like HN if it
| were dedicated to the middle of that content distribution you
| describe. Nothing too simple, but nothing too abstract either.
| candleknight wrote:
| that link's broken, I think you meant https://lobste.rs/
| TheHumanist wrote:
| If ya poop, ya have time for dadagrams!
| 867-5309 wrote:
| exactly! two types of people on HN: those who have five or
| ten minutes to spare (on the bog) and those who comment
| "professionally" to bolster some sense of compulsion
| reaperducer wrote:
| _those who comment "professionally" to bolster some sense
| of compulsion_
|
| I wonder what would happen to the quality of discourse on
| HN if there wasn't a scorecard at the top of each screen.
|
| The "gamification" of everything is so 2010.
| blowski wrote:
| True, I wonder how much internet points improve quality
| of conversation. Given some people keep arguing even when
| they're being downvoted into oblivion, there must be
| something deeper, like a need for engagement.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| It is a well known fact that everyone who gets down voted
| is always wrong
| throwway120385 wrote:
| And the person getting downvoted is never an expert
| talking to amateurs, and the downvoters are always
| correct that there is zero nuance to the subject.
| tobr wrote:
| There's something pleasant about software that feels light and
| simple and does one thing well. Most software tends to grow to
| become perhaps more useful, but also complex and inelegant.
|
| Not sure if that explains your observation or not, but at least
| it's what attracts me to engage with a submission like this.
| jstanley wrote:
| I've noticed this as well, and not just on HN.
|
| If you do a bit of knitting that is obviously an amateur's
| attempt, people will say "wow, so cool that you can knit". When
| you work hard and get better at knitting and you produce stuff
| that is so good that it's commercial-product quality, people
| will say "what's the point in spending all that time and effort
| when you can just buy one?". Only when you become _so good at
| knitting_ that your output is of a quality that is not
| generally available commercially do people find it interesting
| again.
|
| Replace "knitting" with anything you like: programming,
| painting, woodworking, welding, electronics, 3d printing,
| pottery, basket-weaving, card tricks, ...
|
| People are interested in things that seem cute and homemade.
| They're interested in things that are better than anything
| they've seen before. They're not generally interested in the
| mediocre middle, even when it has been created by 1 person who
| spent a lot of time and tried hard, rather than by a faceless
| megacorporation.
|
| EDIT: I think I did the faceless megacorporations a disservice
| there. Faceless megacorporations _also_ make high quality
| products through the hard work of their employees, they just do
| such a great job, and they mass-produce so efficiently, that
| the products end up inconceivably cheap and we take them for
| granted.
| ihappentobe wrote:
| Mentioning "knitting" and etc. is interesting, and reminds me
| of a variation on this theme:
|
| Browsing BoingBoing in the 2010s, the maker-themed posts that
| gained traction were projects that were essentially
| structured as: An over complicated _______ but it's actually
| a simple ________. For example, 'a 3d printed diy wrist
| mounted display that actually only shows yesterdays' tweets".
|
| In some ways today's pattern of projects being either very
| complicated or very simple is a distillation/separation of
| the earlier pattern.
| Closi wrote:
| I think we also enjoy playing with other peoples fun passion
| projects.
|
| It's different playing with something that someone built
| because they wanted to build it and it was fun, rather than
| them having some sense of commercial gain. See: indie games.
| bla3 wrote:
| It's also true when learning languages. If you speak a
| language a tiny bit, locals act politely impressed. If you
| speak it kind of good but aren't a native speaker, at least
| in some countries that lands much worse than speaking the
| language badly.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| if you speak the language like crap and they've never seen
| you before they think aww, this tourist really tries. When
| you speak kind of good they know you live there damn it!
| pessimizer wrote:
| I used to always hear this about black Americans in
| France. You're unbelievably popular and everybody thinks
| you're charming and cool until your French gets too good.
| Then you start being mistaken for an African immigrant
| and go from being cute to getting spit on by strangers.
|
| Actual advice from black people to other black people
| _not_ to work on your accent.
| bmalicoat wrote:
| I've noticed this too. It's mentioned in other comments below,
| but I definitely think it's easier to see the human behind
| something if it looks like a hobby project. I'm not sure what
| camp my games fall into, but I've had limited traction on HN,
| even though I'm just a lone human trying to hack it at full-
| time indie game dev.
|
| Ironically I just launched a new word game today so we'll see
| if it makes the front page!
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35184884
| gowld wrote:
| Same reason why there are so few mid-budget movies in
| Hollywood, and why medium size business either become giants or
| die.
|
| Cheap stuff is easy to churn out -> low chance of success, x
| many shots
|
| Expensive stuff costs a lot to be the best, and gets big
| payoff.
|
| Middle-tier stuff costs too much for its benefits.
| dandellion wrote:
| I think it's to be expected that the kind of projects you
| mention are rare. Consider that even if 80% of the people
| posting worked on games that take a couple of years to develop,
| and 20% worked on games that take one month, you'd still have a
| ratio of 6 short games posted for every single two-year project
| launched.
| Tade0 wrote:
| After spending a year on-and-off making a game I realized that
| I don't really have a compelling story to tell and my artist
| friend is too busy to help me with the visual side.
|
| Also, the real underlying reason why I started was the
| technical itch I wanted to scratch - it's been done so many
| times by so many people that I don't think it would be
| particularly interesting at this point.
|
| I suppose there are more people like me.
| KineticLensman wrote:
| FWIW: So I started some hobbyist game dev using Unity and
| realised that the full process of making a game has
| dependencies on a mass of lower-level skills including
| lighting virtual environments. As a hobbyist photographer I
| could see some useful analogies from lighting studios and
| other scenes
|
| So I pivoted, and eventually made money, not from selling a
| game, but from developing tutorials about digital lighting. I
| was also able to contribute to a project at work that was
| making a product based on a commercial games engine, not by
| actually coding it, but by helping to better estimate the
| costs of the asset generation required.
|
| Coding Unity object scripts in C# also got me back into
| programming, and I went on to successfully build a self-
| hosting lisp interpreter following the Make a Lisp guidelines
| [0].
|
| [0]
| https://github.com/kanaka/mal/blob/master/process/guide.md
| gbudee wrote:
| Could you link me to your tutorial? I'd like to improve the
| lighting in my game and I'm quite excited to have seen your
| comment!
| ch33zer wrote:
| Maybe I can describe how I work and why sharing anything more
| than protoypes is hard, and then people can comment if this
| rings true to them.
|
| Like many people here I have a full time job writing software.
| Most of the time I get home and don't really want to sit at a
| computer for a bunch more hours working on a side project. But
| a few times a year I get super inspired or have an acute need
| and will spend my spare time working on a game, or a small
| project or something like that. Inevitably I lose interest
| after reaching the 'alpha' phase of the project (or sometimes
| even failing to get there). At that point I sometimes want to
| share the project with others, but I won't usually continue
| working on it.
|
| I think this may partially explain your experience.
| MrLeap wrote:
| I've got a project like that (few years working on it, it's
| very unique, there's a demo), I talk about it in the comments
| from time to time but haven't done a dedicated writeup or
| anything.
|
| I don't think I've ever seen a youtube video get to the front
| page of HN, and that seems the easiest way for me to broadly
| communicate all that I've put into it. Some part of me thinks a
| medium post about it or whatever just wouldn't make sense. I
| want to present what you're hungry for, haha.
| lukas099 wrote:
| You might have a better shot if you write a blog post that
| includes video elements.
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