Paradachshund

People like that really aren't fair, are they? Save some talent for the rest of us. 😅

It's worth noting the dude worked his ass off and had financial support to pay living expenses from his partner:

For four years, he says, he worked an average of ten hours a day, seven days a week, on Stardew Valley. Luckily, he was living with his girlfriend, a graduate student in, appropriately, plant biology, and to help stay afloat he worked part-time as an usher at Seattle’s Paramount Theatre

Not diminishing his accomplishments at all, but I think it's always good to compare effort to effort, resources to resources, rather than simply team size. Most people can't spend 4 years with that pace without investment backing.

One thing I'll throw out there is while there are rare cases where a solo dev really does everything themselves, when you see a really ambitious looking result from a supposedly solo dev, it's very likely they either contracted things out, bought/found assets, or had on and off help from people. It's only solo in the sense it's their vision and they get to put things together/make all the final calls on the game.

Making stuff solo is hard. I'm doing it right now and I'm purposely trying to use a lot of stock assets for art and music because the game alone is already a massive task by itself. Don't be afraid to use what's out there. If your game feels good to play most people will never worry about whether you hand built every blade of grass. In other words, go for as small a scope as you can, and don't be afraid to cut corners.

Nice call out on rice milk straight. I do think it has a nice subtle sweetness to it the others don't.

It has a long way to go but it's a good start. The community is very homogenous right now (maybe excluding some of the mainly politically focused servers). It's predominantly male tech people right now and it shows in what is active and the general vibes of discussions. My hope is not only for more niche communities to grow, but also for a lot more diversity of interests and of people in general. We need more women's voices on here for sure. I miss that diversity from reddit. Things have been steadily, if slowly, growing so far from what I can tell, so hopefully over time all this will improve.

Really interesting reading your follow up post in here. It's so incredible to hear about how differently people can think.

I imagined the scene in detail, but to pay attention to all the details I had to think back to it and examine each part of what I imagined, if that makes any sense.

I pictured a side camera angle with a white metal table and a light blue wall behind. The ball was a soccer ball, and it was pushed by a woman's hand wearing a gray knit sweater. Only the hand and forearm are "in frame". Her arm comes in from the right side and pushes the ball to the left, rolling it across the table.

North A-scare-ica (I'm sorry)

Exactly. Even if you've seen it before it doesn't mean everyone has.

I think if moderation is so intense that it has a chilling effect on the community, that's a big red flag. Sounds like you did it just right.

Wow, those were some impressive effects!

Repost policing is so ridiculous. Like yeah, of course we'd rather not have the same thing multiple times a day, but it's totally ridiculous to expect people to look through the entire sub's history to make sure you're good. If you saw it before, just move on. No need to shit on people for trying to contribute.

If you look at old games, the reason they didn't need this was because they couldn't have nearly as many props in a scene. I like to use classic WoW as an example. It didn't have any kind of highlighting for objects to interact with, but you didn't need it because there just weren't that many objects period.

Highlighting interactables, whether it be through a pulse like the meme, or just based on proximity, is a compromise in modern games to make things playable while also having dense, prop-filled environments. The infamous white or yellow paint for climbing surfaces is another example.

I doubt many designers love these solutions, but they're currently the best we've got. It's not an easy problem to solve, but I hope a more immersive solution comes along someday. In the meantime, having it is better than not, I totally agree with you.

They're tribalists, not idealists. In other words, it's on their side now so they don't mind. I see a lot of people always attacking the double standard aspect, but its not the point. They don't mind double standards, they just want their tribe to win.