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> ultimately the journey to that particular place is one of the sincerest forms of self expression I've found This hits me hard, and thank you for expressing i

> ultimately the journey to that particular place is one of the sincerest forms of self expression I've found This hits me hard, and thank you for expressing it. I'm currently building a strange SaaS which brings me joy. I have no customers and a handful of people that have tried it out. I promote it here on HN every chance I get as I am shameless. It's called Adama ( https://www.adama-platform.com/ https://www.adama-platform.com/ ) and it started as a way to build online board games. Now, I have no idea how to market it, and I'm still developing it on variety of fronts. My focus is super diluted and chaotic, and I try to reign it only to discover more shiny things. The true beauty of life is that there no right way to experience it. When viewed through the lens of an artist, much is subjective. Who is to say my idea is bad? Well, yeah, it is full of silliness, but that's the fun of it. Perhaps, I am wasting my life, but what then is the point of life? I've come to believe that faith (which I sorely lack in a spiritual sense) is an important part of being human. I have faith that Adama is a great way for me to spend my time, and I'm currently trying to embrace the creative side of life.

Folcon 4y ago
Hey, it looks like you're trying to do something cool and different. Awesome. May I ask that you check out some of these dead links that may be giving people a bad impression of you? On here, [0], the link to [1] is dead. Same with this[2], here[3]. There may be others. Edit: Now that I've had a chance to read a bit about what you're doing, I've got to ask, you talk about boardgames, have you built a really straightforward boardgame prototype? Like one I could find online and understand as a complete project, preferably as an example or starter template for a new user? It could be for a trivial boardgame, but an actual boardgame, so settlers of catan for example? -[0]: https://www.adama-platform.com/pricing.html https://www.adama-platform.com/pricing.html -[1]: https://www.adama-platform.com/2022/02/25/early-access-launch-and-confession.html https://www.adama-platform.com/2022/02/25/early-access-launc... -[2]: https://book.adama-platform.com/ https://book.adama-platform.com/ -[3]: https://book.adama-platform.com/reference/history.html https://book.adama-platform.com/reference/history.html
- mathgladiator 4y ago
  Thanks for the heads up, I just deployed the reference and main site with fixes for the dead links. I built the least straightforward board game: Battle Star Galatica ( https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37111/battlestar-galactica-board-game https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37111/battlestar-galacti... ), and I've also made hearts. My #1 problem at the moment is focusing, but I'll share the rough plan I am hoping to commit to for the coming weeks. First, I am seeking a balance between low latency awesomeness and durability. I'm super not happy with the RDS implementation of how I persist game state, so I'm writing directly to disk with a periodic back-up and cold storage migration. I plan on writing about this more on the blog. Now, this is the wrong priority from a business growth perspective, but it brings me joy. Second, I am going to ship a new @web aspect where the Adama server can be a read-only web server for assets, json, and other fun things. This is needed for the IDE so assets (i.e. images) can be uploaded and attached to a document and then served publicly. Third, for actually shipping board games, I'm de-prioritizing how I think about the WYSIWYG editor and focusing on just HTML via RxHTML. RxHTML is a new templating thing that I'm working on which I will post details about in the coming month, but the gist is that I can take a HTML template and then reactively bind it to a tree such that DOM updates are seemless and minimal. I intend to write a post on my own personal despair of dealing with modern JavaScript tooling. Fourth, I am going to get the web portal online with just a text editor (currently evaluating code mirror) such that I can onboard people quickly with just their email and they can get to typing. Fifth, with super minimal IDE, I can then introduce examples for a variety of games and applications which can be one-click instantiated. Sixth, with one-click instantiation, I'll build a reflection base UI where people can send messages to a document and see the document with pretty printing. This will let people actually play a game in a sense as a developer. Seven, I'll add rxhtml to the minimal IDE and then people could make reactive reports/UIs. At this point, the vision can start to manifest of Adama as a roblox like website for board games. Now, it is worth noting or pondering "where is the customer in all of this?" and I'm currently the customer.
  - Folcon 4y ago
    Firstly it's great that you've got a lot of enthusiasm for this and a roadmap. > I built the least straightforward board game: Battle Star Galatica ( https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37111/battlestar-galacti https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37111/battlestar-galacti... ), and I've also made hearts. Sorry about that, I was being unclear, is this visible anywhere? Can I look at how you've done it? In my experience authoring systems can fall into two broad categories: 1. You can think in them, so they're a useful space to prototype and if you're lucky the output is good enough to ship. 2. You can't easily think in them, but they have other positive qualities, they're performant for example, or target a wide array of platforms, so you sketch out ideas elsewhere and once you've worked out what you're trying to do, pull it in. For some people, this is a non-problem, they've internalised a system well enough that they can do everything in one place. If you can show what a prototype looks like, people can start looking at what you're producing and see where this fits in their toolbox of useful tools. Or they can point out gaps they perceive which you can look at and think about whether fixing those perceived gaps is within the vision of your tool or not. Maybe you're just not wanting to solve that use-case =)... I would also suggest setting aside a day and showing what you currently have to some people who design games, either as amateurs or experts and see what feedback they give you. You may already have something they want to use, or you may find blockers that prevent them from using it. The mom test[0] may be useful here if you are collecting feedback to discern useful feedback from platitudes. If you're not interested in doing this because you're building primarily for yourself, that's cool. I just think that this might be a useful exercise to work out if people would be more willing to engage with what you're building and what if anything might be holding them back from doing so =)... - [0]: http://momtestbook.com/ http://momtestbook.com/

Folcon 4y ago

Hey, it looks like you're trying to do something cool and different. Awesome. May I ask that you check out some of these dead links that may be giving people a bad impression of you? On here, [0], the link to [1] is dead. Same with this[2], here[3]. There may be others. Edit: Now that I've had a chance to read a bit about what you're doing, I've got to ask, you talk about boardgames, have you built a really straightforward boardgame prototype? Like one I could find online and understand as a complete project, preferably as an example or starter template for a new user? It could be for a trivial boardgame, but an actual boardgame, so settlers of catan for example? -[0]: https://www.adama-platform.com/pricing.html https://www.adama-platform.com/pricing.html -[1]: https://www.adama-platform.com/2022/02/25/early-access-launch-and-confession.html https://www.adama-platform.com/2022/02/25/early-access-launc... -[2]: https://book.adama-platform.com/ https://book.adama-platform.com/ -[3]: https://book.adama-platform.com/reference/history.html https://book.adama-platform.com/reference/history.html

mathgladiator 4y ago
Thanks for the heads up, I just deployed the reference and main site with fixes for the dead links. I built the least straightforward board game: Battle Star Galatica ( https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37111/battlestar-galactica-board-game https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37111/battlestar-galacti... ), and I've also made hearts. My #1 problem at the moment is focusing, but I'll share the rough plan I am hoping to commit to for the coming weeks. First, I am seeking a balance between low latency awesomeness and durability. I'm super not happy with the RDS implementation of how I persist game state, so I'm writing directly to disk with a periodic back-up and cold storage migration. I plan on writing about this more on the blog. Now, this is the wrong priority from a business growth perspective, but it brings me joy. Second, I am going to ship a new @web aspect where the Adama server can be a read-only web server for assets, json, and other fun things. This is needed for the IDE so assets (i.e. images) can be uploaded and attached to a document and then served publicly. Third, for actually shipping board games, I'm de-prioritizing how I think about the WYSIWYG editor and focusing on just HTML via RxHTML. RxHTML is a new templating thing that I'm working on which I will post details about in the coming month, but the gist is that I can take a HTML template and then reactively bind it to a tree such that DOM updates are seemless and minimal. I intend to write a post on my own personal despair of dealing with modern JavaScript tooling. Fourth, I am going to get the web portal online with just a text editor (currently evaluating code mirror) such that I can onboard people quickly with just their email and they can get to typing. Fifth, with super minimal IDE, I can then introduce examples for a variety of games and applications which can be one-click instantiated. Sixth, with one-click instantiation, I'll build a reflection base UI where people can send messages to a document and see the document with pretty printing. This will let people actually play a game in a sense as a developer. Seven, I'll add rxhtml to the minimal IDE and then people could make reactive reports/UIs. At this point, the vision can start to manifest of Adama as a roblox like website for board games. Now, it is worth noting or pondering "where is the customer in all of this?" and I'm currently the customer.
- Folcon 4y ago
  Firstly it's great that you've got a lot of enthusiasm for this and a roadmap. > I built the least straightforward board game: Battle Star Galatica ( https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37111/battlestar-galacti https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/37111/battlestar-galacti... ), and I've also made hearts. Sorry about that, I was being unclear, is this visible anywhere? Can I look at how you've done it? In my experience authoring systems can fall into two broad categories: 1. You can think in them, so they're a useful space to prototype and if you're lucky the output is good enough to ship. 2. You can't easily think in them, but they have other positive qualities, they're performant for example, or target a wide array of platforms, so you sketch out ideas elsewhere and once you've worked out what you're trying to do, pull it in. For some people, this is a non-problem, they've internalised a system well enough that they can do everything in one place. If you can show what a prototype looks like, people can start looking at what you're producing and see where this fits in their toolbox of useful tools. Or they can point out gaps they perceive which you can look at and think about whether fixing those perceived gaps is within the vision of your tool or not. Maybe you're just not wanting to solve that use-case =)... I would also suggest setting aside a day and showing what you currently have to some people who design games, either as amateurs or experts and see what feedback they give you. You may already have something they want to use, or you may find blockers that prevent them from using it. The mom test[0] may be useful here if you are collecting feedback to discern useful feedback from platitudes. If you're not interested in doing this because you're building primarily for yourself, that's cool. I just think that this might be a useful exercise to work out if people would be more willing to engage with what you're building and what if anything might be holding them back from doing so =)... - [0]: http://momtestbook.com/ http://momtestbook.com/