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Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?

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Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?

#211

Post by lelandfe »

austinthetaco wrote: post #47
cableshaft wrote: post #45

List of video games supposedly developed by just one person: https://www.gamespot.com/gallery/the-14-best-games-developed... I say supposedly because I know Jonathan Blow paid someone to do all the art for Braid, and licensed all the music (I even saw him demo Braid before release with his programmer art at GDC back in 2008, it did not look anywhere near as pretty, so he made the right choice). But the artwork was so…

Lucas Pope is for sure a solo dev. He wrote a custom shader for Obra Dinn while he was also writing the storyline. It's a pretty incredible feat.

Here’s a pretty wonderful timelapse of Pope getting the player’s hand working in the game: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IQdpeN_OERM

Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?

#212

Post by closeparen »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #152
ptudan wrote: post #132

I'd say literature come to mind the most. A Tale of Two Cities, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, Beowulf, Pride and Prejudice were the first ones that come to mind, though there are of course many more. Wish I knew more of the non-western classics

This is such a fascinating observation to me. Why has literature largely resisted team based creation? Writing teams exist for other mediums, but literature is almost exclusively written by a single creator who then loops others in after the work is completed.

When things cost money to produce, funders get more input. That said many TV and film projects are the vision of a single auteur, when the auteur has the pull to get total creative control from funders or else funds his own project. It’s just that this person is a director or executive producer instead of a writer.

Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?

#213

Post by Jcowell »

justin66 wrote: post #179
jcims wrote: post #98

An intern I met a few years back built a Farnsworth fusor while he was in high school. He showed me pictures of it in operation, complete with some really cool shots of the plasma. It occurred to me a few years later that the helium atoms he snapped together will likely survive until they are swallowed up by a black hole or maybe have a front row seat to a supernova or gamma ray burst. So likely hundreds of billions…

It'll be a bit of an anti-climax, compared to some of that stuff. Those helium atoms are likely to be fuel for our sun somewhere along the line when it's burning down and becoming a white dwarf. Our star isn't big enough to do the supernova thing.

Off topic but in a sci fi hypothetical, would there be a way to make out sun bigger to go supernova ?

Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?

#214

Post by justin66 »

Jcowell wrote: post #213
justin66 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be a bit of an anti-climax, compared to some of that stuff. Those helium atoms are likely to be fuel for our sun somewhere along the line when it's burning down and becoming a white dwarf. Our star isn't big enough to do the supernova thing.

Off topic but in a sci fi hypothetical, would there be a way to make out sun bigger to go supernova ?

I could be wrong but I don't believe there's enough mass in our solar system for it to be close. Solar systems do merge with one another, stars bring other stars into their orbit, etc. It would take something like that, I believe.

Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?

#216

Post by ajnin »

What about works of art in general ? Leonardo da Vinci, Van Gogh, Picasso, Escher, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Bach, Haendel, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Saint-Saëns, Bob Dylan, Mark Knopfler, Bob Marley ... And so forth. All artists who created works that are still considered masterpieces to this day.

Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?

#218

Post by throwaway4323r »

austinthetaco wrote: post #47
cableshaft wrote: post #45

List of video games supposedly developed by just one person: https://www.gamespot.com/gallery/the-14-best-games-developed... I say supposedly because I know Jonathan Blow paid someone to do all the art for Braid, and licensed all the music (I even saw him demo Braid before release with his programmer art at GDC back in 2008, it did not look anywhere near as pretty, so he made the right choice). But the artwork was so…

Lucas Pope is for sure a solo dev. He wrote a custom shader for Obra Dinn while he was also writing the storyline. It's a pretty incredible feat.

I have no game programming experience. What is a shader and what other things needs are required to make a 3d object realistic. I think wireframe and then lighting is another. Seems shading is yet another which provides skin. Other than animation is there anything else?

Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?

#219

Post by ravi-delia »

Jcowell wrote: post #213
justin66 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll be a bit of an anti-climax, compared to some of that stuff. Those helium atoms are likely to be fuel for our sun somewhere along the line when it's burning down and becoming a white dwarf. Our star isn't big enough to do the supernova thing.

Off topic but in a sci fi hypothetical, would there be a way to make out sun bigger to go supernova ?

Not any way that wouldn't just let us move to a star that will go supernova, I don't think. I just looked up the mass of the solar system, and got the gut-punch answer of 1.0014 solar masses. Considering that it seems to take 8 or so times as much mass as the sun for a star to experience a supernova, we could trivially just move all the non-star mass in the solar system elsewhere for several fewer orders of magnitude of effort.

Re: Ask HN: Single-person creations that have stood the test of time?

#220

Post by jka »

hkt wrote: post #41

Surprised nobody has said Denis Ritchie and C. Also, the architecture of Corbosier. Lots of other examples exist in architecture. Great question, by the way.

Your comment made me think of Hundertwasser's architecture: https://www.hundertwasser.com/en/architecture , another example.
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