There’s an Aztec city building game called Tlatoani. It’s in early access, but has enough meat on the bone that it’s one of my goto games.

Out of curiosity I checked Steam DB for active player numbers. I have discovered at any given point I am 10% to 25% of the given player base BY MYSELF. I am 1 of 4 people playing this game right now in the world. With the prevalence of the internet I always assume whatever weird bullshit you’re into there’s at least a thousand people talking about it; making memes outsiders could never comprehend. It’s actually novel to fly under the radar for once.

What do you do that doesn’t have a community associated with it?

  • pruwyben@discuss.tchncs.de
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    5 months ago

    Earlier this year I tried out a Steam demo of a game called “That Time I Found a Box” and got hooked on it. It’s a very unique card game where you create and enhance the cards as you play. I played it for days and eventually beat the demo - the devs told me I was the first person to beat it.

    The full version just came out on Steam - I’d recommend taking a look. It’s a bit janky and not for everybody, but it does something unique that really clicked for me.

  • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 months ago

    Thermodynamics, specifically refrigeration cycles.

    Its probably my autism showing but the fact that we can just move funny fluid around and make heat move is absolutely fascinating. I can spend a lot of time making theoretical refrigeration cycles with different fluids, thermoelectrics, heat capacities, repurposing car junkyard AC systems, etc.

    Millions of people do it for work, sure. I doubt any of them are “into it”.

        • BurgerBaron@piefed.social
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          5 months ago

          I really loved the decal he put on his lift to make it seem like the brand name of his one armed car lift was “TIPPI.”

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      5 months ago

      If you haven’t before, you should play Stationeers. It sounds like you’d love it.

      • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        5 months ago

        I touch r134a the most in my day to day life, cuz i fix a lot of people’s car AC… But I have a soft spot for propane (R290) or propane/butane blends. Yes it’s flammable to a degree but it’s naturally provided, cheap as hell, zero ozone depletion and very low GWP. It has usable pressure/temperature curves that are easy for compressors to handle and can produce temperatures as low as -30C.

        I’ve refilled old farm trucks with propane from a BBQ can and gotten good AC out of them. It’s kind of cool.

  • YeahIgotskills2@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I’m not into gaming. I think I’m the only adult male I know of comparable age that isn’t. I don’t really know why. I think it’s a mental block. I was big into 16-bit Atari/Amiga games in the early 90s. Then I just hit like 16/17 and got into music and drinking to fit in. The gaming scene at the time (pre-internet) was social kryptonite, and I lived in rural Scotland so I left it all behind.

    Oddly, I returned to general computing in my early 20s as the internet was blowing up and now work in the IT sector.

    But still not a gamer, which ironically is quite isolating.

    • AlolanYoda@mander.xyz
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      5 months ago

      It’s true that barely anyone is into actually contributing, but I assure you a fair amount of people are into the actual open source implementations and are thankful for your efforts!

      Any game in particular you contributed to that you want to share?

  • greedytacothief@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    5 months ago

    I do calligraphy. Sometimes i meet someone who knows someone who does calligraphy. But I’ve never met another person IRL that does calligraphy. And the particular style I like makes it even more rare.

  • hammocker@leminal.space
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    5 months ago

    I play single player video games and I roleplay and tell stories about my characters. I’ve done it with BG3, Elden Ring, Skyrim, Oblivion, Fire Emblem, and Pokemon. I take notes and write little stories for myself. I cultivate a little headcanon universe for each game, and I even let my roleplay alter my gameplay in meaningful ways. I don’t know if anyone else plays these games like this but I haven’t found much community for it.

  • Tuukka R@piefed.ee
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    5 months ago

    Well… I’m using an instance that has 10 active users according to https://piefed.fediverse.observer/list :)

    I wanted to move from Lemmy to PieFed, because its development is faster than that of Lemmy’s and because its maintainers have values I have nothing against and because I want to help a cool project grow.

    And then I had a bunch of criteria that I wanted my instance to fulfill, and piefed.ee was the only PieFed instance that fulfilled all of my wishes. So, now I’m apparently one out of ten :)

  • smeg@infosec.pub
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    5 months ago

    I have a lot of obscure interests, but not as obscure as yours.

    • Finding former Pizza Huts in North America. It’s just such an iconic building design. There’s a documentary out now on them, but I’ve been fascinated for almost a decade now.

    • Meshtastic

    • John le Carré novels. He was huge decades ago, but basically nobody knows the name now besides Boomers and genre fans.

      • cenzorrll@lemmy.ca
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        5 months ago

        What do you need 8 extra hours for? Affording the 8 other nodes you buy after your first one?

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          My experience with DIY home networking and self-hosting has been “This is going to eat up your weekend if you want it to work as intended”.

          • smeg@infosec.pub
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            5 months ago

            You can buy premade nodes on AliExpress or Etsy that are easy to use and portable. Pair it to your phone and start war driving.

  • BurgerBaron@piefed.social
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    5 months ago

    At a glance, Tlatoani: Aztec Cities looks like a Pharoah game type city builder. I’m into this, thanks for mentioning this game OP.

    Currently I’m in a similarly small population of people who play Motorstorm 1 (Monument Valley), and Motorstorm Pacific Rift online.

    They work with real PS3 consoles with just a DNS change or on RPCS3 emulator.

    Motorstorm Arctic Edge on PSP or PPSSPP as well but it’s played less often.

    Apocalypse also kinda works but it’s pretty broken in very annoying ways, and reverse engineering needs more work.

    Motorstorm RC is also supported, but I don’t play that one.

    Can find the Motorstorm communities on Discord and they’re mostly using PSRewired.

    Here’s an invite link for Motorstorm Online World: https://discord.gg/4sJPGDxhx

  • Spinda (he/him/his)@leminal.space
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    5 months ago

    I’m sure there’s probably someone out there, but I’m really interested in cool border crossings and how they represent nations on each side. As much as I am no nationalist, I find those projections of strength, friendship, security, etc. all super interesting.

    Oh, and fake/fantasy transit maps. Those are always fun to draw up in my spare time.

  • LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I really like killing invasive plants. I think that’s probably my most niche passion. Like when I have some free time I’ll just go into the woods behind my house and cut down wisteria, ivy, Chinese holly… I just find it extremely satisfying idk. I love the idea that I’m clearing out space for native plants (and in turn native animals) to grow.

  • lemmy_outta_here@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I know there are others out there, but I sometimes feel like I am the only person under 50 who loves opera. I have 2 streaming services that I mostly use for watching opera.

    I honestly feel like many people would like opera if they gave it a chance. Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen is a cross between Lord of the Rings and The Avengers, but without the 30-min CGI fights (no disrespect to those who like fight scenes, but i get bored). My son and I love Mozart’s The Magic Flute; my wife’s favourite is Bizet’s Carmen.

  • Stonewyvvern@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Dune was my go to scifi…now it’s popular and I feel like a hipster.

    My dad got me into hard scifi, d&d, Tolkien…if I feel like a hipster, can’t imagine what he feels like.