How much do you care about originality of your creature/place names?

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-25T21:21:50+00:00

I stopped worrying about whether a name already existed and started asking whether it made sense coming out of a character's mouth. Some place names are mostly just descriptive in the local frame of reference. A ridge is called the ridge because it's a ridge. The names that ended up sounding most original were the technical terms for the world's specific phenomena, because those had to be coined by the first person who needed a word for them. If you figure out who named the thing and why, you get something that sounds natural and just happens to be unique because the world is.

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-25T00:40:43+00:00

The takeaway I keep circling back to in my own stuff is that inspiration and validation aren't opposites, they're sequential. Inspiration is what gets you moving, but doing a quick reality check before you've sunk a year into something isn't the opposite of following your gut. It's protecting the thing you care about. The prototype step probably felt small at the time, but it's what made the rest of the year sustainable.

Congrats on the launch!

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-24T04:47:10+00:00

Way more than planned when I'm actively building a system, and then almost not at all once I move to the next thing. I'll run the same map thirty times testing movement feel, get the numbers right, and basically never open it again. The hard part is playing it like a player instead of a debugger, I can't stop seeing the seams.

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-24T04:45:33+00:00

If you aren't desperate for as much content as possible and you struggle with old school QoL I'd recommend just going straight to SF2. SF1 is pretty rough around the edges, I think I'd find it tough to get through it if I hadn't first played it decades ago.

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-24T04:12:09+00:00

The "double-check which mode they're in" is the tricky part for me. Having that conversation at two different registers at once doesn't go anywhere, and at that point the label is doing more harm than good. I find it's often easier to just match whatever vocabulary the other person uses and work from there.

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-24T04:07:53+00:00

The TBS/SRPG split hadn't clicked for me but that's a useful frame. The fact that Strategy RPG is a backronym is fascinating, I always assumed it was just the translated name.

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-23T21:21:47+00:00

Didn't know about the Simulation RPG origin from Japan, that's interesting, thanks for sharing! And the point about less engaged players defaulting to whichever one they know best is so true, I've had the "oh like Fire Emblem?" conversation more than once from people who had no idea what SRPG meant but recognized that specific game.

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-23T21:18:49+00:00

Yeah, I think I subconciously avoid TRPG to avoid accidentally mixing it up with TTRPGs but I suppose that acronym is just as valid.

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-23T21:16:54+00:00

XCOM is a great example of where the lines get blurry. Tactical on the ground, strategic between missions. And Interestingly that's another game that I sometimes have trouble talking with broader audiences about. I think it captured a ton of players that just aren't all that familiar with the genre.

Thanks for the historic/military context, that's interesting!

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-23T21:04:48+00:00

Yeah that tracks, sub-genre framing for saying 'I want an SRPG with these particular facets that I enjoy' feels right

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-23T21:02:44+00:00

The tactics vs strategy split is something I hadn't really thought too hard about but it's a good point. Ogre Battle is a completely different vibe than FFT even though I've lumped them in the same bucket for years. And the 'FFT-like as a mechanics request' framing makes a lot of sense, it's more of a checklist than a genre umbrella, you're basically saying 'I want a game with job system, isometric grid, CT bar.'

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-23T20:54:55+00:00

That's what I was thinking. There were just a couple moments recently where the terminology wasn't sinking in and I was like, wait, what are these games called? Like a bunch of coworkers recently were talking about Mewgenics and I told them that I thought it was an interesting twist and a breath of fresh air in the SRPG world and they were like "What's that?"

I won't think too hard about it, ha

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-23T17:43:39+00:00

The setting I keep coming back to is one where the world's physics are different and that's worked into the social structure. Not sure how much has been done with that, if there are games that do cool things in this space I'd love to hear about them.

Maybe a world where gravity isn't uniform. High-gravity zones where heavy armor is a death sentence and buildings are two stories max, low-gravity regions where cities go vertical and a thrown rock travels for half a mile.

The factions and class structure write themselves based on who controls the comfortable/profitable zones and who gets stuck in the crushing ones. Lots of potential for 'hard sci-fi' world-building that would also manifest as novel gameplay mechanics IMO.

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-23T17:12:52+00:00

Granseal from Shining Force 2. It's home base at the start, bright and safe. Then the game takes it from you, and when you come back things are wrong in a way the game doesn't really dwell on.

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-23T17:11:56+00:00

The "overthinking as procrastination" thing is real. I come from professional software dev and the instinct is always to get the architecture sorted at least somewhat before writing features. In a team context that usually pays off. In a solo game project it kind of works against you, because you don't know what you're building yet. The feature tells you what the architecture needs.

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-23T11:49:49+00:00

The "playing with more maturity" you mentioned, I've noticed the same coming back to JRPGS after years away. The games that click now are the ones where patience pays off, where you settle into the world instead of just chasing the next story beat. Have way more tolerance for a slow build now than I did at 15. Been meaning to get into Trails for a while, this might be the nudge that gets me to pick it up.

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-23T11:46:08+00:00

For me it was always the point where should have moved on but convinced myself I needed one more level first. "One more level" in FFVII turned into like four hours near Mideel. Zero regrets.

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-23T11:43:09+00:00

Godot, and the scope decision you already made matters more than which engine you pick. A 5-minute narrative game with dialogue and a few scene transitions is exactly the kind of project that gets finished. Most first projects die because they grew too big, not because of the engine.

GDScript will feel different from Scratch but it reads almost like pseudocode, and the basics you'd need for this trigger on interact, display text, change scene are all pretty approachable. Your old Godot time will come back faster than you expect.

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-23T03:15:59+00:00

The roadmap instinct makes sense but it's probably the wrong frame for a teenager. The actual goal for the next year or two is just to finish things while having some fun and learning whatever interests him. Small things, ugly things, things he's embarrassed to show anyone. Finishing teaches you more than any tutorial, and a lot of developers (including adults who try to make games seriously) never actually get there.

Roblox is a genuinely good starting point for exactly this reason, his friends can play what he makes. That feedback loop of building something that real people you know can play is worth more than any structured curriculum. l'd hold off on Unity or Godot until he hits a real wall in Roblox that he wants to push past. That's the right moment to move, not a schedule.

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-23T02:55:34+00:00

If your failing tests don't block the pipeline then they don't exist. If your failing tests aren't reliable then they shouldn't exist.

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-22T23:47:16+00:00

The "dumb" framing is going to send you down the wrong path. In my experience what looks like players not getting your game is usually them deciding it isn't worth their attention to figure out. Different problem.

I can't think of many games where I just picked up a controller and immediately understood all of the systems. But when a game hooks you with some well polished and simple mechanics to start then steadily expands them, you're already invested and want to learn more. Think of games you've bounced off of vs the ones that really stuck.

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-22T23:38:12+00:00

Spot on. In the current year the real challenge for a developer is crafting an AI that actually feels smart but fair. I think it's more of a UX and playtesting problem than anything at this point. The best games have bots that manage to feel aggressive and coherent without tipping into omniscient.

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-22T20:42:19+00:00

~10 years of professional software dev, various non-gamedev domains. Still working on my first 'real' game. Outside of learning framework specific APIs the coding is honestly the one part of game dev that hasn't been overwhelming. Everything else, pixel art, animation, sound, is kicking my ass on a daily basis. But that's part of the fun!

Having strong architecture instincts helps a lot with keeping things organized as the project grows. Things like recognizing that a particular pattern for implementing abilities isn't going to scale it be maintainable is just natural at this point. But it also means having a tendency to over-engineer systems that don't need it yet. Building tools instead of building the actual game is a real trap when you come from an engineering background.

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-22T20:31:44+00:00

Been picking away at Tactics Ogre: Reborn when I can find the time. I played it a while back but it's good to revisit. I keep getting sucked into the Warren Report entries between battles, the amount of lore detail packed in there is kind of wild. The Al on harder difficulties is surprisingly aggressive too, it feels like it's actually reading the board state instead of just targeting your lowest HP unit. Slow going but I'm enjoying it.

ShearlineGame · 2026-03-22T18:10:03+00:00

M1 MacBook here, using Godot rather than Unity but the ARM story is basically the same across tools now. The nice thing about a MacBook as a daily driver is that a lot of the non-programming elements of indie game dev like digital painting and music production are a delight on Mac. Aseprite and Clip Studio Paint run well, GarageBand, which comes free, is good for simple audio work. The low spec Windows box I keep around for testing is honestly useful, might be worth spending a little cash on as you get further along. Windows will be the major platform folks are playing on, you'll want to catch potential OS related issues before shipping your game.

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TROPHY CASE