It's like calling your project "engine" and telling people they can't call their project engine

I think it's a "Maker" that happens to make "RPGs", not a "RPG Maker" engine. A bit like you could still call your shop a "photo shop" if there are photos for sale there.

Do I have to change the name ? Given it's just an open source project and the name is actually just 'core' . It's an rpg maker tool and functional engine.

No. By the power vested in me, I hereby permit you to keep your project's name, and to point at this man and laugh at him.

A name has to meaningfully differentiate amongst its peers, which calling an RPG making tool "RPG Maker" when it's not associated with the brand clearly does not.

It is (was) marketing failure and an unnecessary legal risk if this gets bigger and comes up on Enterbrain's radar.

only the owner of the copyright can make you change, however, being able to search for articles, tutorials, bugs, solutions, etc will be easier if you give it something unique

> only the owner of the copyright

You meant trademark, not copyright. Otherwise, your point still stands.

I am actually also open for names, I don't know exactly what this thing is.

Maybe change your wording to "an RPG maker", as "RPG Maker" is already an established brand.

As for names, maybe something cute like ClojRPG?

But I don't know exactly what this thing is. I have coded like crazy on it and created a new component system & datomic-like transaction-data like effect system, so it is more than just an RPG maker. Its a whole new way to write games.

For example side effects are just vectors of `[:tx/foo param]`.

Then maybe something more generic sounding like ClojEngine? Naming is hard lol. Core is fine, but maybe add one more word to it, because googling just "Core" to find your repo is difficult.

But I highly recommend changing the capitalization of Maker to maker to avoid being mixed up with the product RPG Maker. Adding "an" helps signal that it's a descriptor instead of a name too.

Core: An RPG maker and engine for Clojure.

GamesCore - generic but serviceable name.

CrystalCore - because RPGs must have some sort of magic crystal, it's the law

CreataCore - why limit the name to RPG theme in case it develops into something larger?

Just a few quick name suggestions for OP.

If it aspires to become like Unity you could maybe call it "Clunj".

>It's an rpg maker tool and functional engine.

Proper grammar would be "an RPG making tool".

Additionally, you deliberately wrote "RPG Maker" rather than "RPG maker". Capitalization is important, kind of like how "US bank" and "US Bank" mean completely different things (former is a generic reference to an American bank, latter is the name of an American bank).

So yes, I would change the name if I were you (and you have from what I can tell, good job) because it's infringing upon the RPG Maker brand and trademark but most importantly because it's just confusing.

> Additionally, you deliberately wrote "RPG Maker" rather than "RPG maker".

I think HN automatically converts post titles to title case. (There's a short window of time to manually edit the post title to fix the capitalization.)

I am referring to the README.md that's in the repo, which originally stated "RPG Maker&Engine for Clojure"[1].

I really don't think it's unreasonable to assume this had something to do with RPG Maker when it was written like that.

[1]: https://github.com/damn/core/commit/72682f512343c596bce84f0f...