The phrase “initial commit” for any non-developers out there, is one of the first things you usually write when starting a new software project. You start a source control repository in Github, add your files, bundle them in its first ever commit message which usually is “Initial commit”.

I’ve been reflecting a lot on how people start business projects and go for ideas without any sure promise of reward or financial incentive. My father was an electrical engineer and bought and modified circuit boards to sell for a profit. On the one hand, if no one bought them you were stuck with a bunch of circuit boards. So software development has that advantage that it at least won’t clutter up your garage or living room.

That’s been my “initial commit” setting up the business to put myself in a position to sell my software projects and services. We’ve moved into a new office, and settled on a lot of ideas about how to approach making a game and moving forward with Project Koto.

Unreal was the engine of choice over Unity or Godot. There was a real issue though when you go into Unreal’s terms of service and realize that if you go over $1,000,000 in sales you’ll owe them a 5% royalty fee!?! Somehow that felt really off-putting until I told myself that still means I would be at $950,000 in revenue (assuming I paid nothing else) in thanks to the tools that Unreal provides. Deep Breaths… okay, let’s continue onward. The engine itself is quite feature rich and requires a lot of learning and tutorial viewing. I felt that between the three though, that Unreal had the most potential long term. I use “felt” here because I don’t think there would be anything wrong with using Unity or Godot in the end, it came down to a deeply personal preference and how I like to pursue projects and my comfort with complexity.

That’s where we’re at now. Building out the systems and learning how to use the tools required to build out Project Koto. Sketching various UI designs, talking with artists and musicians, and lots of administrative work.

~Chaos