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Version control softwares


laminutederire

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Perforce is amazing for game development. It should always be your first choice. The only issue it has relative to other SCM's is it can be a little harder to setup but once you have it setup it's way easier for non-programmers to understand relative to other SCM's.

Dont use git for games! It's meant for plain text repositories (and it's amazing for those types of projects). It should not be used projects with huge amounts of binary assets. Git large file storage will silently fail when trying to branch. I've heard people have had some degree of success with git-annex though. If your coders absolutely have to use git, perforce supports a git repo in a perforce repo via git-fusion.

Sorry for the opinionated post. I've had to manage various build systems and SCM's for a few years now and have felt a lot of pain.

EDIT : The perforce C# (other languages also supported) api is amazing when writing tooling. There's many engines out there with such a high level of integration the artists never even use the visual client. 

Some day I would like to try out PlasticSCM (comes with semantic diff/merge) and ClearCase (just because I've never tried it, no idea if it's good). 

If you have any SCM issues or questions I can try to help out. Regardless of whether you choose git or p4 (or otherwise).

Perforce is my favourite of the ones that i've worked with. Currently we're using Plastic and i think it's pretty horrible for art/design people. Coders seem to love it tho.

Ah you've used Plastic? 

So it's not as good for artists as it claims to be? I had a feeling when I read their site that it might be too good to be true. They are essentially claiming they have the best of git and perforce with semantic diff/merge (albeit I think only for C#, C++ I guess might be a lot more difficult to do).

What did you not like about it relative to perforce?

Edited by AlexM
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Ah you've used Plastic? 

So it's not as good for artists as it claims to be? I had a feeling when I read their site that it might be too good to be true. They are essentially claiming they have the best of git and perforce with semantic diff/merge (albeit I think only for C#, C++ I guess might be a lot more difficult to do).

What did you not like about it relative to perforce?

It's just not simple and straightforward at all to submit stuff. We constantly run into some issues because Plastic is anal about something. And it can be quite time consuming to submit even a small change if your workspace isn't up to date or someone else submitted something while you were uploading your files. It's quite bad for productivity.

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If you have any SCM issues or questions I can try to help out. Regardless of whether you choose git or p4 

I will take you up on that help offer when i'll have covered the basics I guess. Currently I am struggling to set up correct workspaces and correct file mapping, but I tried to set those up when I was really tired, so that explains!

Are there things to look out for on the server side, like particular specifications?

Having no server myself I'm using the cloud based service from Perforce to begin with, which, from what I understood, is like Assembla but with more space storage on the free versions (5Go should be enough for that game since it is supposed to be a lightweight game usable on mobile devices, or maybe I'm completely off, it's the first game my team is doing to be honest)

 

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Alienbrain: have briefly used it at IO-Interactive not enough to really have an opinion though. ?/00

Tortoise SVN: its got a kind of ghetto reputation but it always gets the job done so yeah ... I like it 8/10

Perforce: I can not share your guys enthusiasm I think all of their front ends  (p4V, that windows explorer shell extension, maya & photoshop plugins ... you know the parts that me as an artist actually gets in contact with) are pure and utter vile gutter trash 2/10

Dropbox: not exactly a "subversion" system but I use it right now to sync files back and forth with a coder friend and we have our entire unity project just sitting in there in the dropbox folder and i am SHOCKED how well and fast that works ... or that it works at all really ... 9/10

 

Edited by Warby
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I will take you up on that help offer when i'll have covered the basics I guess. Currently I am struggling to set up correct workspaces and correct file mapping, but I tried to set those up when I was really tired, so that explains!

Are there things to look out for on the server side, like particular specifications?

Having no server myself I'm using the cloud based service from Perforce to begin with, which, from what I understood, is like Assembla but with more space storage on the free versions (5Go should be enough for that game since it is supposed to be a lightweight game usable on mobile devices, or maybe I'm completely off, it's the first game my team is doing to be honest)

 

Ah ok. With perforce cloud you have to use streams. That's probably why you can't see anything. When setting up the workspace you need to make a stream for it as well. 

streams are not something I've liked about perforce. When possible I don't use them but I also have a perforce cloud account and therefore have to use them. 

Alienware: have briefly used it at IO-Interactive not enough to really have an opinion though. ?/00

Tortoise SVN: its got a kind of ghetto reputation but it always gets the job done so yeah ... I like it 8/10

Perforce: I can not share your guys enthusiasm I think all of their front ends  (p4V, that windows explorer shell extension, maya & photoshop plugins ... you know the parts that me as an artist actually gets in contact with) are pure and utter vile gutter trash 2/10

Dropbox: not exactly a "subversion" system but I use it right now to sync files back and forth with a coder friend and we have our entire unity project just sitting in there in the dropbox folder and i am SHOCKED how well and fast that works ... or that it works at all really ... 9/10

 

Do you mean alienbrain? If so I thought that was discontinued years ago. 

Also dropbox. They don't have a secure history. You lose all concept of revision control using it. 

Edited by AlexM
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