Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
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Perforce has a nice GUI for anyone who doesn
t want to use the command line. The
GUI will perform about 99 percent of the tasks you ever need to perform, so you can
leave the command line to someone who knows what they
re doing. Even better, Per-
force integrates with Windows Explorer, and you can edit and submit files just by
right-clicking them. Artists love that kind of thing.
The branching mechanisms are extremely efficient. When you create a branch from
your main line of development to a test line, Perforce only keeps the deltas from the
original branch to the new branch. Network space is saved, and merging branches is
also very fast. Subversion and others make a completely new copy of the branch, tak-
ing up enormous network storage space.
You
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ll find almost as many third-party tools that work with Perforce as with some of
the free repositories. Free downloads are available, including tools that perform
graphical merges, C++ APIs, conversion tools from other products like SourceSafe,
Subversion, and tons of others.
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Perforce + Visual SourceSafe = Chaos
When I worked for Ion Storm, the programmers used Perforce, but everyone
else used Visual SourceSafe. What a fiasco! The content tree that stored art,
game levels, and sounds would always be a little
from the source code
in Perforce. If you even had to check in a change that required a parallel
change to content, you had to practically halt the entire team and tell
everyone to do this massive refresh from the network. This was simply
horrible and wasted an amazing amount of time. Don
“
off
”
make
sure that you get source code control licenses for everyone on your
development team: Programmers, artists, and everyone else who touches
your game should all use the same source control software
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t screw around
—
For those of you with really serious asset tracking problems and equally serious bud-
gets, there
s a pretty good solution out there that will track your source code and
other assets: AlienBrain from Avid. They have a huge client list that looks like a
who
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s who of the computer game industry. Their software integrates with nearly
every tool out there: CodeWarrior, Visual Studio, 3ds Max, Maya, Photoshop, and
many others.
AlienBrain is somewhat more expensive than Perforce, but it has some features Per-
force doesn
t have. AlienBrain is used by game developers, filmmakers, and big iron
simulation developers who have to track much more than source code. They
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ve also
made some serious strides in the last few versions to improve performance and bring
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