Version control, like Git, allows developers to track changes made to code and assets over time by saving revisions to a remote server or repository. This allows for easy collaboration, reverting mistakes, taking risks with new features, and preventing work from being lost due to hardware failures. The document recommends using a distributed version control system like Git for game development projects and outlines best practices for setting it up with Unity.

1. Version control in Game Dev
(or how to not lose everything to a power surge)

2. What is Version Control
• Wikipedia: “the management of changes to
documents, computer programs, large web
sites, and other collections of information.”
• Huh?.. In real people speak?
– It’s a history of the changes to your work
– Usually saved on a server somewhere
– That allows you (or someone else) to get a copy of
your work as it is/was at some point

3. Demo

4. Why should I bother?
• Helps you track down where bugs came from
• Lets you take risks
• Makes it easier to work in a team
• Backups (stuff happens!)
• All the cool kids are doing it :P

5. Which Version Control system?
• Centralized = old school. Everything on the
server, without access to that, you’re fooked.
Eg. CVS, SVN, SourceSafe
• Distributed = everyone has a copy of the
whole repo.. More resilient, can work offline.
Eg. Git (<3), Mercurial

6. What should be in Version Control?
• Ideally EVERYTHING you need to recreate the
project at any given time
• Prefer source assets to output assets (source
code instead of internal dlls, pdfs instead of
pngs)
• On large projects, may have to rather keep
output art assets (gajillion meg multilayer
pdfs), but then at least back source up

7. Git: Which tools?
• Commandline
• SmartGitHg
• SourceTree <3 (Windows only in Beta )
• TortoiseGit (No, no, no. Just don’t do it)

8. Git terminology
• Repository: where history of work is stored (you
have one locally, and one or more on remote
machines).
• Origin: shorthand for “main” remote repository.
Not really special in any way.
• Commit: state of all your assets at a given point in
time
• Branch: series of commits
• Master: “main” branch
• Working Copy: assets you’re actually working on

9. Git workflow
1. Create new repository
2. Make code changes
3. Commit local changes (repeat 2-3)
4. Pull changes =
– Fetch changes from remote
– Merge changes into local
– Commit merge
5. Test
6. Push changes
7. Repeat from 2

10. Demo

11. Unity+Git: specifics
• Set version control mode to met a files (edit-
>project settings->editor)
• Set up your .gitignore to exclude:
– Library and temp folders
– Monodev/Studio project files
– System files like DS_store & thumbnails
• Metas, metas, metas:
– If you add an asset, add the meta
– If you empty a folder, delete the folder and the meta

12. Where to go to get started?
• Github.com – free public repositories, well
known, widely used
• Bitbucket.com – free private repositories!! 
• Git-scm.com