I need a hassle free "time machine" style backup for my ongoing developing projects

[dennik]

Long time ago I developed a project on a mac, and I really enjoyed the time machine backup which saved my ass more times than I can count.
But now that I’m developing stuff on the PC I’m finding that I quickly running out of space if I keep making backup copies of the current prooject in case I mess something really bad which can happen from time to time. Unfortunately full backups are very large and very inefficient.
Is there a solution that I don’t have to spend too much time implementing? Again I really don’t have the time to commit learning an overly technical solution. I’m a single person trying to tackle everything. Something efficient like the time machine would do. Let me know if you have any ideas. thanks.

[zombiegorilla]

Version Control.
GIT is good solution, PlasticSCM is another. And there are others.
They are not like Time Machine, and aren’t hands off, but they are the VC is standard in software development. It is the best solution. It’s something you should learn, it isn’t difficult but it is one of those core skills.

[system]

Also if you set up backup besides the version control, you should exclude the contents of the Library folder. There is nothing in there what cannot be recreated based on the other files.

[Kurt-Dekker]

Building on ZG’s suggestion above, definitely worth getting git set up. And adding to what Lurk says, let me tack all this extra standard blurbiage on to help you get started as smoothly as possible:

BEGIN Uncle Kurt’s standard ra-ra-ra source control blurb:

Please consider using proper industrial-grade source control in order to guard and protect your hard-earned work.

Personally I use git (completely outside of Unity) because it is free and there are tons of tutorials out there to help you set it up as well as free places to host your repo (BitBucket, Github, Gitlab, etc.).

As far as configuring Unity to play nice with git, keep this in mind:

Prefab links keep getting dumped on Git pull

There really isn’t any fix because git works perfectly with Unity when configured properly. Best practices involve saving your work and closing Unity before using git. But if you understand how Unity does and does not flush changes to disk (or at least ALWAYS do a save-project), you can get away with leaving Unity open. The only thing linking EVERYTHING together in Unity is the GUID assigned to a script or asset. Name is irrelevant. Only the GUID connects it. This GUID is in the meta file. I…

Here’s how I use git in one of my games, Jetpack Kurt:

2 steps backwards

Yeah, what Praetor said is it… Debug.Log is your friend, and also since this is animation related, you can open up the Animator window when you expect the animations to go, and actually visually see where the state machine is, see which state it thinks it is in. You can combine this with Debug.Log() output at the locations where you set the animations to be what you think they should be, and that should lead you to some intel. I highly recommend setting up git source control. It really plays ni…

Using fine-grained source control as you work to refine your engineering:

When to make a separate object or class/script? Help me think like a programmer! (Example in text.)

This is a reasonable initial approach. The problem is you have listed the parts, but you haven’t really listed how they interact, and even if you did, it’s still sorta up to you how to organize it. Only YOU will know how to organize it, and the only way you can tell is to do the work. I recommend this: first, develop ALWAYS with source control (such as git), and every time you get even the slightest thing working, commit those changes with good commit messages. Then move to the next thing, c…

Share/Sharing source code between projects:

Your techniques to share code between projects?

I have found that bundling your own code into DLLs only serves to slow down your workflow. I base this on several years of experience dealing with other teams well-intentioned packaging mishaps. With games, it is almost always useful to reach into library code, make a temporary tweak to isolate a problem, and then revert it. With DLLs this is impossible, making workflow harder and more brittle. I prefer to share source code at the C# level. That way I can reach into libraries trivially and inje…

Setting up an appropriate .gitignore file for Unity3D:

Removing IL2CPP_cache from Project

Not sure what you are “auto generating” with… I usually start from one of my other projects, or a gitignore example online, and reason about all the parts inside it, and start from there. Like any other configuration change, after you make it, pay attention for a while to make sure it is what you want. You can always clone the repo somewhere else to verify that the correct files are being tracked. Doing so to a brand-new computer is the acid test to make sure you can still build the project. …

Generally setting Unity up (includes above .gitignore concepts):

How to Git with Unity

It is only simple economics that you must expend as much effort into backing it up as you feel the work is worth in the first place.

I close with a timeless quote from StarManta:

“Use source control or you will be really sad sooner or later.” - StarManta on the Unity3D forum boards

[dennik]

Thank you all for the suggestions. I guess I’ll bite the bullet and try Git. I’m sure I wont regret it. Just need to put that time aside in to learn the ins and outs.

[Kurt-Dekker]

@dennik

Just need to put that time aside in to learn the ins and outs.

Indeed. It may baffle you a few times but the good news is that it’s SUPER popular so there’s tons of help out there. Learn the terminology so you can search for help well: push, pull, fetch, diff, merge, status, etc.

Always commit early and often, comment well for each commit, then push to remote storage, either another computer on your own network, or those providers I listed above. As long as you are doing that, it becomes really hard to lose your hard work. Every time you clone a git repo, you are making a full (compressed) copy of the entire history of the repo back to the first commit.

[dennik]

Alright I’ve set up a local Git repository for my current project and I can honestly say, it was criminal of me to not have used anything like that in the past. I would have saved me at least 2 years worth of work, from all the stuff I spend my time working on. Thank you all for convincing me to try it!

[Kurt-Dekker]

@dennik

from all the stuff I spend my time working on

It keeps paying dividends far into the future… let’s say you want to try something really dangerous with your code, a new feature you’re not sure about.

Make a branch, go nuts for a few hours, committing, testing, committing, testing, cut a build, send it out and think about it for a while… weeks even!!!

Meanwhile your main work line is “Safe” back in the master branch and you can always go back and work there.

When and if you decide to keep the experimental branch, merge it in to main, bam!!!

If you decide to drop the experiment, just leave it there for future reference.