My friend and I both are seriously looking into getting Unity indie licenses, but one major problem we are experiencing is the lack of multiple developer support. I understand that we can both purchase asset server seats, but that is out the price range we are willing to pay for doing side projects at home. Ideally, we would be able to use svn, git, or some other open alternative, but it is unclear when svn support will make it into unity. Can anyone give people like us some tips on how to achieve our goal of making some games in our free time together, in unity, without paying for asset server seats + pro licenses?
Thanks in advance!
Look for another product?
Whilst Unity is generally a pretty good product, the asset server (and how version control is handled by Unity in general) is definitely Unity biggest problem. I’ve read about future plans to improve the situation, but there are no known timeframes at this stage.
Is there really no intermediate solution? We’ve got no problems with locking some files, it’s just the shared library files that seem to change for every single thing that really hose us.
I imagine some folks work on Unity3D projects with more than one person without spending the ~1500 dollars it takes to get both Asset Server and Unity3D Pro. Are these guys just stuck doing separate projects and importing everything together at the end? Or are there really no teams working with Unity3D’s Indie license?
I’m surprised that there don’t seem to be many options for actually making Unity3D something useful for hobbyist teams.
Personally I just spent a lot of time trying to figure out whether it is possible to use some version control with unity other than their assets server. From what I have tried I havn’t been able to find a good solution.
Version control on the Assets folder, is fine for having version control of your script files and such, but all links/reference between gameobjects and scripts will be broken. Then you can add your Library folder to your version control, but then you will have to commit binary files from your library folder all the time even though you havnt changed anything. And it will possibly cause a lot conflicts aswell.
The last thing I tried was to export a package of the entire project. This unitypackage file is a zip file with a tar ball inside so it can be extracted, and then commited to your version control server. But unfortunatly even this unitypackage includes some metaData files that for no apperent reason is updated even though you havnt changed anything in your project. Granted it’s a lot less of unnecessary file changes than the other solution, but they are still there. Removing the metadata files unfortunately breaks the package when it’s compressed again.
Extraction and commiting the packagefiles is fairly easy handled with a script, as well as updating and recompressing the file, so that isn’t the biggest problem.
But in the end I think the best solution is simply to divide the project in sub parts that can be developed individually and then put together in the end. Which is a very anoying workflow.
If anyone have any ideas that I havn’t tried feel free to let me know.
Or just go read the Unity Roadmap, note that SVN/Perforce support are on the way and hang in there while we tidy that up for release in a future update of Unity.
As to teams working with Indie, sure there are some but you have to work carefully together to make it work effectively. You can source control script/text files using SVN and the like, or you can have everyone work with prefabs and/or packages to avoid handing around entire project folders.
SVN would be a HUGE plus for me. Hopefully a nice solution will be coming soon.
Judging by how the assets and libraries folders are laid out, it looks like it will be a lot of work. Unless they are planning on changing how the engine stores its project data?
http://www.sourcegear.com/vault/?gclid=CN6W4ZqejZwCFQJ2xgod5ygjYA
Free for single user and works perfect for Unity on Windows.
At least that is what I use.
I realize this may not be possible, but given that you’re aiming towards SVN and Perforce support anyways, why not just give away the asset server for free with Unity Pro?
My company is just starting on using Unity and we’re the atypical spread out small team, and currently can’t justify the cost for upgrading to both pro and per seat costs for the asset server, so for now we’re stumbling along with Indie and shared storage spaces and lots of “okay, you added what again?” conversations…
It’s the only negative so far for Unity in any way/shape/form. We’re madly in love with Unity after ditching TGB, but this asset sharing problem is a biggy.
We’re all coming from ‘big’ studios, so the thought of working raw without source control is quite scary.
Thx,
John G.
http://buskergames.com
I Agree, working without source control is scary. If the asset server could we installed on a Windows servers I would buy it a heartbeat. But getting something like SVN to work would be awesome.
I put it into a VMWare - Mandriva Linux installation.
runs and runs and runs and if the server has trouble, it just runs and runs and runs on another machine without trouble 
I would never even consider to install vital systems straight on the OS and not within a virtualized environment that I can move as required to compensate for failures.
FYI, Windows support for the Unity Asset Server is also on the road map…