Elysian Shadows

Hey Guys,

I just had a quick question about best practices to use when developing an application with two or more people. So far, everything I have done has been solo but I have a some friends that are interested in collaborating on a project in the near future. We won't be able to meet up to dev all the time so I'm interested in finding some sort of online storage resource that would allow us to host the source files and other content on the web. It would be nice if this service would be intelligent enough to know when someone was actively editing a file that way we wouldnt have two people working on the same file at once. Or, perhaps a way of posting minor version edits to certain files and having a major version file available at all times. Because I've never gone through this process, I'm not entirely sure what the majority of developers tend to do. Any insight on the best way to go about this or even just the way you like to do it would be greatly appreciated.

I think most people use Svn, which you can find some free hosting for it online (and have to download something like Tortoise SVN to upload/download files).

When working on Shattered Wrath, my teammates and I used Dropbox, which is similar, but it automatically uploads your stuff and updates. The problem with DB is that I have a tendency to save every few seconds, so by the time someone else logged on it's say like 100 things were updated, but it was just the one file being updated a bunch. So you might move stuff to another folder while editing it and move it back when you're done. :s

I don't know about multiple people trying to work on the same thing at once, though.

Both also feature archiving, so if you screw up a file you can reload an old version of it.

Excellent. Thanks for the info. Useful stuff.

I highly recommend an SVN system. TortoiseSVN if you're on a PC. That's what we use when developing for ES.

GyroVorbis wrote:I highly recommend an SVN system. TortoiseSVN if you're on a PC. That's what we use when developing for ES.

Sounds good. Thanks

I would also throw in Git.

TortoiseSVN and http://www.assembla.com

TortoiseSVN is a client. You'll need a SVN server, which you can set up on your home PC or whatever.
http://subversion.tigris.org/

But yes, version control is essential and SVN does it well. It has a bit of a learning curve to it though. Commit your changes to the repo every time you finish for the day, update from the repo before you start. Make use of the ignore list. You can right-click on most file names in the dialogs in order to say resolve conflicts (do not put this off!) and such. Don't forget to tell your client to ADD files to the repo when you make new ones (try rclicking in the commit dialog on anything that says "non-versioned")

You can "lock" a file to prevent others from editing it, but really as long as you update when you start for the day and commit when you finish and resolve any conflicts as they appear, you'll be good to go.

...and as I always say, don't ever forget that teams suck.

GyroVorbis wrote:...and as I always say, don't ever forget that teams suck.

trust him. not easy.

cypher1554R wrote:

GyroVorbis wrote:...and as I always say, don't ever forget that teams suck.

trust him. not easy.

Oh I don't know about that, at The Chaos Rift crew we're mostly just playing around, throwing paper airplanes at each other from time to time, the occasional pillow fights with our fans, I'm not very good at that and my team usually looses when we play capture the flag, a lot of smiling and laughing, especially when someone by accident finishes something "Oh look! I just found this spritesheet I forgot to show you guys earlier, isn't it great!", then at the end of the day we're all listening to "99 Luftballons" with Nena together with everyone like fans and dancing around with 99 balloons that look like hot air balloons in different beautiful patterns and colors and then everybody joins in the sauna for one or two cold ones. And then we finish the day with a shower and strawberry cake for everyone. I thought we had this talk before Falco, teams don't suck, right? Maybe I lost that argument.. Oh well. I enjoy it anyway.

Oh no! Wait! Did I just make this all up or was I daydreaming again.. hmmh. *Pritam smiles and dreams on..

Ah, crap!!! You do that now that I'm gone?! I'm thinking about coming back now..

I wonder.. What do you guys think are the chances of me ever making it back into the team? Let's vote!

GyroVorbis wrote:...and as I always say, don't ever forget that teams suck.

Noted...


I just feel like sometimes I need a bit more motivation than I can give myself. Having a friend or two along for the ride would help me stay focused on the project.

hurstshifter wrote:

GyroVorbis wrote:...and as I always say, don't ever forget that teams suck.

Noted...


I just feel like sometimes I need a bit more motivation than I can give myself. Having a friend or two along for the ride would help me stay focused on the project.

My problem always is that nobody else seems to be motivated (with my real-life friends anyway), except for the Infinite Hat team, but we were developing a game for a class so there was more of a motivation than just "lez make a gayme"

hurstshifter wrote:Noted...

I just feel like sometimes I need a bit more motivation than I can give myself. Having a friend or two along for the ride would help me stay focused on the project.

That's what we're here for.