terrehbyte/UnityCollab.md

## UnityCollab.md

      
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              UnityCollab.md
            
          
    Unity Collaboration Guidelines

So you want to make a game in Unity with more than one person
(meaning, not you!). Here's a quick list of things that you'll want to look out
for. You can read the description below them for any relevant steps
or information.
1. Unity Versions

As Unity introduces new features and API changes, the stability of your codebase
may vary from version to version. For example, if a co-worker uses a new
function is introduced in the next version, everyone will have to upgrade their
version of Unity in order for their codebase to compile without errors.
If you need to install multiple versions of Unity, install them to separate
directories. My hard drive looks something like this:

X:\GameDev\Unity 4.6.3f\
X:\GameDev\Unity 5.1.0f\
X:\GameDev\Unity 5.1.2f\
X:\GameDev\Unity 5.2.0RC2\

Major version changes typically introduce changes that aren't backwards
compatible. When Unity moved from 4 to 5, a lot of plugins were rendered useless
unless updated by their author.
2. Editor Setup

Make sure the editor is set up with the correct settings.

Go to Edit -> Project Settings -> Editor
Set Version Control Mode to Visible Meta Files

Meta files record how you want Unity to process something.
Always make sure that these are committed whenever you add new assets.


Set Asset Serialization Mode to Force Text

You can see how the data is stored: open up a prefab in a text editor!
This can be handy when two people have made small changes to the same thing.


3. Configure Your VCS

Configure your VCS to only upload what you need.

INCLUDE

Assets

Contains all of your code, art, prefabs, scenes... (i.e. the game)


ProjectSettings

Contains global settings, like Input axes, Editor config, tags, layers...
This may change between Unity versions, like when new services are added.


EXCLUDE

Library

Contains precached and auto-generated files used for running the game.


Temp

A staging location for temporary files, like the UnityLockFile.

'UnityLockFile' shows that this project is currently open in an editor.


obj

Typically contains hot-reloading information for your project code.


4. Beware Repository Restrictions

GitHub has a max file size of 100MB per file, but no actual limitation on the
overall repository size. Depending on your source control provider, there may
be support for a Git extension that attempts to provides a way to store
binary assets outside of the Git repository via symlinking or pointers. In
the case of GitHub, Git-LFS is available for all users with a limitation of
1GB of storage and 1GB of bandwidth per month. This can be useful for unusually
large files that exceed GitHub's regular file size limit.
5. Avoid Merge Conflicts with Binaries

Two people should not edit the same scene, prefab, or any other binary file or
any other file format whose contents are not human-readable.
Scenes are basically blobs of data and should be considered unmergeable. If one
person makes a change to a GameObject in the scene and someone else makes a
change to the same GameObject, how does it resolve that? What if someone removes
some of them and someone else adds something that references them?
The answer: it's fucked. I'm kidding: UnityYAMLMerge was released by
Unity Technologies sometime this year, but I haven't heard of anyone using it.
You'll need to hook it up as your merge tool for Unity projects.
Prefabs are basically mini-scenes; they store a lot of user-defined parameters
and can be difficult to make heads or tails of once two people have made changes
to them.
6. Accept FBX / OBJ and Reject MA/MB/BLEND

The FBX file format has a freely available SDK that developers (like Unity) can
integrate to add FBX support. Since Unity natively supports FBX files, it will
require the least amount of effort and asset preprocessing to use.
Using OBJ files is also an option, though I have had issues with the different
ways that OBJ files are encoded. Unity has not failed to read any OBJ file I
have given it, but I've had problems with other frameworks and engines. Best to
avoid the hassle in the first place.
If you bring in a file used for authoring the content, such as Maya files or
Blender files, then Unity will invoke the appropriate editor behind the scenes
and convert it to FBX upon import. This would require anyone who wants to open
the Unity project to have the appropriate tools installed, even if they would
not normally make use of them in their workflow. This can be a hindrance if
Maya is required especially since it is non-free.
One advantage that using the authoring format of either 3D modelling suite
would be ease in iteration. Since Unity will automatically reload assets upon
load, artists can simply edit, save, and open Unity to inspect the final result.
Remarks

Working with a team introduces so many concerns that it'd be a real doozy to
try to list all of them here. I hope these serve as general guidelines or
fill you in on a few gotchas before you learn about them the hard way.
If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions for this, feel free to
comment or let me know in any way.
Terry Nguyen

terreh@terrehbyte.com