TeaHands @lemmy.blahaj.zone Alt account of @[email protected], for modding purposes.
Yep I personally use Bitbucket, a holdover from the days when you couldn't have private repos for free on GitHub, and I just never bothered moving. There's tons of options, but I wanted to keep it simple for people starting off 🙂
Add stuff, commit stuff, push stuff. Like 99% of the time that's all you need to know how to do, especially if you're working alone.
But I think maybe part of the problem is people think it's going to be a lot more complicated than that, and who wants to learn something big and complicated when you're already trying to learn game dev, you know? At least that's my theory.
Ok I've seen the "but I use Google Drive for backups so it's fine" argument a few times from solo devs, but in a team? When you're in a hurry? Argh, nightmare fuel.
I didn't want to mention that in the op because I didn't want to confuse anyone coming into this for the first time, but you're right it can be a problem.
I'd expect (and correct me if I'm wrong here) that by the time someone is running into this issue they're generally going to be experienced enough to know about the basics of version control. But there are options, Git LFS is one, Perforce is another, and some folks self host their own instance of Gitlab to get around repo size limits of sites like Github.
Haha, I won't say this was entirely uninspired by you, but I will say it's come up a lot in conversations I've been a part of lately so you're far from the only one 😅
Git is by far the most popular but I know large studios sometimes go with Perforce because it's apparently better for dealing with extremely large projects. I say "apparently" because as a lowly hobbyist I've managed just fine with Git thus far.
Hah, yes I should maybe have added "soothes irrational fears" to the list somewhere too.
You're right about the sense of closure though! Nothing like finally making a working commit to round off work on a feature, oof, feelsgodman.
PSA: Use version control
This one goes out to the hobbyists and the solo devs, as I’d guess anyone employed in the industry is already using such basics.
But it does seem to be a particular problem among less experienced game developers, to avoid using version control (also known as source control) and risk losing progress if not their entire project.
Just in the last few weeks I’ve seen a video from a well-known indie dev admitting he got himself into a tangle through not using it, another one with a guy trying to make a game in a weekend only to have his files irretrievably corrupted on the last night. And endless Discord conversations in which someone has lost a significant amount of work and needs to be talked down from a ledge.
Plus it came up in the game jam advice thread, so it’s been on my mind and I thought it deserved its own post.
Why is this so prevalent in game dev? I have a few ideas, mostly around misunderstandings and perceived complexity. But it’s a bit heartbreaking to see people lose such huge chunks of work, not to mention demotivating for the person involved, so a PSA it is!
Why you should be using version control
- Backups - Each commit is an emergency backup of your code at a particular point in time. Hard drive fails? Well, luckily you’ve only lost the work done since you pushed the last commit. Note: I do recommend taking regular backups to store elsewhere and not relying on just this, but it’s a good start.
- Experimentation & rollback - You can feel free to try new things, break stuff, safe in the knowledge that if it all sets on fire you can just roll back to the last commit and pretend nothing happened.
- Teamwork - Sharing code and working together without overwriting stuff can be a bit of a nightmare. Version control helps to prevent issues and keep things running smoothly in a team situation.
- Branches - Maybe you’re working in a team and want to try adding a new feature without bothering anyone else. Or maybe you’re working solo but want to keep your wild experiments separate to your stable codebase. Either way, sorted.
- Paper trail - Ever discovered an obscure bug and wondered when it crept in and how (or maybe even whodunnit)? Now you can find out.
- Versioning - Clue’s in the name really, but once you start thinking about game releases and versions the ability to differentiate between stable release branch and work-in-progress branch is gonna come in clutch.
- And probably plenty other reasons that I can’t think of right now off the top of my head but hopefully you get the idea.
How to get started
There are two things you’ll need to start, the actual version control software and a place to host your project.
The most popular source control software is Git, and the most popular host is Github. Honestly you might as well learn these first because even if you decide to move to an alternative later, they’re massively popular in the industry and most teams and places of work will expect this knowledge anyway.
This post is long enough already without trying to add an actual tutorial in here but info on the exact process is easy enough to find. You’re smart, you’ll do fine.
You can interact with your project through the command line, but you can also install a more user-friendly GUI. The two most popular tend to be SourceTree and Github Desktop.
You can also find engine-specific help and .gitignore files etc online, so do make sure to search for those.
Before you start your next project. Before you work on that new feature for your work-in-progress game. Before you lose something you’d really rather not have lost. Please, please use version control.
End post.
Hey no worries, we all need a good rant on occasion. Welcome to the community and also to Lemmy! Lurking is totally acceptable btw, albeit kind of a foreign concept to me 😄
We were just talking about scoping in another thread recently and I'm gonna straight-up quote @[email protected] because honestly their advice in that thread was great. Basically it was to break down your scope into bronze/silver/gold like so:
- Bronze is something you are sure you can complete in the time frame.
- Silver is where you think you can get to if you really push yourself and nothing bad happens
- Gold is where you can go if everything goes right all the time.
That's in the context of a game jam and the time constraints that come with it, but I think it's great advice in general. Whatever your personal limitation might be, whether it is in fact time or maybe it's budget or even your own skill level, there will be a "bronze" level game you can make without too much trouble. Focus on that first, and have your silver and gold stretch goals waiting in the wings for if you complete your original plan. Maybe add a diamond tier for the real pipedream stuff, or whatever works for you!
A lot of solo projects I follow tend to sort of splutter out and die after a few months and it's almost always because the dev finally stepped back, took a lot at how long their ideal scope would take, and understandably noped out. A bit of planning ahead and being realistic with yourself works wonders.
Thanks. I feel like this screenshot maybe makes it look further along than it actually is but never mind 😅
Thanks! Yep, I've been learning how to do AI navigation for the first time so currently they wander randomly around town. Including over bridges between hexes that are currently invisible and only exist in the code 😅
To kick things off then. Progress on my little solarpunk city builder has basically ground to a halt the last couple of weeks among illness and other priorities. So it feels good to be back on the horse this weekend.
I've done some planning, picked out focus tasks for the weekend, and first up is to tweak this model a bit. It's the central "hub" building in my city and it's a little too six-way symmetrical for my tastes.
Here's how it currently looks in-game, I'm still in the prototyping stage so there's not much visual variety (all the house tiles are the same etc), but tackling that is a nice low-hanging task to ease me back in.
rolls up sleeves
Let's get to it!
Weekly WIPs, Wins & Whinges
Hi all! Posting from my alt account on lemmy.blahaj.zone because it's been brought to my attention that we have users here from Beehaw and of course they can't see anything I'm posting with my main account @[email protected].
Sorry Beehaw folks, I'm still getting to grips with mod duties here.
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Anyway. As part of the "try things and see what sticks" approach to community engagement, welcome to the new weekly chat thread!
Whether you have progress to show off à la Screenshot Saturday, a Monday morning gripe about unreasonable expectations on your team, or a Wednesday win, this is the place to share how your gamedev week is going.
You know game devs, if there's one thing we love more than making our own stuff it's living vicariously through others, so share away and let's see what everyone's been up to!
It definitely seems like the instances that restrict image hosting are doing a lot better in terms of keeping costs manageable so far. Glad to see there's a plan, though, and no worries about downtime.
Just set up a monthly recurring donation to do my part. This isn't one of my main instances (this is just a backup moderator alt account) but some of my fave communities are here and the instance ethos is definitely something worth supporting!
I'm aware these things take time. I'm also aware that each app developer has been prioritising features in a totally different order to all the others. The possibility that one of them decided some basic mod tools were important to get in there early is not entirely unlikely.
Anyway just thought I'd check with the people who've tried more apps than me. Thanks for the reply!
(Backup mod account comment - please ignore!)
Looking for a Lemmy app with mod capabilities
This was asked a couple of weeks ago and it seems the answer then was that such a thing didn't exist. But given the rate of change in all these apps I figured one might have added it in the meantime. Anyone seen anything promising?
I'm on Android but if anyone knows an option for iOS please leave that recommendation too for anyone else looking.
Thanks!