Version control for large game projects

Game projects have large binary files and can overwhelm standard Git version control repositories without careful planning.

Using Git till your repository nears 1 gigabyte

You can get away with using a standard Bitbucket or Github repo if you monitor the size and prepare to upgrade it to Git LFS once it nears 1 gigabyte in size.

Failure to do this will cause the repository to lock and refuse to accept new commits, forcing you to clone a totally new repository using Git LFS.

Using Git LFS or Plastic

Git LFS is an option in Github, Bitbucket and Gitlab.

Plastic is an alternative that is higher performance and optimized by design for large game files.

Using a large USB external drive

You can shuttle a large project between a desktop and notebook or multiple machines quickly by keeping the files on an external USB3 drive.

You’ll need to optimize the drive performance by searching for Device Manager, expanding Disk Drives, selecting your external drive and choosing Better Performance and clicking OK.

You need to be careful when doing this as disconnecting the drive without safely ejecting after closing the project files can result in data loss.

This doesn’t work well as a repository synced with Git, but it is possible if you commit from only one designated machine.

usbdriveperformance

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