A Perforce alternative for your next Unreal or Unity project
How Git with Anchorpoint can help you with version control on a budget and with a better UX than you would get with Perforce.
If you want to work with a team on an Unreal or Unity project, you need a version control system. A great system should not force you into a complicated setup and should be able to scale later.
Where Perforce is king
Perforce is the industry standard for AAA game development. These companies have the budget and the people to maintain perforce servers. If you don't have both, you may want to look for an alternative.
Anchorpoint is the game development alternative to Perforce
Anchorpoint uses Git as its version control system and extends it with powerful features such as file locking. Git is the most popular system out there and a great comparison to Perforce in game development. Git is open source and has a much larger ecosystem of servers, tools, and communities. This prevents a lock-in effect to a particular vendor. Here are the reasons why:
Lower costs
If you want a plug and play solution for Perforce, the only way to get it is through Assembla. Each user will cost you $627 per year. If you go with Anchorpoint (for your desktop application) and Azure DevOps for file hosting, you pay a combined $312 per user per year. That's a savings of $315 per user. If you multiply that by 15 users, you would save $4,725 per year in subscription fees.
Greater Independence
With Perforce, you are locked into a single vendor. If they raise prices, you have to live with it because the cost of switching to another solution is way too high.
Anchorpoint is built on Git. So if you ever decide to move away from it, you can choose any other Git client or use the free Git command line. You also have access to a variety of cloud providers such as GitHub, GitLab, or Azure DevOps.
Both solutions offer integration with other applications (Unreal Engine, Unity, Godot or development tools). Due to the open source nature of Git, the integration landscape is of course larger.
User Experience
The perception that Git is hard to use is based on using the Git command line or a desktop application designed for developers. If you're an artist, you're not going to use it that way. Anchorpoint simplifies Git to a two-button solution that any artist can understand. The only thing they need to know is how to pull (download files) and push (upload files) to the server. Everything else happens in the background (staging, configuring the Git LFS, merging).
The Perforce p4v desktop application is fine for UX, but it is not able to show thumbnails of files, which is very helpful for seeing a visual history.
Maintenance
If you are not hosting your Perforce server on Assembla, you will have to take care of setting up, configuring, and maintaining the server yourself. If something breaks, you have to fix it.
Using Git in combination with Anchorpoint and a server like GitHub gives you a plug and play solution with a huge support forum for questions.
Feature comparison
How to get started
Take a look at this tutorial to learn how to use Git with Unreal Engine and Azure DevOps. The same procedure applies to other game engines like Unity and Godot. All you need is your current Unreal or Unity project, an account on Azure DevOps and Anchorpoint, which you can download here.
Get started with Anchorpoint
Frequently asked questions
What is Git LFS?
Git LFS is a module that supports the handling of large binary files. Since Git was originally designed to version text files, Git LFS was added to Git a few years later. Today, Git LFS is part of the official Git installer and almost all desktop applications and cloud providers.
How scalable is Git?
Git is scalable due to the recent development of Git features like sparse checkout and partial cloning. Today, companies use large monorepos that are versioned in Git. They essentially merge multiple repositories into one for simplicity.
What is the difference between GitHub and Git?
Git is the system, and GitHub is the cloud provider that relies on the Git system. GitHub allows you to host files that are versioned in Git. There are alternatives to GitHub like GitLab, Bitbucket or Azure DevOps.
