How do we organize of all this crap!!

#1 Have you tried CVS?

The needs of an art department might be met by a version control system like CVS.

#2 Our team uses CVS for version control of binaries like models, textures, and audio files. Works ok for us. With a logical tree of folders for your content it should work well.

Alc

#3 You could also try Sourcesafe, although we used to have problems, and it wasnt internet friendly last I tried it.

Alienbrain also have a free 2 machine "evaluation", but I didnt like it.

Phil.

#4 Yes we use CVS for code, and it works pretty well. Although it would be nice to have a visual interface other than winCVS which can be kind of funky at times if you ask me. But what about for models and textures and stuff. Does anyone have a set way they manage all that. I have tried the Alienbrain evaluation and it's pretty nice, but obviously built for far more complex productions. What sort of stuff would you guys be looking for in a system like Alienbrains and what do you do to get by now when it comes to keeping track of art related stuff?

#5 I don't use WinCVS I use Eclipse. The interface for it is much better and seems more intuitive. I'd recommend it over WinCVS but I'm not a programmer and never got down and dirty with either WinCVS or Eclipse so I couldn't tell you what features one has over the other. I have used though and prefer Eclipse.

Alc

#6 So let me get this straight. Everyone says use CVS since that's the only thing available. Is CVS such the standard that if a visual art management tool existed that no one would use it? Or would we all flock to it, considering it was either free or fairly priced. I have looked at this software called Cumulus from Canto which doesn't seem to be too costly, but still. What is everyone's take on this? I don't see why they don't have a $100 Alienbrain like Garage Games does with the Torque engine. Which is definitely more costly than $100 bucks. I guess I should just suck it up and use CVS. Or is there another option? Hmmmm

#7 @Greg

I remember reading about Eclipse when it was first coming out, but I guess I'm not up enough on my programming skills to know the pros/cons vs. CVS. Care to enlighten me? :)

#8 I wouldn't say CVS is the only thing available, there are many version control systems around. CVS is used a lot because it's free and it works very well, as simple as that.

Sourceforge's use of it probably has a fair amount to do with it's popularity as well.

There are lots of superior products on the market, such as alienbrain, rational clearcase, and so on. They tend to be really expensive, since good version control software is fairly difficult to design and has a pretty small market.

Garage companies and other small developers just have other things they need to spend their money on, so they go with the free one.

#9 Eclipse is just a JAVA program used to interface with CVS, so it's the same idea as WinCVS, a gui to an existing framework. So there really aren't any pros or cons :). If you already have a CVS server set up you should be able to use Eclipse to interface with it. Come to think of it the fact that it's multi-platform should encourage GarageGames to make the switch to use it over WinCVS. But like I said before, I don't really know the pros and cons of using WinCVS over Eclipse or vise versa.

Alc

#10 CVS works
CVS is free
CVS has stood the test of time
CVS is simple
CVS is cross platform

so the real question is... why NOT CVS?

#11 One word: Binaries.

#12 only issue I see with CVS and binaries is the CVS maintainer....
I have several repositories setup for various things, each contain binary and ascii type files with no issues at all.

as long as you import them correctly everything works fine...

so, if their is an issue with binaries 9 times out of 10 it is an (as we used to say int he Navy) "ID 10 T" error

#13 @james What excactly is the problem with binaries? Like Ron says, import them properly and everything is just fine and dandy.

#14 Wow, way to vote confidence, guys. I have read the manual, you know. I know how to import binaries.

Substitution and line-end conversion is not the issue I was referring to. I was referring to the ultimate snowballing of binary files in the repository. From that side, binary files aren't diffed, they're appended. This doesn't get to be a problem until you start seeing your executable storage in the repository getting really really big.

So, don't use CVS for binaries, you might say. Well, what's the point in that then? Connecting to two different places and performing full downloads of the bulk of data (binaries) just to get changes? At that point, I might as well put the whole thing up on an FTP site for my team and use that for collaboration.

#15 James, none of us know you so don't get offended all we did is ask for clarification after your rather flippant response.

As for binaries you just make sure your CVS server has enough storage space to hold them and excerise a little restraint and don't make 18000 revisions to the same binary.

Bloated binary storage is still FAR better than no revision control at all.

#16 There are version control systems that do a much better job with binaries, Donovan. That's a good response to 'Why not CVS?' in my book.

#17 ok this is going to degenerate into another religious issue for people so....


Use what you want.

#18 There are a few alternatives to CVS that are free also:

Meta-CVS - Simple branching and merging
SourceJammer - written in Java
subversion - includes binary diff capability

#19 Okay, so the consensus is use what you want. So let's pose this question because now my curiosity is peaked. What issues do you see in your own development related to art asset management? I mean what issues or problems do you guys face, specifically, in regard to managing those art files. Whether that system be file naming or a dedicated asset management system. Also with CVS do each of you use it on your systems or do you have a central place for the whole team to access it? Please excuse me for asking all these questions, but I am very detailed oriented; it's my nature.