Team Cooperation: help on using PlasticSCM with Unity for a tiny team

[NeatWolf]

Hi everyone!

I'm working on contract in a small team (4 persons includind the CEO), 2 of which should collaborate on the same project.

By contract, I asked to have access to a Unity Asset Server.

The CEO, which has no knowledge about Unity, somehow forced us to use PlasticSCM since he or someone from his companies probably insisted on using it because had some experience, but not with Unity.

He also said that "Using a legacy old tool has no sense when we can use better alternatives".

Well, I have no experience in repositories, project management and so on, while them have no experience with using PlasticSCM in Unity. And no experience with Unity at all actually.

Now, trying to begin start using PlasticSCM, but since the deadlines aren't too far (February), I don't want to end up with messing my project and my work because I took the wrong decisions.

PlasticSCM seems to be built on the Branch per Task approach. This means that even if 2 persons do have actually access to the project, I should be branching for each task, and HOPING the merge will work.

I think this is a huge overhead. The other person is the main "artist" of the team, so he's the game designer, art director, level designer, etc.. so he should basically only access the scenes and build them with the prefabs and tools I will be developing.

Also, he's probably going to use Glueon.

So, I, the only programmer, should continuously be branching back and forward from the main branch, and let the artist work on the main branch exclusively.

Shouldn't we use a single branch? This seems to overcomplicate things for 2 persons only

We're both using Unity v5.4.2f2 with Personal Edition, even if we could transition to Plus soon.

I don't think we're going to update to Unity 5.5 in the middle of the project because I'm relying on several third party assets which could, or could not, be updated in a timely manner, hopefully bug-free. And the first release of 5.5 could be a little buggy as well.

I'm not going to use the Unity Collaborate Beta, since I don't think is reliable enough to be sure it won't be messing up the project.

Now, after I watched several Webinars about PlasticSCM+Unity, I don't even know how to fill this form:
 

The Unity project already exists and already contains a prototype, in a certain folder on my disk.

Should I fill in the same folder here? The server is not local but remote.

Will I be able to move the folder of the rep elsewhere if it gets so huge to fill my disk?

Are the folder rep and my Unity Project folder the same thing? Do I have to worry about PlasticSCM to be deleting or dirtying up the Unity folder structure with extra data?

How should I name the repository according the best practices?

What is the workspace? How should I name it, always according to best practices?

I'm not comfortable with all this, and probably will be having a talk with the CEO, but, who knows, maybe I'll get used to it?

Is the experimental merge tool from PlasticSCM still working on scenes and prefabs? The last webinar in the youtube channel is from 2015 and lots of Unity stuff has changed.

Does PlasticSCM now handle scenes and prefabs in binary format in a reliable way? Are merges problematic?

I can't find a way to switch to text/XML format for saving scenes and prefabs as suggested in the webinars. If I can't merge scenes or prefabs, I can't branch.

What if I later decide that PlasticSCM is just too much for our team? Will it be leaving the folder of our unity project with leftovers?

What are your experiences? Could you please share your thoughts? Do you have any very noobish or step by step video/tutorial to share?
Any help and answer is appreciated.

Thank you in advance.

[manu]

Hello!

I wan to to be honest with you, you'll be much better with Plastic rather than with any other tool. There're a few thing to learn, very basic, and you are set to go.

I'm available for you if you want to have a 20 minutes gotomeeting connection, I can show you how it works and the basics. If you are not available I'll go I'll answer one by one your questions.

 

[JRC]

It would have been great if NeatWolf's concerns had been addressed publicly since they are EXACTLY the same concerns I have in 2021 which the documentation and countless of videos on YouTube fail to answer. Although Plastic SCM and Plastic SCM Cloud Edition are actively marketed for use with Unity, the tutorials, documentation, and YouTube videos try really hard to provide a generalized view that can be used with any other workflows like DevOps, that a clear path to understand how to work with Unity is never clearly provided. 

I would be interested to see if NeatWolf was able to understand how to use Plastic with Unity. I now see I have a really steep learning curve. The acquisition of Codice by Unity has not improved the ease of use of the product or the documentation just yet. I hope it gets to be more intuitive and integrated since at the moment I feel like I have to walk on eggshells so I don't mess up my current prototype and not end up with duplicate copies of files all over.

[calbzam]

Hi,

Could you point us where you are stuck using Plastic via the Unity plugin? Did you get any error?

Are you using the new beta plugin? https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/plastic-scm-plugin-for-unity-beta-169442

Most of the SCM oerpations can be performed via the plugin and you don't need to use the Plastic GUI.

Regards,

Carlos.