Week 7 Source Control
- Matt Wilson
- Dec 3, 2020
- 4 min read
Updated: Jan 2, 2021
I now know why they call it "GIT"hub!
For several years I had started and failed in the attempt to implement Source Control into my course. Lack of resources, knowledge, and a reluctance from my IT department due to the impact it may have on the college Network has mainly prevented me from doing so. I have tried it once or twice on personal projects but have been turned off by the complexity and the misunderstanding that it is mainly used in a programming environment. The idea of using the command line to navigate through the repository and make saves etc does not appeal to me and overall I find it very confusing.
Being more creative and working mainly in a visual and design capacity I found it less than important. I have started to work more in Engine, especially throughout the first term and I have a desire to improve my understanding of Unreal Engine which has the Blueprint system that I feel more comfortable with than the script I have mainly used within Unity.
Giovanni’s GitHub Desktop Tutorial (2020) took us through the process and was the starting point, but demonstrated in Unity I knew it was likely to throw up a couple more issues. Getting it set up was not much hassle as I first thought and all seemed to be moving nicely. I mainly worked on the master branch to start with until I understood the process, but there was still a niggling uncertainty in the rollback aspect that I wasn't sure if or how it would work.
Then Unreal Crashed. I lost a good chunk of my work. Reverting to a commit seemed to do very little. In fact, it had no impact and the work was gone. The very reason why I was using it seemed to not work and this became extremely frustrating.
I enlisted the help of Juan, also on the course. Although incredibly grateful for his time and efforts to help me through virtual desktops. The differences in understanding were blatantly clear. Juan knew code and the “GIt Jargon” as described by Belen Barros in Github (2019) and I only knew what I wanted it to do in the limited vocabulary that I had and the presumption of how it was supposed to work. A good hour had gone by while Juan talked me through the constant lines of code and commands. This was not going in and it most definitely was not going to enable me to fix the problem.
In the Video Lecture by Github (2019), Belen a UX Designer talks about her experience which I could relate to a great deal. I was spending too much time trying to understand the software and its processes as a whole. It was taking me away from what I actually wanted it to do and down a rabbit hole of figuring out the Jargon and the full process in its entirety.
I had found another tutorial that went through the set up in Unreal but also implemented additional software that would link to Unreal and its own Source Control Button. GIT would need to be downloaded and installed that would link Unreal to Github. This seemed to work a bit smoother and once installed I tried out some test projects to which started to work and show that I could make changes and roll back the project.
It took a good few days of head-scratching and working through the problems before I could actually get back to work on the project. I have to admit the whole ordeal with setup and getting it to work really demotivated me and broke the flow of my project.
I have since been implementing it in my classroom trying it out in multiple locations and with my team so that I can further understand how to use it properly.
Belen talks about learning to use the software as and when you need it and I guess I'm trying to do this but I also don't want to be faced with further issues when much more important work is on the line. She also recommends that I learn the command language but I know that is just a non-starter.
I see the value in this, and more so as I try it out with my Student teams and on my work. I still find it temperamental and a huge lack of support in how to make it work correctly for a none coder type person. It's not really made for a designer but I agree with Belen in that it is definitely a key piece of software for the game development process. The journey continues…
Rubino, G. (2020). [GDD710] Week 7 – GitHub Desktop tutorial. Available at: Week 7: Git Version Control: Development Practice (falmouth.ac.uk) [Accessed 7 Nov. 2020].
GitHub (2019). The art of patience: why you should bother teaching Git to designers – Git Merge 2019. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S3h5L21KlA [Accessed 13 Nov. 2020].
DevEnabled, 2018. Git For UE4 / Unreal Engine 4. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXMTHrLWFKQ&t=10s> [Accessed 10 November 2020].
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