If you asked me what is the one most important tool in gamedev, it wouldn't be Unity or Unreal or Godot. It would be git. If you play games like I do, you’ll have a huge log of autosaves and quicksaves. Git it the quick save quick reload of the programming world. Git also offers collaboration tools, so if you add a new dev partway through, getting them set up and contributing is super easy. It basically makes programming a multiplayer game. 

Learning the most basic level of git will save you tons of time. Learning the most basic 4 commands (git fetch, git checkout, git commit, git push) will save you tons of headache. I decided I wanted to try and upgrade unity from 2018 to 2019 and it updated all of my files. However, the airconsole plugin wasnt compatible with 2019! Oh well, no big deal, zip zap zoop. A quick revert and we outie. There are also a bunch of times where small bugs get introduced. Hmmm, I thought to myself, what I’m working on right now shouldn't cause this bug. A quick checkout to two days ago proved that I was right! I coded that bug last month! Without git, theres no way I’d be able to find out where in my code I introduced this bug so effortlessly. Check out how I do my commits here https://github.com/betakyros/know-your-friends/commits/master.

The second benefit is it’ll open the door to collaboration. You’ll need to learn some of the more advanced commands such as resolving merge conflicts, but if you want to work with 2 or more devs, git is much better than a google drive folder with 30 “latest build” folders in it. 

If you’re working on your first throwaway game or a game jam, git might not be too useful. But any project that lasts longer than one month should use git. Even if you have a game in progress, it’s never to late to start using git. Git is so popular, they made a git game! https://learngitbranching.js.org/! It’s pretty fun and my company uses it for new hires to teach git basics. Unity actually has a free git plugin so I don’t even need to open another terminal to commit and push! I highly recommend it. https://unity.github.com/

Don't forget to checkout our website https://betakyros.github.io/Meexarps/