Version control using Git and Azure DevOps for Unreal Engine 5

Introduction

If you want to collaborate on a game project, resolving version control (or source control) is one of the first things you need to consider. If you are familiar with Git, you may have heard of GitHub. This allows you to store your game project on a server, so that everybody has access to it. GitHub is great for software development, but for games, there are better solutions out there.

Microsoft Azure DevOps is a Git server and a viable alternative to GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket. It provides unlimited storage for Git LFS, which is a blessing for game development with Unity, Godot and Unreal. The free plan allows up to 5 users, which is great to get started. Everything above 5 users comes at a reasonable price of $6 per user per month. This is keeping in mind that it does not bill you for storage, which you will need for textures, movies, audio and 3D files.

Azure DevOps is part of the huge Microsoft Azure ecosystem, which is a direct competitor to AWS from Amazon. It seems a bit overwhelming to get started and this tutorial will help you with that.

Prerequisites

In this tutorial, we will use

• Azure DevOps (a free account is fully fine)
• Anchorpoint, as our Git desktop application
• An Unreal Engine project as an example

Setting up your Unreal Engine project

Since Unreal Engine 5, changes on a level can be stored in multiple small files using One File Per Actor. This has multiple benefits:

• The level is not completely locked for others. Multiple team members can work on the same level at the same time
• Your commits to version control are lighter, because you don't need to re-upload the whole level
• You have a better history, because each committed version will display you all the actors that have changed.

If you are using World Partition, the One File Per Actor feature is enabled by default. It not, you have to enabled it here.

Setting up Azure DevOps

Go to dev.azure.com and create an account.

Now you have to walk through the typical account creation process. When you are done with that, you will be able to create a new project in DevOps. The process is a bit nasty, but you only need to do it once.

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Setting up Anchorpoint

In the next step, you'll need a Git client. This is a desktop application that will push and pull files from your computer to the server. In this tutorial, we will use Anchorpoint, because it is suited for artists and has all the configuration for Unreal or Unity projects ready to go. If you don’t want to use Anchorpoint, there are alternatives like GitHub Desktop or SourceTree.

What happens if something goes wrong

Setting up Azure DevOps can be a bit fragile. We experienced some login issues, that can be solved using a custom credential set. Just open up the section under "Use Custom Credentials" and follow the instruction on the screen.

Creating a project

Now it's time to turn your Unreal project into a Git repository that you can upload to DevOps. Create a project in Anchorpoint and select your project folder on your hard drive. Once you create a new project in Anchorpoint, it will be also created on Azure DevOps due to the integration.

Upload your game project to Azure DevOps

Anchorpoint detects that you have changes that haven't been committed yet. There are files on your computer that are not on the server. You need to enter a message and commit them.

When you entered the message and pressed “commit”, you created a version, which is basically a checkpoint for your project. After that, you can press “Sync” to upload them to Azure DevOps.

Work in Unreal

Your workflow will be always like this:

• You work in Unreal
• You push
• You work in Unreal
• You push
• etc.

During every push, Anchorpoint will check for file changes, which have been made by your teammates and download them, before uploading your changes.

What your team members should do

Your team member needs to have an active Azure DevOps account and an Anchorpoint account. When you invited your team member to an Anchorpoint project, which you did in the step above, they will get a notification. They simply need to click on the invite and join the project. Anchorpoint will ask them, where to store the Git repository. They have to pick an empty folder on their hard drive and then Anchorpoint will download the game project from DevOps.

Collaborate

This is all you need to do to set up a game project with Azure DevOps and Anchorpoint. From now on, you can make changes in Unreal or Unity and commit, push and pull. That’s everything you need to know about Git.

Frequently asked questions

How much das Azure DevOps cost?

Azure DevOps is free for 5 users and costs if your user count is beyond that. Take a look at their pricing. Right now, Azure DevOps does not charge for Git LFS storage. Read more on their blog. This however might change in the future.

What is a .gitignore file?

A .gitignore prevents uploading files, that should not be shared, such as build results or DerivedDataCache. Anchorpoint is setting up a .gitignore file automatically. If you want to know how to customize it, take a look at this article on how to customize your .gitignore for Unreal Engine.

Can I use the Git command line interface instead of Anchorpoint?

You can. Just make sure that you configure your .gitattributes file correctly to use Git LFS.