Tarsier Studios Switch from SVN to Helix Core
Tarsier Studios, headquartered in Malmö, Sweden, was tired of being slowed down by poor connection speeds, checkout mayhem, and scattered assets. To support game development of LittleBigPlanet™ PS Vita and Rag Doll Kung Fu™: Fists of Plastic, they switched to from SVN to Helix Core.
What Were the Benefits of Helix
Simple backup and recovery solutions
Unparalleled technical support availability
Team collaboration and improved productivity
Using Helix is an excellent example of this – we don’t need to think about it; it just works.
SVN Limitations
Tarsier Studios started developing using the open source version control tool Subversion (SVN). As the company expanded, its version control requirements grew as well. Large binary files and poor connection speeds had major impacts on productivity. Developers lacked an overall view of their projects. They required a view to see which files were checked out and who had them. Code was mismanaged and spread around on developers’ PCs. Sometimes it was only available as a single version, or on a working server. This created a version management headache. And, files in with various formats were kept in different systems. The team required fast and reliable access to all assets from one place.
Bumping Up to Helix Core
Following a thorough evaluation of the tools in the marketplace, Tarsier Studios quickly realized that Helix Core was a natural choice. The benefits were undeniable:
- Ability to manage all assets in one place including, textures, 3D models, sound effects, music, source code, and more
- Simple backup and recovery operations
- Enhancements for collaboration for graphic artists, sound designers, and developers
- Increased visibility into multiple projects simultaneously
- Helix Free for Small Teams program was free and included excellent tech support
“The visual management of code changes was a blessing due to the complex nature of our team’s workload.”
Version Control in Action
There are 35 developers using Helix Core at Tarsier Studios. Developers work mainly in Visual Studio, but the plug-in P4VS allows the powerful HelixCore features to be embedded right into the Microsoft Visual Studio IDE. The team works with different versions of the games in parallel using streams to visually manage the flow of changes across code lines. Perforce technical support has been invaluable, especially when some data was corrupted due to a hard drive error. The support team was able to restore all the data within a day.
Perforce Enhances Productivity
Although Tarsier Studios hasn’t recorded any benchmarking figures, implementing Helix Core has resulted in some significant benefits. Team collaboration and the ability to access all assets from one system have led to productivity gains. The risk of missing a production deadline has been reduced. And, the full change history feature has made going back to a previous version of the code quick and easy.
Experience firsthand why Tarsier Studios trusts Helix Core for version control.