Version control and backup strategies

Development Pipeline & Plugins
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1

I am an active developer, but new to UE4. I have questions about the project structure and strategies for backup and version control. I have searched the forums and youtube but have yet to find a proper guide on the topic. I am currently working with blueprints so I don’t have any actual code. I plan to transition to C++ in the near future. My question is this:

What is the absolute minimum files I need to rebuild a UE4 project?

Here is what I think I know, but please correct me if I am wrong:

  • Everything in the “Intermediate” folder can be rebuilt so is not
    needed.
  • Everything in the “Staged Builds” folder can be rebuilt so it
    is not needed.
  • Everything in the “Editor Cooked” folder can be rebuilt so is
    not needed.

All “.uasset” files are derived from an original mesh, texture, animation sequence…etc. Provided I have the original file it could be rebuilt as a “.uasset”, but is there other essential information written into the “.uasset”? Is there information about the collision box, materials, or physics baked into the “.uasset” that would be lost if I did not back them up. Also there seems to be multiple copies made of some ".uasset"s, which one is the most important?

Bonus Question:
I would be thrilled if anyone is willing to share with me their folder structure organization. Do you break it down by asset type? Does each object get it’s own folder? Does each level have it’s own folder?

Thanks so much
-scott-

2

There’s never going to a single answer to this question. You have to determine what works best for you and your team.

As a good start I setup my GIT project with the following - A new, community-hosted Unreal Engine Wiki - Announcements - Unreal Engine Forums. It gives you a list of what you can safely ignore from source control.

Check out Example Project Content Structure (GitHub - Allar/ue5-style-guide: An attempt to make Unreal Engine 4 projects more consistent) Actually, the whole article is a good start for you.

In the UE4 editor I set my folders to blue for assets that I’ve created and want to add to source control and everything else is grey and could be downloaded from the marketplace. This works for me.

3

Did you ever find the answers to your questions here? Could you share any links that helped you find the resolve?

Edit: link from Bino doesn’t work (tried waybackmachine), additionally I do not know if it would answer the questions in paragraph two very well.