Unity Version Control (Plastic SCM) vs. Perforce Helix Core

Plastic SCM offers a cloud-hosted option that removes most of the friction of getting started. Plastic SCM also offers an intuitive interface for artists and designers, as well as visual branching and merging features. Its integration with Unity is also an appealing benefit, and it will only get better over time, since Unity now controls both sides of the equation. 

Unity started out by building their own versioning system, “Unity Collaborate,” but later shifted their focus on acquiring a Unity DevOps tool, Plastic SCM. 

Unity's Plastic SCM lays out a performance scenario that they refer to as “medium.” It makes sense that it would avoid comparing “large” and “extra-large” scenarios since they cannot scale like Helix Core. 

Their “medium” test only involves a repo that is 7.16GB in total size. Helix Core would label this test “small” (if not “extra-small”). This test was run on a Windows environment. Our Helix Core install base is approximately 50% Linux, 50% Windows. It is known that Helix Core runs faster on Linux, in general. In addition, this performance comparison was run against Helix Core version 2018.2. Recent changes to Helix Core have resulted in material performance gains on both “sync” and “submit” operations on Windows servers, for example. 

But performance is just one of the reasons that multiple customers try Plastic SCM (because they believed the hype) only to come back after it could not scale to their needs. 

Plastic SCM has a GUI — Glueon. It is positioned as being highly user-friendly. But not everyone on a team, especially artists and designers, wants to learn a new tool. To avoid version control, some team members may even start using email or DropBox instead. 

Helix Core has been serving teams of developers for years. But our tool Helix Sync — the free desktop client created just for non-coders — allows everyone to version their way. No more unsecure sharing methods.  

Artists get to keep their own workflow while still getting all the benefits of Helix Core. 

Plastic SCM does offer standard branching capabilities like task branching, diff, and 3-way merge tools. They claim to handle complex integration scenarios like move/rename + readd better than Helix Core, but that is not true, and never has been. Helix Core gracefully handles merges for the world’s largest and most complex codebases. In continuing to deliver on its best-in-class capability, Helix Core’s latest release delivered improvements to the namespace merge algorithm. 

Because with Streams, developers’ lives are easier. It helps them code more instead of dealing with overhead. The structure is built in to support complex branching for development and releases (no matter your branching strategy). Plus, this foundation is flexible enough to adapt to how your team works. 

When a developer creates a branch, Streams sets up their workspace automatically. It knows what files are available, and developers can see which ones are being worked on (and by whom). Streams creates and shows the flow of change between branches. 

Your team no longer needs to rely on naming conventions to determine how branches are related. And forget about documenting branching strategies on a whiteboard! Because with Streams, you always know where your code needs to go. 

Using the Stream Graph, developers can visualize how code is propagated. They can quickly check to see if they have the most recent changes in the parent branch. If there are updates available, new code can be merged down. Then changes can be copied back up after testing in the child branch. This helps keep your branches stable. 

Plastic SCM offers a cloud hosting solution, which removes some of the ongoing maintenance requirements of a version control system. However, any customers that need to work at scale quickly find that they need to move from their cloud offering to their enterprise offering.  

With Helix Core, you can get everything you need in your preferred cloud. The Enhanced Studio Pack is available in the AWS and Azure marketplaces. We also have machine images available in the Google Cloud Platform and DigitalOcean marketplaces. 

📘 Related Resource:Learn more about Perforce Helix Core cloud options. 

Perforce Invites Game Studios to Design Partner Program for Helix Core SaaS

Perforce has invited its game studio customers to partner in designing a future SaaS offering for its industry-leading version control software, Helix Core. The first release of Helix Core SaaS will be hosted on Microsoft Azure. 

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Plastic SCM offers a two-way sync with Git because Plastic SCM “adheres to the Git protocol.” Developers can push and pull and to Git, it just looks like another client. 

Perforce also offers solutions for Git users. Use our Helix TeamHub Git code hosting & collaboration solution to take advantage of unique to-Perforce Git functionality like multi-repo code reviews and the new hth-cli command line offering. Licensed Helix Core users also have the option to continue using their preferred Git hosting and collaboration solution and simply mirror Git assets into Helix Core using the Git Connector. As an added bonus, Git clients can be configured to use a dual-remote strategy, where changes are pulled from Helix Core but pushed to the central Git server (and then mirrored back into Helix Core).