When I say larger project I mean something along the lines of:
- Dev Budget > $6,000,000
- Team Members > 25
- Assets > 10,000
When that's the type of resources you're intending to contribute toward the project, then the cash outlay and learning curve Articy Draft definately could make sense.
If you're a young studio that needs to stay 'lean and mean' regarding where you spend time and money, then the money is probably better spent other places (like content production tools, engine technology and talent).
Should you find the main driver is being able to have a central repository to do things like:
- Make files accessible to multiple people.
- Allow collaboration on those files.
- rack who made which changes to what, revert to earlier versions when nessesary.
Then it sounds like you need some form of version controlled repository to manage your assets really, and you'd need to license one to really use Articy Draft as it's makers intend anyway.
Just keep in mind that has to be administered by someone, so a team member will need to become your expert on that system and devote some time to it's 'care and feeding'. There are ways to accomplish the goal without going to a version control system, so you need to consider if something simpler (e.g. DropBox, SharePoint, etc.) will accomplish what you need or not.
If you choose version control there's a lot of systems for doing that, but here's a short list:
- Perforce - The premiere commerical offering in the space.
- Ease of setup/administration.
- Speed of operations on large repositories.
- Integrations (UDK/UnrealEngine, Eclipse, Visual Studio, Max, Maya, MS Office, etc.)
- Good professional support.
- Most industry professionals are used to working with it.
- Subversion - The premiere open-source offering in the space.
- Multiple clients available (choose your preferred UI)
- Integrations (Eclipse, Visual Studio, Windows Shell, etc.)
- On-premise or a choice of hosting providers.
- Open-source, but optionally purchase a support contract.
- Huge community around it.
- Team Foundation Server - Really nice if your tool-chain and target platform is well supported.
- Automated Build Management
- Project Management features.
- Automated Testing Management
- Automated Lab Management
- Integrations (Eclipse and just about anything Microsoft related)
- Hosted and on-premise available.
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