Comment by jayd16 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jayd16 | Hacker News Reader

As a game dev I find the pitch unexciting.

> git is bad we're better

Honestly, a modern git lfs workflow is really smooth. I think it handles binaries fine. Show me cumbersome git feature and why this works better. You can't just tell me tools I use every day are unusable.

I think the main pain of git is if you want to put everything in a single repo. Big isn't a problem, getting just what a I need (checking out a single large model) is the problem.

From the website I have no idea if this can do partial checkouts. I assume yes but its not stated at all.

> cloud native

A lot of studios want on-prem and self-hosted private cloud support. Cloud native is touted as a feature but details are left out. That has me wondering if some things don't work when I try to host on-prem or that its an afterthought.

Can I easily host this on my own k8s cluster? Its not stated. Cloud native doesn't mean it's on the internet

Another feature that artists like is file locking. P4 has it and git lfs actually has it too. The heavier usage of P4 streams and branches makes it hard use locks effectively these days. Merging something that was locked but now isn't is sticky business...maybe you guys solved that.

> File locking across branches - coming soon!

"coming soon"... so close.

Good luck to you guys but I think the pitch needs work.

Git LFS is a giant hack ontop of Git. Most game devs I know moved away from it over time (back to Perforce or SVN). It might seem okay at first - but deep into a project you'll want to rearrange/rename folders and keep history logs, and discover that Git LFS doesn't actually work like normal Git and your file history wasn't kept. Only once you start dealing with issues will you find all the weird hacks Git LFS does ontop.

I'd say Git not working well for game dev isn't a pitch that Diversion needs to make, because it's already clear to most game devs.

Its gotten a lot better over time as far as adding tooling to make big changes. Its the same ol' 'its fine if you know what you're doing and not so fine if you don't.' Personally I'd rather deal with git's issues but p4 has the a lot of built in support in engines.

Day to day I think its the industry tooling and the partial checkouts that have people pick P4, not esoteric problems you face years down the line.

Thanks for the feedback, glad you asked! Partial checkouts are supported. K8s not yet, but we do run Diversion in a container for testing. Private cloud works as well, it's more a question of support manpower though - will be available for large clients. Obviously we still don't have every possible VCS feature, we're just getting started :) But we are adding features pretty quickly (e.g. conflict notifications took a few days to implement). Thanks!

Game dev here, totally agree.

File-locking across branches excited me, support for visual diffing of uassets would be insane. The platform screenshots as a git/github alternative didn't excite much interest as Plastic and Perforce are major players.

Other game devs mentioned visual diffing as well, we'll try to make this happen!

Also a game dev — if you want to attract devs, tell me why this beats P4 or Plastic. How's it similar or different? Plastic has a lot of the features you're bringing up as "new" and has great DX, which tells me your either didn't do your research, or aren't saying enough about how what you're doing is meaningfully different from them.

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