Which folder do I save my game development progress to?
Wherever you desire!
Anywhere you want.
Unless you’re methodically copying all assets and materials to new folders as you go, your game development is taking place across the whole project. There is no specific folder.
When you make your own map, materials, blueprints etc, feel free to put them in a new folder of your choosing, but generally speaking your whole project is moving towards the development of your game.
What is “game development progress”? Sounds like an umbrella term for everything that you do.
I wouldn’t save psd work files in the project, or the meshes I’m working on on the desktop. I wouldn’t keep code snippets in the project folder either…
So “anywhere” is not a great answer…
You’ll want to back-up things, surely.
Every somewhat serious project I ever worked on has always had more stuff outside the folder than on the inside.
Have I been doing it wrong?!
Now you’re just gettin’ philosophical… Even though I’m working on the game, what I’m doing isn’t contributing to the overal look and feel, in fact I’m going backwards.
Where do I keep that stuff?
tl:dr:
Where do I keep that stuff?
As an indy-dev it’s absolutely up to you! Are you finding your approach practical, efficient, logical, easy to maintain and resilient to snafus? If yes, then great - it’s working well, don’t change a thing.
If not, why not work on that?
Philosophical? Mayhaps! But it’s very practical in my mind.
I don’t even know what OP is asking about, tbh. Is it the folder structure and naming conventions inside the project folder and all the uassets? Or are these the psd character sheet designs and XP curves?
I don’t put the MyHero_FinalFinal_v99.png icon in the actual project folder. Why would I? I have a massive library that lives on a separate drive and gets synced with an online version.
The *.ussets are still linked to the original source and can be re-loaded / re-imported / re-linked if necessary.
I can’t comprehend the reasoning behind keeping *.doc / *.max files in the project folder. UE4 can’t use them anyway.
Willing to listen to arguments, though.
Not willing to listen to arguments along the lines of:
- I’m participating in a 24h game jam so I keep all my stuff in the same folder (obviously)
- my 50 co-artist buddies keep the files in the corporate cloud with a back-up on the Moon (obviously)
Ah, backing up to the moon, I think that’s safer than the cloud…
Now I’m thinking maybe the OP is talking about backing up the project folder.
Do you mean how to backup your progress on the project?
Get an iDrive account ( or similar ), you can set it to ( incrementally ) copy the whole project to the cloud every night… 