How to prevent losing progress with Collab+Dialogue System

[JavierRayon89]

Hey gang! I'm Javier, indie dev from Mexico City. My brother and I have lost progress more than once with Unity Collab, the engine's repo solution. This includes art assets and conversations in the Dialogue System.

How useful are local backups, to restore previous versions of our Unity project?
Do you know of an automated solution for Mac?

Have you seen a repo that allows 2 devs collaborating with the Dialogue System, and it's easy to learn?
Unity Collab has been a nightmare. Thanks a lot! It's awesome learning from experienced people.

[Tony Li]

Hi Javier,

Make sure only one person at a time edits a dialogue database.

A dialogue database is a ScriptableObject asset. It's usually serialized as text, such as:

Code: Select all

%YAML 1.1
%TAG !u! tag:unity3d.com,2011:
--- !u!114 &11400000
MonoBehaviour:
  m_ObjectHideFlags: 0
  m_PrefabParentObject: {fileID: 0}
  m_PrefabInternal: {fileID: 0}
  m_GameObject: {fileID: 0}
  m_Enabled: 1
  m_EditorHideFlags: 0
  m_Script: {fileID: 11500000, guid: 935899b62f48ae5498594680ed17d133, type: 3}
  m_Name: Demo Database
  m_EditorClassIdentifier: 
  version: 1.5.1.0
  author: Pixel Crushers
  description: This project demonstrates the major features of the Dialogue System
    for Unity.  In this sci-fi scene, the player's squad has been sent to intercept
    launch codes to stop the launch of a weapon against their homeworld.

Since it's text, if there are two conflicting versions, your version control system may try to merge the changes, causing a corrupt asset.

If multiple writers need to work at the same time, use multiple dialogue databases. or use an external multi-user editor such as articy:draft multi-user (which is unfortunately kind of expensive).

More info: Working with Multiple Databases

Also, make sure your project's Serialization is set to Force Text and Meta Files are set to Visible.