Going Remote: Build Up Your Game Dev Team

Going Remote: Build Up Your Game Dev Team
ROBERT COWHAM

perforce.com2 | Helix Core by Perforce © 2020 Perforce Software, Inc.
Robert Cowham
Principle Consultant, Perforce Software

Going Remote: Build Up Your Game Dev Team
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2
3
How to Meet Increasing Demands
Ways to Empower Your Remote Teams
• 3 Challenges When Working Remote
• How to Scale Your Infrastructure
How Helix Core Supports Everyone on Your Team
• How to Set Up Monitoring
• How to Enhance Your Build Pipeline

How to Meet Increasing Demands

• Institutions are closed, events canceled, and lockdowns are being enforced.
• Games entertain and can relieve stress for millions of people.
• Online replacing real life: Virtual F1 and NASCAR.
• Pro drivers competing with gamers.
• This increasing demand means your teams need to:
• Build faster.
• Release more.
• Adapt existing games and systems.
Increasing Demand from COVID 19

Impact on Your Game Dev Teams
• Many of you have always had remote teams:
• Different offices, located in different countries.
• But now you are supporting remote individuals.
• Developers need shared access to large repos.
• Designers need to download and work on large files
• WAN limitations make this difficult.
• Increased need to communicate.
• What are people working on?
• Do you need to switch to different releases?
• How can you help teams efficiently manage workloads?
We’re here to help you
meet this demand.

Ways to Empower Your Remote Teams

What Remote Team Members Need
• Different teams require different subsets of the data.
• All team members need to handle:
• Hundreds of thousands of files.
• Total size of files hundreds of GB or more.
• Many individual files are multi-GB each.
• You need to provide solutions that can:
• Efficiently sync the latest data.
• Seamlessly integrate tools.
• Enhance coordination and communication.
• Support increased demand on continuous integration
systems.

3 Challenges When Working Remote
1. Scale Infrastructure 2. Set Up Monitoring 3. Enhance Builds

• You need to scale your infrastructure to support:
• Individual team members working remote.
• More builds and tests to enhance collaboration.
• Increased releases to support demand.
• This can be done using:
• Single server.
• Server + proxies/replicas.
• Deployment options: on-premises, cloud, or hybrid.
Challenge 1: Scale Infrastructure

• Many of you may be looking at the cloud.
• You may lose access to on-premise servers.
• Can help deliver files to remote users.
• Start by asking:
• What instances/resources are still available in your
preferred region(s)?
• How are you going to optimize data costs?
• How will you manage a more complex topology?
• Do you understand the appropriate security mechanisms
to be set up?
Challenge 1: Scale Infrastructure (Cloud)

• Helix Core — version control from Perforce — can meet the demands for remote teams.
• It can handle:
• 10s of 1,000s of users.
• 10s of millions of daily transactions.
• 100s of terabytes of data.
• 10,000+ concurrent commits.
• Deliver files quickly to remote users without the WAN wait.
• Works on-premises or in the cloud.
• Get help managing your cloud with Assembla.
Helix Core Scales to Support Teams

Scale Globally With Federated Architecture
• Set up servers around the globe to allow remote
users to work like they are local.
• Majors sites can have edge servers.
• Support individual users with personal proxies:
• Caches contents of files locally.
• Ideal for larger files.
• Easy to “pre-sync” to avoid initial delay.
• Easy to monitor.
• Build farms may also be distributed to deliver
feedback faster.
commit
proxy
proxy
proxy
edge
edge
edge

Challenge 2: Monitoring
• Setting up more servers increases the need to monitor
your entire infrastructure.
• Monitoring helps you:
• See trends and spikes.
• Review performance and pro-actively respond to issues.
• Limit any downtime.
• Allocate resources where they are needed most.
• You should:
• Automate alerts.
• Build with industry standards: Prometheus and Grafana.

Set Up Dashboards With Helix Core
MN San Diego

Set Up Alerts With Helix Core

Challenge 3: Enhance Your Build Pipeline
• Coordinating builds across remote users is critical.
• Need to handle more builds.
• Deliver feedback, fast.
• Support multiple releases.
• Deploy build farms close to commit or edge servers.
• Utilize cloud backbone connectivity.

Helix Core Speeds Up Your Builds
• No need to coordinate using external tools.
• Central server keeps DevOps teams up-to-date on
changes.
• Use a “build edge” server:
• Easier to manage.
• Doesn’t require HA replica.
• New “background submit” option increases
responsiveness for large digital assets.
• Quickly delivers feedback to teams.

Perforce Streams Supports Your Builds
• Perforce Streams automates workflows. They can also:
• Streamlines your build process.
• Guides branching and merging.
• Allows you to visualize how change flows.
• Virtual streams provide great flexibility.
• Choose files necessary for builds without impacting other users.
• Pull in some or all digital assets: artwork, video, code, binaries, and more.

How Helix Core Supports Everyone on Your Team

Deliver Files and Feedback Faster
• Scale your infrastructure:
• Flexible options for replication and personal proxies.
• Appropriate use of cloud options.
• Monitor performance.
• Optimize even for “last mile” bandwidth issues.
• Improve coordination amongst the team.
• Build faster.
• Deliver feedback wherever your team members are located.
We’re here to help your
teams stay productive (no
matter where they are).

• Fortnite, GTA, Halo, Battlefield 1 — Robert’s kids
• Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on Nintendo Switch Online — Beth
• FortNite and Minecraft — Kara
• Grand Theft Auto 6 — Leah
• Rimworld & Sid Meier's Civilization VI — Samie
• Doom — Ben
• Asetto Corsa, Forza 7, Minecraft – Gerhard and kids
• Sniper Elite IV, Micecraft, Unravel – and Wii Fit Plus back
out! - Adam
Thank You for Making Us Happy
• Super Mario Odyssey & Legend of Zelda: Breath of the
Wild — Ethan
• Mario Galaxy on WiiU — Dana
• Fusion Frenzy — JoAnne
• MLB The Show 20 — Megan
• Super Mario Party — Tom
• Assasin’s Creed Odyssey & Witcher 3 - Sam
• Destiny 2 - Karl
At Perforce, we appreciate the work your teams do J

Going Remote: Build Up Your Game Dev Team

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