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Introducing Unity DevOps for game development

March 7, 2023 in Engine & platform | 9 min. read
Introducing Unity DevOps for game development | Hero image
Introducing Unity DevOps for game development | Hero image
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Today, we’re excited to announce the debut of Unity DevOps, a modular DevOps solution from Unity Gaming Services that includes a monthly free tier.

DevOps tools and methodologies are a proven way to help you release more often, catch bugs earlier, and deliver higher-quality, more-innovative experiences. But for too long, game studios like yours have found themselves underserved by DevOps products made for general software development.

This is because game development has a host of unique requirements that only purpose-built DevOps solutions can solve, such as:

  • Large scale: Binaries and repositories can be massive, with large projects often reaching multiple terabytes.
  • Role variety: Team members with a range of technical skill sets and jobs to do are contributing to the project on a daily basis.
  • Platform diversity: Each target platform and/or store has its own unique requirements and SDKs, and cross-platform development means you’re balancing them all.
  • Complexity: Even the smallest functionality can yield high complexity, increasing testing and iteration cycles as each new feature is implemented.

For these reasons, you need tools that scale with projects of any size or level of complexity, address the needs of every member of your team, and can get your projects where they need to go. That’s where Unity DevOps comes in. With Unity DevOps, you can rest assured that you’re getting a service that scales easily, offers user interfaces designed for every role on your team, includes support for a variety of platforms, and more.

Unity DevOps combines our existing Plastic SCM and Cloud Build products into a single solution designed for the rigors of game development, helping you release more often and deliver higher-quality games. We have rebranded these solutions as components of Unity DevOps: Plastic SCM is now Version Control, and Cloud Build is now Build Automation.

Better together

By bringing Version Control and Build Automation together, you’ll be able to trace content and workflows across tools, automate more manual processes, and deploy solutions with more ease and flexibility. Additionally, you’ll be able to get up and running quickly with our new onboarding walkthrough, accompanied by streamlined administration and single invoicing across components.

Unity DevOps also features a new navigation experience that makes it easier to perform day-to-day tasks like triggering a new build, reviewing a pull request, and managing your built artifacts.

Unity DevOps dashboard view
Unity DevOps dashboard view

Starting today, when you sign up for Unity DevOps you’ll get access to both the Version Control and Build Automation components. Try all aspects of Unity DevOps for free, with three (3) free seats of DevOps, 5 GB of complimentary storage, and 200 free build minutes per month.

Interested in automating your builds but already have a version control service? No problem – you can still pick which Unity DevOps component you use. For example, the Build Automation workflows can work with any version control including GitHub. Additionally, Unity DevOps Version Control remains compatible with any engine, slotting seamlessly into your existing tech stack.

Last but not least, Unity DevOps is a consumption-based tool. This means that you’ll only pay for what you use once you exceed the monthly free tier. For more information on pricing, see the Unity DevOps web page.

Version Control

Creating games is hard, and learning and implementing proper source control can be a major challenge. We’ve met with many studios whose version control slows to a crawl when working with large files, who employ two source control services to bridge the gap between artists and programmers, and who deal with a whole host of other issues.

We believe your version control should help you collaborate easily with your team so that you can focus on innovating instead of troubleshooting. Unity DevOps Version Control, formerly known as Plastic SCM, empowers studios to create their games without compromising scale, slowing iteration speed, or requiring multiple version control services.

We have been improving Unity Version Control based on your feedback, and that innovation isn’t slowing with Unity DevOps. Thanks to recent updates, you can now use a new code review workflow on the web, leverage cross-platform clients that feature dark mode, and install updated Unity and Unreal plugins.

With the release of Unity DevOps, we are also excited to share a new web dashboard feature currently in beta that unlocks 3D model previews. You’ll now be able to view and examine 3D models (.glb, .gltf, .fbx and .obj) down to the wireframe directly from Version Control, and even play animations frame-by-frame from the web dashboard.

3D file viewer in Version Control

We’re committed to building Unity DevOps Version Control to tackle the challenges of game development, ensuring you can make changes with ease, try more ideas, and scale your development workflows with speed and agility.

Build Automation

A build solution is an essential part of any development cycle. When you can't build quickly, you can't test as often, which increases the chances of introducing game-breaking bugs. Unfortunately, build pipelines are tedious to set up and maintain, often becoming a costly distraction for creators whose time would be better spent on more valuable activities. Offloading builds to the cloud improves team productivity and release quality by freeing up local workstations for higher-value tasks.

Unity DevOps Build Automation, formerly known as Cloud Build, is a turnkey continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) solution that can execute and deploy builds in the cloud. It empowers you to build and release more often for higher-quality, more-innovative releases.

Build Automation can be connected to any source control repository in a matter of minutes and set up to execute builds manually or automatically once any change is committed to version control. Build Automation also supports multiple platforms including iOS, Android, Windows, and WebGL, eliminating the need to maintain unique build infrastructure for every platform.

You can also choose to build your full project or content-only addressables for maximum agility. You have the option to set up turnkey deployment targets, such as Cloud Content Delivery (CCD), or use the Rest API to customize the deployment pipeline to your studio's needs.

Getting started with Build Automation

By empowering users to build across platforms in the cloud, Build Automation can help you debug quickly, experiment easily, and ultimately deliver better games to market.

But wait, there’s more…

Anybody familiar with DevOps knows the iterative cycle of development spans more steps than just version control and build automation. Having a prolific CI pipeline without accompanying artifact management is like creating the world’s most efficient assembly line only to have the products fall onto the floor.

That’s why we’ll soon be introducing Artifact Center, which will help you store, organize, and orchestrate artifacts across your projects. This keeps you agile regardless of how many artifacts you generate, as each team can find the build they need to work with to test faster, find bugs earlier, and try more ideas.

Release more often with DevOps tools purpose built for the rigors of game development. Transform your workflows and generate the best games. Sign up for Unity DevOps today.

March 7, 2023 in Engine & platform | 9 min. read

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