Make the same
GAMES...
...but in better
CONDITIONS
The human-centric platform for game development
Game Dev Space helps game developers build their projects stress-free.
- Version your game
- Test and deploy automatically
- Sleep easy
What is Game Dev Space?
Game Dev Space is a 🇨🇭 based cloud infrastructure dedicated to gamedev-related software for a healthier work environment.
It's a set of online services that I can set up for you.
Game Dev Space lets you collaborate through an open-source Git forge to version your projects. Catch bugs earlier and deploy your game automatically with its full fledged CI/CD solution without compute time limitations.
Remote workspaces, HTTP automation, chat... it's all at your fingertips. Weather you're building a robust pipeline or jamming every month on different projects, Game Dev Space is tailorable to your needs.
Updating our game on Itch after the first playtests only took a minute and happened automatically after each commit
for the 10th Epic Game Jam
Eating your own bread has never been that easy
as I develop my own projects with Game Dev Space
We know how it goes...
Our industry is hard
The videogame industry is known for its difficult work conditions. Crunch, burnouts, layouts...
You know the drill. I know the drill, first hand.
But you're an indie!
This doesn't apply to you! No, you...
never overwork yourself
never do all-nighters
never have merge issues
only deploy your games once
...right?
All game dev is hard work
Improve your work environment
Thankfully, we can leverage tried and tested technologies to help us on this difficult journey towards peaceful development.
Sharing files and code, as easy as it gets
Using Git and its Large File System lets you benefit from the best version control system there is for files of all sizes.
The open-source Github clone Gitea frees us from licenses and limited minutes of automation per month, among other benefits.
Automated testing
Testing our code is key when discussing both code quality and developer experience. With Game Dev Space, each change is tested automatically and on the cloud. It's called Continuous Integration (CI for short).
Continuous Delivery
Continuous Delivery (CD) lets you build and deploy your game automatically, as often as possible.
This way you always have a working build available and when it breaks, you know exactly where to look to solve it.
Use case example
Chat-based project management
You don't have to learn fancy new tools to benefit from CI/CD. Here's an example of how it might integrate in your messaging application of choice.
main branch!
sudo rm -rf / main branch! Build is available
here.
Games are for everyone, so is healthy gamedev
Accessible tools for every team
There's no one size fits all when discussing tooling. That's why the tools are adaptable to your team, project, pipeline and workflows.
What's your favourite flavour?
Are you an open-source fan like me and love Godot? Or are you developing the next ulta-realistic AAA MMORPG using the one and only Unreal Engine 5? Or did you stick with Unity?
Either way I got you covered. And if you use another engine, it's fine. It can almost certainly be adapted to run on the platform as well.
Opiniated for best practices
By default, the platform's automation encourages Trunk-based Development because I believe it to be the best collaboration practice.
But you may disagree and prefer Git Flow for example and that's fine.
Every team is unique, the platform adapts to your preferences.
Go wild with Perforce
While Git is an incredible VCS, game engine integrations may be a bit lacking sometimes especially with Unreal Engine.
Lots of Epic Game's tooling is built around Perforce and you can directly benefit from it by setting up a server on Game Dev Space.
Use case example
Same space, different environments
Let's see how two teams might benefit differently from Game Dev Space.
💻 First is a solo dev with many Godot projects, they like to jam.
🏢 Second is a bigger team working fully remotely on an ongoing project with Unreal Engine 5.
💻 Solo dev
As a solo dev for small projects, we can just setup a Gitea instance which takes care of versioning and of CI/CD to automate the deployments.
With a single service and little resources dedicated to it, our solo dev makes sure to reduce their expenses while benefitting from a full versioning and CI/CD solution for their projects, completely on the cloud.
🏢 Remote team
This team need to share bigger files and maintain a larger codebase together: testing and documentation become key to prevent breakage.
We setup a Gitea instance for versioning and CI/CD, but with lots of resources that can spin up when needed to take care of multiple automations at the same time.
Since not everyone is a tech pro, the more common processes can be controlled right from a chat paired with workflow automation.
Finally, we setup a website, some custom web tools and the docs. We can go a step further and setup remote workspaces: It lets you code from anywhere, without any setup and it's great for onboarding new team members.
With all these services on the cloud, the team covers most of their automation needs which are available to everyone in the team regardless of where they work from. Not the worst Developer Experience.
Tools by humans, for humans.
Take back control
Most platforms will resell you an Amazon cloud subscription at a high price with the added bonus of being tied up in their ecosystem.
Well it doesn't have to be that way.
Hosted in Switzerland 🇨🇭
Game Dev Space leverages Infomaniak's cloud in Geneva, which means better employee protection than anything the main cloud providers will ever do.
It's also an eco-friendly provider. Their next datacenter is actually going to use the servers' heat to provide hot water to the city above! One of the many advantages of mutualized resources.
Community driven
Need a hand to test your code or to automate some task? Simply ask around on discord, we'll be there to help.
Made a custom script to ease your life? Share it with the community, someone else might benefit from it.
Make it your own
Need something more? If it runs in docker, we can host it. You can develop your own tools and host them on the cloud easily using containers.
Combined with workflow automation over HTTP, you can connect the tools you use everyday for mail, drive, chat, project management or production tracking to your very own dedicated infrastructure.
Use case example
Didn't have enough?
Are you missing something? Another CI tool, Kanban tools, Google drive replacement, Microsoft Office alternative... The open source world is filled to the brim with useful stuff. Check these out.
Butterscotch Shenanigans' Seth Coster
“You can't afford not to do this.”
Seth Coster is a developer who was tired of the stress and pressure that seemed to always come from game development. That's why he and his team started implementing DevOps principles for their studio, the same principles that Game Dev Space enables and encourages.
“As soon as you take even one single step towards applying DevOps principles to your work, you'll see immediate benefits.”
From that point on, he and his team never looked back. Check out his amazing GDC talk Stress-Free Game Development: Powering Up Your Studio With DevOps