Organizing software-projects in general

[Rummelbooz]

Hello guys,

 

first I hope I'm not totally wrong in this forum. If there is a similar topic I just have not found, then I apologize. My question is not really related to modding but I hope there is someone who can help me anyway.

 

Some friends of mine and me are planning to approach some software-projects not related to modding. But unfortunately we are split all over germany and have not yet found a satisfying way to manage work.

So how do you guys handle this if the members of a team are not sitting next to each other frequently? How are the tasks managed? How to keep files synchronous and avoid having several versions of a file to be merged because of two or more people changing different things in parallel? How to collect and sketch ideas? What software do you use for all this managing stuff (freeware preferred)?

 

I hope I could put across what I'm looking for. I know there are other forums where this question might be more appropriate but that's task of one of my colleagues ;-)

 

Thanks in advance!

 

[Boombro]

The best one to work with is google drive.

In my collage class, we all made google account to mange. I say give it a try.

[Mattiewagg]

Google Drive is good for collecting/sketching ideas out, etc.

 

Perforce is the absolute best for sharing files + version control (not overwriting files, merging, etc.), it's amazing, but it costs money. However, they came out with something recently where they're free for up to 20 members. If you can't use Perforce, try Git. But Perforce is definitely better + Google Drive for documents and such.

[Ph0rce]

Dropbox works fairly well, but it lacks the "check in/check out" system that you seem to need. Not sure if that feature exists on any freeware platform. Hm. Perforce sounds intersting. I might have to check that one out myself.

Edited May 17, 2015 by Ph0rce

[Rummelbooz]

Perforce really looks very interesting. I will definetly have a closer look at it.

 

Thanks also for the other suggestions, but I forgott to say that a "closed system" (meaning it should run on our own server) is preferred. So please no cloud solutions or something like that.

I know the demands are very hard to satisfy, especially for freeware. If you have something that might be suitable for us and it is not free you can suggest it anyway. We just don't want to pay several hundreds of euros / dollars since it is just a hobby so far.

[bben46]

Off topic, Not Skyrim related - moved to software discussions section.