Source control for artists with Unreal Engine 5 and Perforce P4
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Every Growing Unreal Engine Project Needs Source Control
Many creative projects start with a single person building something exciting. An artist or designer creates a prototype, gains interest from investors or customers, and suddenly needs help delivering more than they can manage alone.
That's when collaboration begins—and when problems start appearing.
The Scaling Problem
With one developer, managing an Unreal Engine project is straightforward.
With two developers, passing files around via Dropbox or a shared drive is still manageable.
With three or more developers, especially across different time zones, things quickly become chaotic:
- Multiple versions of the project appear.
- People overwrite each other's work.
- Nobody knows which copy is the latest.
- Changes are difficult to track.
- Rolling back mistakes becomes painful.
- Integration consumes more time than development.
Many teams eventually find themselves in what is often called integration hell.
The problem isn't Unreal Engine. The problem is that file sharing is not collaboration.
Enter Source Control
Source Control Management (SCM) systems exist to solve this problem.
Instead of developers exchanging files manually, everyone works against a central source of truth. Changes are tracked, recorded, and synchronised through dedicated software.
For Unreal Engine projects, the most common choice is Perforce P4 (formerly Helix Core).
Unlike simple file sharing tools, source control provides:
- A complete history of changes.
- Visibility into who changed what and why.
- The ability to roll back mistakes.
- Protection against conflicting edits.
- A structured workflow for teams.
As projects grow, these capabilities become essential.
How Perforce Helps Teams Collaborate
In a typical Perforce workflow:
- Sync the latest project changes.
- Check out the files you want to modify.
- Make changes locally.
- Submit those changes back to the server.
- Other team members sync and receive the updates.
The system keeps track of ownership and change history throughout the process.
If two people attempt to modify the same asset, Perforce can identify the conflict and force a resolution before changes are merged.
That doesn't eliminate the need for communication, but it prevents many of the mistakes that occur when teams rely on shared folders and manual coordination.
Source Control Is About Accountability
One of the biggest benefits of source control is traceability.
Every change should have a description explaining:
- What changed.
- Why it changed.
- Which requirement or task it relates to.
This creates a chain of intent that links business requirements, development work, and delivered features.
When something breaks, teams can quickly identify when the issue was introduced and who made the change. More importantly, they can understand the reasoning behind it.
Source Control Doesn't Replace Discipline
Installing Perforce won't magically fix a team's workflow.
Developers still need to:
- Sync regularly.
- Communicate changes.
- Check files in and out correctly.
- Write meaningful change descriptions.
- Coordinate work on shared assets.
Source control is a tool that supports good practices, not a substitute for them.
Start Early
One of the most common mistakes growing teams make is waiting too long to adopt source control.
Moving from a single developer to a team without proper version control creates unnecessary friction, duplicated effort, and avoidable mistakes.
Implementing source control early allows teams to scale confidently while maintaining visibility, accountability, and control over their project.
For Unreal Engine teams, Perforce remains the industry standard for a reason: it solves collaboration problems before they become production problems.
Final Thoughts
If you're building an Unreal Engine project and starting to bring other people on board, source control should be one of your first priorities.
The alternative is spending increasing amounts of time managing files, resolving conflicts, and untangling mistakes instead of building your product.
The earlier you introduce proper source control, the easier it becomes to grow your team without losing control of your project.