For those of you who work with a team, especially one that's not local, what do you use for collaboration, discussion of design decisions etc.? Do you just put everything in a git project, or do you use something like shared Google Docs, Notion or other tool? Do you meet up through video or voice calls on a regular basis? Or keep the conversation mostly in written form? I found a graphic artist who is interested in working on a project with me and I'm looking for the best way to communicate and exchange files etc. efficiently.

For the actual project git. If you need design documents and you put them in markdown format or something similar then you can also use git for that.

Forum is a good option if you have a somewhat larger team (5+ or something) and you don't need rapid exchanges.

I used slack at some point for situations where rapid exchanges of ideas were required. I suppose you could also use voice for that, but I prefer text form. Its still immediate, but a little bit slower which makes things a more thoughtful.

Video is good for formal meetings only and these are generally a waste of time. Wouldn't bother with them.

    Zini Thanks. For design docs I've always used TiddlyWikis so far, so html files. What about concept art and assets like music, sound and graphics? Can git handle those as well? Or would they better be stored in some kind of cloud drive? Do you use some kind of task tracking, like a kanban board or similar?

      git isn't great with large binary files. If its something like SVG, no problem. If its not particularly large, that might work also. For everything else you need alternatives. git lfs is an option. But that is expensive if you host it on some service (like github) or difficult to set up when you host it yourself. Cloud works too. Or any other of many option. For one project I was involved in the project leader had set aside some space on his webserver and we were using that via FTP. If I'll ever do this kind of cooperation again I might just use my NAS to keep everything on my own hardware and save on subscription cost.

      To organise development any kind of issue tracker will do. I have used several different ones in the past. Doesn't make much of a difference which one you choose.

      I have recently started using a Kanban board for my solo project. No experience with use of Kanban in groups. Its probably good to organise work. Not so good to keep a record of what has been done (that's where the issue tracker shines again).

      Used to use Xmind and dropbox/google drive etc. But only for fairly small teams/projects.

      For game design documents, I use Confluence from Atlassian.

      For project tracking, Trello.

      Communication depends on the size of the team and the project. In a more professional/commercial project, Slack has been the place. But if I'm doing a personal project with a friend, I usually just make direct contact through Signal.

      I use Git currently, even though it might not be the best for heavy game projects. I would love to hear what alternatives there are for smaller indie projects. Perforce I know a lot of bigger studios use.

      I do as many video calls as possible (I don't mean to overdo it. This depends on the team and personality types, of course. But perhaps once or twice a week or every other week). A lot is communicated through visual queues that get lost in text or voice. Maybe not for small things where you need a quick answer to a question. But having longer discussions about things, I think video calls have significant benefits. You get a much better sense of soft values. It's not all about data and information sharing; soft values, emotions, and building relationships during the project are essential, too.

      7 days later

      Im no hard core game dev myself, but for what im doing, git / git lfs for version control. Never had problems using git with blend files or any other binaries. Also for godot projects, also for other projects that generate lots of binaries. I dont understand why yall saying its bad and hard to set up, i have set up my own gitlab instance (homelab) but it was too overkill for 1 man band. Gitlab has issue tracker and other goodies wich can benefit groups and teams, some versions had kanban boards or something that connects directly with issue tracking, but if youre 1 man bandito, then gitea (self hosted) is enough. It has user interface similar to github but with less features. It has issue tracker too. Easy to set up and doesnt use much resources - 100mb ram. Gitlab - 4gb ram.

      For note taking, logseq. Its a learning curve to use but once youre comfortable then its a blast 🙂. Tho its a personal note taking app, meaning its not possible to collab in it. Also its per device - meaning you will need to manage the data on your own to share between devices. It just saves data in files on device, and then loads it on the app. I use git and then sync between devices. You could use syncthing to sync files.

      For comms - matrix (self hosted). Has text/img/voice/video sharing capabilities.

      In this world your data is not save. Im strong believer in self hosted stuff. Dont trust nobody 😃.