As far as version-controlling art, I'd lean towards a system where checking a file out locks it from any other concurrent modifications. Unfortunately, trying to merge concurrent changes into an image file, for instance, is just about impossible.
It's almost as bad trying to work with MS Office file types - I wish I could get people on my team to use something else that is more VCS friendly, like HTML or Markdown, but that's an uphill battle. Even better would be if we actually used the versioning and collaboration features that are built into some of the tools like Office 365 that we pay for, but can't seem to leverage...
My wife is a math teacher and trying to figure out a good workflow for her team has been illuminating. Only the one true desktop Word has a good formula editor, so they have to use that... and only SharePoint provides a good "open and save" workflow. So SharePoint it is. Anything to get them off timeshares.
Yeah, exactly. Perforce has file locking, and the need to file-lock binary assets is a great example of why a central server setup has advantages over a DVCS in some cases.
The alternative to file locking could be a rule set for who or which branches win when there are conflicts in binary data. Then again, as an artists you would rather know if someone's touching an asset before you dig in. With art & binary assets, it's more important than with mergeable code that your team and work is properly organized in a way that avoids multiple people touching the same file.
It's almost as bad trying to work with MS Office file types - I wish I could get people on my team to use something else that is more VCS friendly, like HTML or Markdown, but that's an uphill battle. Even better would be if we actually used the versioning and collaboration features that are built into some of the tools like Office 365 that we pay for, but can't seem to leverage...