I want to develop a game and am considering collaborating with others, potentially even making it open-source.
To make this process smoother, I need to establish an easy-to-replicate development environment—one that can be set up by non-programmers (such as artists) but is also simple for me to configure so I can focus on actual development.
I’ve explored various options (Docker, Podman, Anaconda, NixOS, VMs), but the choices are overwhelming, and I’m unsure which one is best for my needs.
I’ve had partial success with a Fedora+i3wm virtual environment (VM), creating a plug-and-play experience. However, this setup requires extra space (~3GB for the OS) and includes software already installed on the host system. It also requires users to learn i3wm and possibly use the command line, which may not be ideal for everyone.
I would appreciate any advice on how to approach this effectively.
Edit: An example of things to setup:
- The right .Net Sdks version
- Git
- Git LFS
- Format Checks
- VScode (+ extensions)
- Godot (+ extensions)
Final: I have read your recommendations, researched your suggestions, and looked at what other projects use (Luanti uses docker). And I have finally decided that at least for now this might be a bit overboard. I will start with a simple setup script and setup files (such as for vscode) with instructions. And if I need to in the future I will most likely use Docker.
Interesting idea to take "non-programmers (such as artists)" out of their normal professional workflows (e.g. adobe creative) and putting them in yours for the sake of productivity. What hardware are we talking about? Are you running a vm? That won't work on apple silicon. (Which creative types overwhelmingly use)
Bonus question: You "want to develop a game" and are "considering collaborating with others"? What's the scale and where are we at with making the game? Because worrying about your team's workflow sounds a lot like having that $10 million idea and buying a domain name before writing a line of code.
That said, I've done this kind of thing before. Pick something. Anything. And write scripts to automate most of it. You will never get a 100% turn key solution, and everything has a tradeoff. Solve enough of the problem and go work on your game.