Open-World Narrative · Guides & deep dives

0013: Perforce Sidecar for Binary Assets

V5 will produce very large Unreal maps, meshes, animation clips, MetaHuman data, VO, and cinematic assets.

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Status: Accepted

Date: 2026-05-25

Context#

V5 will produce very large Unreal maps, meshes, animation clips, MetaHuman data, VO, and cinematic assets. Git remains the right source-control surface for code, text data, tools, and manifests, but it is not the right collaboration surface for all binary content.

Decision#

V5 uses a Helix Core / Perforce sidecar depot for production-scale binary assets. Git remains canonical for source, docs, schemas, manifests, tests, and small bootstrap assets required to open the project.

Consequences#

  • Binary asset manifests in Git must identify their Perforce depot source.
  • Bootstrap assets can live in Git when they are small and reviewable by size.
  • Build and cook automation must sync both Git and Perforce inputs.