Benefits and negatives of using the asset server?

Today I set the Asset Server up on my Raspberry Pi to play around with, I'm wondering what the positives and negatives of it are. Most people seem to just use something like GIT? but the asset server looks cool. Eventually I plan on setting the Asset server up on a NAS box. I already have the license so cost is irrelevant. I would like to know peoples opinions on it, and also I'm wondering if its still actively developed?

 

I don't see any reason to use centralized version control this days at all. Decentralized version control is much better in all ways. We switched to Mercurial and Git from a loooong time and don't regret anything. SVN/CVS was just a step, and I don't miss those at all.

 

Asset server is a bug ridden mess in larger projects that frequently gets upset and wants you to download yourself to yourself.

It's not being actively developed so much as actively replaced. You should use version control if:

- you want a timeline of backups, a history you can roll back to
- you want an easy way to share the entire project across a team or multiple devices

I'd still use Unity asset server over no version control though. As a newcomer, I can't think of anything as easy.

 

Asset Server is a PITA, but we use it here as it's pretty convenient, and you can get into just as much trouble with external versioning if working with Unity newcomers.

As for not being actively worked on, it may be true in the literal UAS sense, but apparently something's afoot:

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/official-how-can-we-serve-you-better.245901/page-5

 

I'm not really getting a vibe, it sounds like its bad, but its the best for me? On a side note, I keep getting this error about the .meta files on some textures?:

 

That sounds odd. Is asset server functioning ok with everything else?

 

Yeah, its functioning fine with everything else, but I think it might be my network connection is to slow (Its using a cheap Wifi dongle) I think the reason is the stuff its failing on are the largest files in my test scene. It also sometimes fails when downloading the updates. I'll try connecting it with a ethernet cable.

 

Same things happens to me when actually cannot use really fast connection and get onto very large file, so i think this is what is your problem actually.

 

I'm not using the asset server anymore. I've been unable to access or restore versions from my projects in the past, and one time it even stopped working completely. Waste of money and time.

 

Using it over a faster connection works. Damn, I was hoping to be able to use this from school but its so slow their the Asset Store wont even work