If you are new to software development or are unfamiliar with the field, you probably have never heard of Git or GitHub. If you plan on working with a team on a project in Unity or any other game engine, you might want to consider getting familiar with the service. Whether you are a professional or aspiring engineer, or a casual solo game developer plugging away late nights at your home office, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with GitHub, so let’s dive into what Git is all about.

Git is a collaborative version control system, which is a fancy way of saying people can work together on a project online at the same time, without messing with each other’s work (hopefully). Having different versions of an application is important not only for backup purposes but also to let the team develop and test new features independently before merging them into their main program that gets released to the public. In the case with Git, this is the main (or master) branch, but before getting into the details of how GitHub works, let’s go start a GitHub account at https://github.com/.

In the upper right hand corner you should see a button giving you the option to sign up. Click that and follow the prompts involved with creating a new account and linking your preferred email address.

Great! Now that you have a GitHub account, let’s install Git on your computer by downloading it from their site. You will want a different version depending on if you are using a Mac or Windows based operating system. If you are using a Mac, type “Git Mac” into a google search bar and head to your download site.

Alternatively on PC, you can just type “Git”.

On the next screen you can click the download button to get the most recent version of Git.

If you want to choose between 64 and 32 bit download versions, click the red “downloads” text on the left, and then select your desired version on the following page.

Head to your downloads folder on your computer, and double-click the Git installer to run it.

Unless you are an advanced user, go ahead and ride the next button to the finish line, accepting the default installation options.

Congratulations! You are now ready to use Git and GitHub with your projects! If Git Bash didn’t open up automatically, you can click the windows icon in the bottom left of you screen, enter Git into the search bar, and then click the Git Bash icon to run it.

Once you open Git Bash you should see an incredibly uneventful terminal with a command prompt style user interface, like you might see if windows failed to start on your computer.

Looks aren’t everything when it comes to Git Bash, but it will enable you to connect your Unity projects to your GitHub account, which IS everything as far as this blog is concerned.

Tomorrow I will dive into using the Git terminal to interact with GitHub and Unity. Before you start pushing and pulling information between your computer and GitHub, I recommend making a backup of your Unity projects in another location aside from the folder where Git will be interacting…just in case.