Tequila Works

Perforce Case Study: Tequila Works

Pull quote:
“With Perforce, we achieved a full return on our investment within one year.”

Jesus Martinez, Producer, Tequila Works

About Tequila Works
•    Headquartered in Madrid, Spain; founded in 2010
•    An innovative games studio with team members in Madrid, Galicia and San Francisco
•    Founders and core team previously worked at Blizzard Entertainment, MercurySteam Entertainment, Pyro Studios, Sony Computer Entertainment and Weta Digital
•    Best known for its award-nominated game Deadline for XBOX; soon to launch RIME, developed for Sony Computer Entertainment Worldwide Studios Europe on the PlayStation 4 platform

Core Pain Points
As at many new studios, Tequila Works started with open source version control tool Subversion. When the studio was commissioned by Sony Computer Entertainment to develop RIME for PlayStation 4, it decided to review its version control requirements. The company realized that open source did not meet all of its criteria for version control, namely:
•    Ability to scale and support a growing code repository of approximately 400,000 files and 40 GB
•    Smooth integration across other software development tools and platforms, including UNREAL, TeamCity, C++, Maya and 3D Max
•    Efficient collaboration between colleagues in different locations
•    Fast and reliable performance in a complex and time-critical environment
•    Support for Continuous Delivery – Tequila Works is using this increasingly popular methodology, which ensures that software is always in a releasable state with clear feedback, testing, automation and version histories

Why Perforce?
Following a thorough evaluation, Tequila Works selected Perforce for:
•    Better overall performance and speed when compared to other products
•    Suited for dispersed and remote workers, while supporting a centralized development environment
•    Powerful branching capabilities
•    Local support via Perforce partner DS Data Systems Iberia, which has supported Tequila Works at the migration process
“Perforce does exactly what we need it to do,” says Martinez. “Its performance is superior to other products.”

Perforce in Action
Tequila Works installed Perforce in June 2013. Because of the small size of its initial team, Tequila Works was able to take advantage of the Perforce 20/20 program, which provides a full but completely free version of the software for up to 20 users. The team has quickly expanded to include additional programmers, artists and designers.

•    Perforce pushes the data through to TeamCity, a continuous integration system, every 15 to 30 minutes. This means that at any time there is a working build of the game with clear and rapid error management, using the bug-tracking features within TeamCity
•    Tequila Works then uses Perforce to identify the most recent check-ins in so that bugs can be identified and fixed straight away
•    Support and training are available from both DS Data Systems Iberia and Perforce, but the team has never utilized it as the system is intuitive and simple to use

Business Impact
Since the installation of Perforce, Tequila Works has observed tangible benefits:
•    Full ROI was achieved within one year
•    Adoption of Continuous Delivery
•    Deadline for the development of RIME has been met