Hi there, I was wondering how if anyone is able to provide some insights or perspective on NxN''s Alien Brain asset management tool? We are currently investigating it as a solution to our growing need for Asset/Source management in a games development environment. As such we would like to invite anyone who has had any exposure to this product, either positive or otherwise, to offer their insights if they would be so kind. As with any games development company, our requirements are unique and as such, any implementation would require a certain amount of customisation and configuration. Is anyone else who may have been down this path able to share a few insights here? E.g. How easy is the product to configure? How is the service level at NxN? Many thanks in advance for your input, Glenn Woodford Torus Interactive

I don''t know too much about alienbrain, but I believe it is a viable solution *if* you can afford it. I believe its pricey. And *not* easily configurable. As I understand it, you would want to hire NxN to visit your offices and *custom* configure it for you.

The fact that it is highly customizable is part of the appeal of alienbrain.

Wish I could give some concrete experience info.

Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.

Yeah, that is the sort of feedback I am hearing. Thanks for your input.

However, at this stage we do not have an idea as to what it would cost us as we have to go down the road of a typical sales process to get to that point. That will probably mean at least another 2 weeks before we know roughly what it would cost us.

As for site visits, we are based in Australia and there currently is no office for NxN here. I think the closest one is Japan. Sort of makes it interesting.

From the reports I have heard, it does seem like a viable option, provided you are going to customise it to suit your specific requirements and not just use it ''out of the box'' so to speak. Oh, and if you can justify it on paper too, given the cost.

Cheers,

Glenn Woodford
Torus Interactive

For art assets, something like alienbrain may actually be *critical*. We use MKS Source Integrity here, which doesn''t really like binary files. We are migrating to Source Safe---not because of the binary file thing, but to get away from some headaches caused by Source Integrity. I have the feeling that most tools built for C++, Java, etc. source management, are not really good for game development which can have huge quantities and sizes of art, music, motion capture, etc. assets. I believe this is one strong benefit of alienbrain.

Graham Rhodes
Senior Scientist
Applied Research Associates, Inc.

This is sort of OT but sort of related: there''s a nascent project to implement an Asset Revision and Management System called ARMS. It''s in very early stages (there''s an operational server backend, but the client API - for which I am responsible - is still being seriously debugged). It''s currently Windows NT/2000 only, but there are long-term plans to port it to other platforms and possibly open the sources (allowing cost-free customization).

Obviously this is of no use to you right now , but just to say that more and more people are beginning to realize this need. Hopefully about one year from now ARMS will be sufficiently mature for your consideration.

Unfortunately, there was a mishap just last week with the project website hosting company, who may have deleted the database. The code is safe with the developers, but the download portal is not available.

From what I´ve heard alienbrain has improved vastly over the last few updates... so i guess IF you can afford it, it´s a pretty good idea, if you can´t, or if you don´t have such a huge pile of data to organise then there are other solutions which will work well for you.