Stingray was designed from the ground up as a data-oriented engine . Unlike Unity or Unreal where scenes are often large binary blobs, Stingray’s levels, units, materials, and shaders are composed of many small, human-readable (or at least diff-able) text files ( .unit , .level , .material , .shader ). This design choice made Perforce not just a version control system, but an integral part of the runtime and editor workflow.