The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2077 makers CD Projekt Red recently talked about how shoddy documentation can quickly turn the development of sequels into nightmares, and, now, the former franchise director of Dying Light has exactly the same warning for fellow developers.
Speaking at a Digital Dragons panel attended by GamesRadar+, former franchise lead Tymon Smektala shared a "quick time traveller lesson" to developers in the audience that he would teach to the team at Techland if he could reverse the clocks: "It's take care of your documentation."
Smektala explains that the studio "didn't really pay that much attention to documenting features" during the production of the first game. "We didn't update the documents that well, we didn't make sure that they cover everything. A lot of the things just happened at the computer of a programmer or a designer," says.
It wasn't just features that weren't being properly recorded. Dying Light's lore wasn't either, probably because the team "weren't thinking that we are starting a new franchise with this particular game." As you can imagine, improper documentation led to lots of problems while making Dying Light 2, like trying not to break continuity or getting specific in-universe dates correct.
"So afterwards, in the years that followed, we spent a lot of time trying to reverse engineer some of the features or collect our lore in one place, and usually we were doing this by going to Wikis made by players, always feeling a little bit ashamed about it, that we had to take it from the players," he adds.
"So, the time traveller lesson – do care about your project documentation if you are working on the first game, because years later, when you are making a sequel and expansion pack, you will be very grateful to yourself for it."
CD Projekt Red imparted similar advice to folks at Digital Dragon, explaining how the studio basically had nothing to reference when it came time to remake The Witcher 1.
