Former Dying Light lead urges studios to keep thorough documentation

Tymon Smektala, former franchise director of Dying Light, warned developers at Digital Dragons that poor documentation makes sequels much harder to create. He framed it as a "quick time traveller lesson" he would give his past team: "It's take care of your documentation." Smektala said the studio "didn't really pay that much attention to documenting features" during the first game's production.

Documents were not kept up to date and, he added, "a lot of the things just happened at the computer of a programmer or a designer." The game's lore also went largely unrecorded because the team "weren't thinking that we are starting a new franchise with this particular game." Those gaps caused trouble during work on Dying Light 2.

The team spent years trying to reverse engineer features and collect lore in one place, often relying on wikis made by players and "always feeling a little bit ashamed about it, that we had to take it from the players," he said.

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