"It was chaos": How The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 are learning from decades of CD Projekt's documentation mistakes

The Witcher 4 and Cyberpunk 2 person gotten ample attraction for their whizbang Unreal Engine features and imaginable large formed resurrections, but 1 of their cardinal 'enhancements' whitethorn look horribly dry: their instauration volition beryllium much, much amended documented than immoderate Witcher oregon Cyberpunk crippled before. This besides means that they volition beryllium a stronger instauration for Witcher and Cyberpunk games to come. Both games are pursuing a caller accumulation process that obliges the devs to support their interior improvement notes up to date, from milestone to milestone – whether it beryllium a communicative bible, a instrumentality usher oregon a folder of sketches.

As method writer squad pb Jarosław Ruciński and elder method writer Adrian Fulneczek explained during a presumption astatine this year's Digital Dragons league successful Kraków, CD Projekt person learned the worth of bully interior documentation the hard mode implicit the past 20 years, with institution lorekeepers departing and important tools shelved to chopped costs, sabotaging enactment connected everything from Cyberpunk 2077's Phantom Liberty DLC to the forthcoming Witcher remake astatine Fool's Theory.

Image credit: CD Projekt

"The world is that information, it has a half-life," Ruciński told an assemblage of developers. "Every twelvemonth that passes, the important and evident reasons wherefore a circumstantial diagnostic was made the mode it was go blurry and murky." CD Projekt's mistakes connected this beforehand are partially the effect of not anticipating their ain success. Back during improvement of the archetypal Witcher – which was based connected abandoned codification for a PC larboard of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, with a starting squad of 15 – cipher expected the workplace to turn into a cardinal zloty cognition with implicit a 1000 unit connected the books.

"The workplace was inactive precise small, precise bare for success, precise ambitious," Fulneczek recalled. "But occurrence wasn't guaranteed astatine all, and frankly, cipher was reasoning 20 years up backmost then. We were inactive discovering our craft, our pipelines, and exertion arsenic we went. Now due to the fact that the workplace was truthful small, we thought we could trust connected the oral contented and tribal knowledge. It was a choky knit group, truthful the cognition didn't unrecorded successful a database determination – it was passed astir [from elder to junior] implicit coffee."

"We person thing from that period," helium confessed. "Or astatine least, not successful our centralised cognition base. Perhaps we person immoderate documents present and determination connected immoderate aged forgotten servers, but if we would similar to find it, we would person to allocate masses of resources to bash truthful – clip and money, which we don't want. So if the authorities of your documentation is this achromatic hole, this means you person to reverse technologist everything, and fundamentally reverse technologist your ain legacy."

This "black hole" has proven particularly troublesome during improvement of The Witcher remake, announced successful 2022. Fortunately, the latter's developers, Fool's Theory, employment a fig of erstwhile CD Projekt developers. "That injection of mislaid tribal cognition was surely uplifting, but adjacent with their help, gaps exist," Ruciński said, comparing moving connected the remake to figuring retired a puzzle with astir of the pieces missing. "I personally volition instrumentality the astir horrible, tangled, chaotic messiness of documentation implicit nary documentation," helium commented. "Because you tin walk time, walk immoderate resources, and yet fig retired what the documentation was."

Image credit: CD Projekt

When improvement began connected The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, CD Projekt had "moved past the Wild West of The Witcher 1 and 2", Ruciński went on. The institution created an interior wiki to support way of the game's gestation, from time to day. Then, a spot inexplicably, they decided to unopen the wiki down to prevention money.

"We lone made 1 large mistake, which was reasoning that the extremity of improvement for The Witcher 3 besides meant the decorativeness enactment for the documentation," Ruciński said. "Because connected paper, the server hosting the wikipedia looked similar a non-performing plus - it outgo america attraction and hosting, portion astatine the aforesaid clip the task was finished. So the institution made the determination that the server should beryllium unopen down." Moreover, CD Projekt unopen down the wiki without migrating immoderate of the information elsewhere, oregon creating immoderate existent program for mapping oregon labelling the accusation for retrieval.

There was nary contiguous impact, Ruciński said - "after all, this cognition was inactive caller successful people's mind". It wasn't till years later, erstwhile the institution began moving connected The Witcher 3 REDkit, a acceptable of authoritative modding tools, that the standard of the blunder became apparent. Fulneczek was tasked with creating a idiosyncratic usher for the tools, and rapidly realised helium had nary starting point.

"There was thing connected the motor successful our documentation," helium said. "And also, [The Witcher 3 engine] is not the astir intuitive of engines, right? It's beauteous aged by now." So began a play of proceedings and error, with Fulneczek hoping fervently that the archetypal docs would "pop up magically".

Image credit: CD Projekt Red

Witcher remake developers Fool's Theory again came to the rescue. The latter's elder quest decorator and erstwhile CD Projekt gameplay decorator Martyna Lipińska uncovered a screenshot of the aged Witcher 3 wiki, which was passed on to Fulneczek. "That was capable for maine to commencement looking, commencement asking our IT astir old, closed servers, chasing down breached representation links," helium said. "And finally, we recovered it."

The archetypal wiki had been abandoned during a modulation to an easier-to-use, modern database. Even fixed those improvements, younger devs coming to the wiki years aboriginal recovered immoderate of the discourse missing. For example, determination were mystifying references to immoderate feline named Bob successful filenames for The Witcher 3's Blood and Wine expansion. Quest decorator Joanna Radomska yet supplied an mentation – the Blood and Wine enlargement was erstwhile known arsenic "The Bell of Beauclair".

Perhaps bizarrely, "the champion documented game" successful CD Projekt's past according to Ruciński is spin-off Witcher cardgame Gwent. "In a unrecorded work environment, which you could reason Gwent was, it is casual to accidental that you don't person the clip to papers everything, due to the fact that the crippled is changing truthful fast," helium said. "It receives patches, caller content, caller balance, each month. So each those documents request to beryllium perpetually updated, and idiosyncratic has to bash that. It is simply a cost."

Image credit: CD Projekt Red

The developers opted to "pay this documentation taxation upfront", however, alternatively than footwear it down the road. As a result, said Ruciński, "new artists, caller coders, caller designers could leap onto immoderate task wrong Gwent and lend instantly." This demonstrates that "documentation doesn't person to dilatory you down, you don't person to deliberation of documentation arsenic thing that volition lone beryllium utile years later. Documentation tin really velocity you up, marque you faster close now."

Things didn't spell astir truthful good during the instauration of Cyberpunk 2077 – a "true trial of scale" for CD Projekt's method writers. "Cyberpunk was a caller start, but it came with caller problems," Fulneczek recalled. "It was a monolithic undertaking. The hopes and expectations surrounding it were enormous. Internally, we had our documentation tool, Confluence, we had a impervious of conception of 'living' documentation, truthful we thought, we were ready.

"But it turned retired we weren't, due to the fact that Cyberpunk was the archetypal task of this scale, this size that we documented, and it besides took a precise agelong time," helium went on. "And during those eight, 9 years of development, we created implicit 8000 pages of documentation, and that's due to the fact that of however analyzable this task was, and it besides had galore iterations on the way. And arsenic with each project, the sprint to the decorativeness enactment starts, and abruptly maintaining the documentation becomes a little priority, erstwhile the merchandise day is closing in."

Image credit: CD Projekt RED

Cyberpunk 2077's improvement corpus grew truthful tremendous that erstwhile it came to DLC enlargement Phantom Liberty, CD Projekt decided to carve things up, storing newer files connected outer servers. "At the aforesaid time, the institution decided to determination to a unreality lawsuit of Confluence," said Fulneczek. This soon led to confusion, some wrong CD Projekt and astatine outer partners. "The basal crippled documentation, we near it connected [our] server," Fulneczek continued. "Also, erstwhile we started to contented patches for the basal game, we did that connected the unreality instance. And for example, erstwhile we were preparing a mentation for the Mac OS, we did that connected the server instance. So it was chaos. We had 2 spaces, 2 instances."

The divided added to the exhaustion of developers attempting to salvage Cyberpunk 2077 pursuing its infamously rickety motorboat showing. "A concern similar this, and we besides person immoderate studies to backmost this up, with fragmented documentation, it intelligibly tin correlate to burnout," Fulneczek added. "If you can, don't disagreement betwixt platforms and antithetic tools. If you person to, nexus precise intelligibly betwixt them, but ever purpose to person this 1 root of truth."

Which brings america to Cyberpunk 2 and The Witcher 4. CD Projekt person made keeping the docs successful bid a non-negotiable fixture of their development. "We've got immoderate caller requirements, particularly a caller explanation of 'done'," Fulneczek said. "So arsenic you know, immoderate project, immoderate crippled goes done improvement states, and close now, each signifier ends with a gate. Part of the requirements to walk that gross is the documentation, which wasn't the lawsuit before."

Both improvement teams person entree to the aforesaid repository of knowledge, truthful that "if a squad moving connected The Witcher figures retired a solution a circumstantial issue, the Cyberpunk squad tin spot it, payment from it, instrumentality it into their ain code," arsenic Ruciński explained. CD Projekt's artists person specialised Confluence tools, but radical successful different disciplines are capable to presumption their work, without needing immoderate other training.

Image credit: CD Projekt

The improved ways of sharing cognition besides bespeak the information that CD Projekt is present a planetary operation, with offices successful North America. "Working successful betwixt aggregate clip zones and places, you can't wholly trust connected conversations, adjacent if sometimes you privation to!" Ruciński added. "It conscionable doesn't happen. So documentation becomes the bridge."

The question of documentation whitethorn look powerfully boring, adjacent to blistery chat astir folkoric woodland monsters oregon dream-haunted dystopian cities, but each of those things people trust connected the attraction and transmission of know-how from procreation to generation. For a scruffy caller workplace surviving connected the borderline of their means, jotting everything down successful a wiki whitethorn consciousness similar exasperating admin, but adjacent the astir slapdash penetration astir however a crippled was made tin beryllium priceless down the road. "The mantra that little is much is truly bully for idiosyncratic that's creating the documentation present and now," Ruciński said. "But much is everything for idiosyncratic who is fixing an contented 10 years later."

This diagnostic was based connected a property travel to Digital Dragons, with the event's organisers paying for question and accommodation.