This question is kind of a two-parter. I have two types of documentation I'd like to discuss:
A) Design DocumentationB) Code DocumentationA friend of mine is also into Game Design, and I noticed something that's quite different between us; he seems to do detailed documentation both for his code (commenting more lines to improve readability, etc.) and his design (keeping in-depth design documents for most aspects of a game he'll be working on).These are both things I have never done, either for laziness, a lack of organization, or some other reason (perhaps a combination).Does anyone here keep documentation for your projects? Would you consider it to be important, or do you think it makes any difference at all?
Always document your code
Game documentation is highly important. Believe me, game ideas become completely different as you try to remember them over time. The game I'm making, I'm not consulting the 2 notebooks I filled with ideas and whatnot, to see how it goes. Its going horribly off-scale from what I remember… I look back to the books every month or so for a quick comparison. Definitely do technical, storyline, character, weapon, detail, etc documentation.
I try to document as much as I can, but not so much that it's pointless. I prefer to write self-documenting code. :)
Design documentation is a must though… you will never remember every single idea you had for a project.