The Early Days of Id Software: Programming Principles
summary
Five concrete rules and concrete outcomes: build games with no prototypes and maintain constantly shippable code, bulletproof the engine with defaults so the game always runs, keep code simple (C, structs, minimal assembly), and invest heavily in tools — the homegrown Ted tile editor ships on 33 retail titles. Small teams (<10) crank out rapid hits — Commander Keen in three months, Wolfenstein 3D in four, Doom shareware uploaded Dec 10, 1993 — all developed on NeXT workstations and iterated until they work.
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chapters (15)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:53Childhood
- 2:14High School
- 6:27The Photo
- 8:10The Early Years
- 12:30Wolfenstein
- 24:48Making Games
- 25:07Core Principles
- 25:36QA
- 27:02Crunch Mode
- 28:50VR
- 30:10Doom Freeze
- 32:27Video Games
- 33:36Source Control
- 34:14Questions
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