Dave D. Taylor is an American

game programmer A game programmer is a software engineer, programmer, or computer scientist who primarily develops codebases for video games or related software, such as game development tools. Game programming has many specialized disciplines, all of which fall ...

, best known as a former

id Software id Software LLC () is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: game programmer, programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer T ...

employee and noted for his work promoting

Linux gaming Linux-based operating systems can be used for playing video games. Because few games natively support the Linux kernel, various software has been made to run Windows games, software, and programs, such as Wine, Cedega, DXVK, and Proton, and ma ...

Early life

He graduated from the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

with a

Bachelor of Science A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

degree in

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

in 1993. Prior to working for id, he was a member of The Kernel Group, which worked on

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

kernel debugging.

id Software

Taylor worked for id Software between 1993 and 1996, and was during the time involved with the development of ''

Doom Doom is another name for damnation. Doom may also refer to: People * Doom (professional wrestling), the tag team of Ron Simmons and Butch Reed * Daniel Doom (1934–2020), Belgian cyclist * Debbie Doom (born 1963), American softball pitche ...

'' and '' Quake''. He created

ports Ports collections (or ports trees, or just ports) are the sets of makefiles and Patch (Unix), patches provided by the BSD-based operating systems, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD, as a simple method of installing software or creating binary packages. T ...

of both games to

IRIX IRIX (, ) is a discontinued operating system developed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) to run on the company's proprietary MIPS architecture, MIPS workstations and servers. It is based on UNIX System V with Berkeley Software Distribution, BSD extensio ...

AIX Aix or AIX may refer to: Computing * AIX, a line of IBM computer operating systems *Alternate index, for an IBM Virtual Storage Access Method key-sequenced data set * Athens Internet Exchange, a European Internet exchange point Places Belg ...

Solaris Solaris is the Latin word for sun. It may refer to: Arts and entertainment Literature, television and film * ''Solaris'' (novel), a 1961 science fiction novel by Stanisław Lem ** ''Solaris'' (1968 film), directed by Boris Nirenburg ** ''Sol ...

and

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

, and helped program the

Atari Jaguar The Atari Jaguar is a home video game console developed by Atari Corporation and released in North America in November 1993. It is in the fifth generation of video game consoles, and it competed with Fourth generation of video game consoles, fo ...

ports of ''Doom'' and ''

Wolfenstein 3D ''Wolfenstein 3D'' is a 1992 first-person shooter game developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software and FormGen for DOS. It was inspired by the 1981 Muse Software video game '' Castle Wolfenstein'', and is the third installment ...

''. He also considers himself to have been the "spackle coder" on ''Doom'', for adding things such as the status bar,

sound library In sound and music, sampling is the reuse of a portion (or sample) of a sound recording in another recording. Samples may comprise elements such as rhythm, melody, speech, or sound effects. A sample might comprise only a fragment of sound, or a l ...

integration, the automap, level transitions, cheat codes, and the network chat system. On ''Quake'', he wrote the original sound engine, the

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the suite are ...

network library, and added

VESA VESA (), formally known as Video Electronics Standards Association, is an American standards organization, technical standards organization for computer display standards. The organization was incorporated in California in July 1989To retrieve ...

2.0 support. One of the musical themes in ''

Doom II ''Doom II'', also known as ''Doom II: Hell on Earth'', is a 1994 first-person shooter game developed and published by id Software for MS-DOS. It was also released on Mac OS the following year. Unlike the original '' Doom'', which was initi ...

,'' "The Dave D. Taylor Blues", was named after him by Robert Prince. The 2003 book '' Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture'' mentions his habit of passing out from

motion sickness Motion sickness occurs due to a difference between actual and expected motion. Symptoms commonly include nausea, vomiting, cold sweat, headache, dizziness, tiredness, loss of appetite, and increased salivation. Complications may rarely include ...

after prolonged playing of ''Doom'', and how the other employees would, after such incidents, sketch a body outline of his unconscious form with masking tape. After the success of the game, they bought him a couch to pass out on. His attempts to "talk up" ''Quake'' on-line, his purchase of an

Acura NSX NSX may refer to: Stock exchanges * Namibian Stock Exchange (NSX) * National Stock Exchange (Jersey City, New Jersey), US (NSX) * National Stock Exchange of Australia (NSX) Other uses * Honda NSX The Honda NSX, marketed in North America as th ...

with ''Doom'' money, his friendship with

American McGee American McGee is a retired American video game designer. He is best known as the designer of ''American McGee's Alice'', its sequel '' Alice: Madness Returns'', and his works on various video games from id Software. Early life American McGee ...

, and his eventual departure from the company are also mentioned.

After id

Taylor founded a small game company called Crack dot Com from 1996 to 1998. Crack dot Com released only one game, ''

Abuse Abuse is the act of improper usage or treatment of a person or thing, often to unfairly or improperly gain benefit. Abuse can come in many forms, such as: physical or verbal maltreatment, injury, assault, violation, rape, unjust practices, ...

'', a PC platform shooter. In a 1997 interview, he claimed that he wasn't particularly proud of ''Abuse'', and that "he set out to prove that a person could sell 50,000 copies of a so-so game." He then led the effort to build ''

Golgotha Calvary ( or ) or Golgotha () was a site immediately outside Jerusalem's walls where, according to Christianity's four canonical gospels, Jesus was crucified. Since at least the early medieval period, it has been a destination for pilgrimage. ...

'', a

first-person shooter A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game genre, video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a First person (video games), first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through t ...

real-time strategy Real-time strategy (RTS) is a Video game genre, subgenre of strategy video games that does not progress incrementally in turn-based game, turns, but allow all players to play simultaneously, in "real time." By contrast, in Turn-based strategy, tur ...

hybrid, but the company folded before its completion. Between 1998 and 2001 he worked for

Transmeta Transmeta Corporation was an American fabless semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California. It developed low power x86 compatible microprocessors based on a VLIW core and a software layer called Code Morphing Software. Code Morphing ...

. He was president of Carbon6 from 2001 to 2002, there also working as lead designer and producer for the

Game Boy Advance The (GBA) is a 32-bit handheld game console, manufactured by Nintendo, which was released in Japan on March 21, 2001, and to international markets that June. It was later released in mainland China in 2004, under the name iQue Game Boy Advanc ...

game '' Spy Kids Challenger''. Since 2002 he has been vice president of

Naked Sky Entertainment Naked Sky Entertainment was an independent game development studio based in Los Angeles. They are a licensed developer for Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in t ...

and since 2003 also an advisor and freelance game designer. He is also willing to act as a Linux game porter for pay projects. In 2009, he produced ''Abuse Classic'' for the

Apple iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphone, smartphones developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The iPhone (1st generation), first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and ...

and ''Beakiez'' for the PC.

References

External links

Dave Taylor's Official Website

Interview with Dave Taylor
by James Hills (June 19, 1999)
Dave D. Taylor interview about Crack.Com
from

LinuxGames Linux-based operating systems can be used for playing video games. Because few games natively support the Linux kernel, various software has been made to run Windows games, software, and programs, such as Wine, Cedega, DXVK, and Proton, and man ...

(2003)
Beakiez
a game by Taylor {{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, Dave Cockrell School of Engineering alumni Linux game porters Linux people Living people American video game programmers Place of birth missing (living people) Year of birth missing (living people)