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 f ...

, 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 gaming refers to playing video games on a Linux operating system. History Linux gaming started largely as an extension of the already present Unix gaming scene, with both systems sharing many similar titles. These games were eithe ...

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 research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...

with a

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

degree in electrical engineering in 1993.

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 (born 1934), Belgian cyclist * Debbie Doom (born 1963), American softball pitcher * ...

'' and '' Quake''. He created

ports A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as H ...

of both games to IRIX,

AIX Aix or AIX may refer to: Computing * AIX, a line of IBM computer operating systems *An Alternate Index, for a Virtual Storage Access Method Key Sequenced Data Set * Athens Internet Exchange, a European Internet exchange point Places Belgi ...

, Solaris and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

, 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. Part of the fifth generation of video game consoles, it competed with the 16-bit Sega Genesis, the Super NES and th ...

ports of ''Doom'' and ''

Wolfenstein 3D ''Wolfenstein 3D'' is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Apogee Software and FormGen. Originally released on May 5, 1992, for DOS, it was inspired by the 1981 Muse Software video game '' Castle Wolfe ...

''. He also considers himself to have been the "spackle coder" on ''Doom'', for adding things such as the status bar, sound library integration, the automap, level transitions, cheat codes, and the network chat system. On ''Quake'', he wrote the original sound engine, the

DOS DOS is shorthand for the MS-DOS and IBM PC DOS family of operating systems. DOS may also refer to: Computing * Data over signalling (DoS), multiplexing data onto a signalling channel * Denial-of-service attack (DoS), an attack on a communicat ...

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

network library, and added

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

2.0 support. One of the musical themes in ''

Doom II ''Doom II'', also known as ''Doom II: Hell on Earth'', is a first-person shooter game by id Software. It was released for MS-DOS computers in 1994 and Macintosh computers in 1995. Unlike the original ''Doom'', which was initially only available ...

,'' "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 de ...

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 * Neon Swing X-perience (NSX), a US musical group * Honda N ...

with ''Doom'' money, his friendship with American McGee, and his eventual departure from the company are also mentioned.

After id

Taylor founded a small game company called

Crack dot Com Crack dot Com was a computer game development company co-founded by ex-id Software programmer Dave Taylor, and Jonathan Clark. History Crack dot com started from home with a staff of just four people. Their first completed game, which had I ...

from 1996 to 1998. Crack dot Com released only one game, '' Abuse'', 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'', a

first-person shooter First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the p ...

real-time strategy Real-time strategy (RTS) is a subgenre of strategy video games that do not progress incrementally in turns, but allow all players to play simultaneously, in "real time". By contrast, in turn-based strategy (TBS) games, players take turns to p ...

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 developed, manufactured and marketed by Nintendo as the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001, in North America on June 11, 2001, in the PAL region on June 22, ...

game ''

Spy Kids Challenger Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information (intelligence) from non-disclosed sources or divulging of the same without the permission of the holder of the information for a tangib ...

''. 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. Games *''RoboBlitz'' (2006) *'' Star Trek DAC'' (2009) *''MicroBot ...

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