Dave Taylor | |
|---|---|
 Taylor atQuakeCon 1997 | |
| Occupation | Video game programmer |
Dave D. Taylor is an Americangame programmer, best known as a formerid Software employee and noted for his work promotingLinux gaming.
He graduated from theUniversity of Texas at Austin with aBachelor of Science degree inelectrical engineering in 1993.[1] Prior to working for id, he was a member of The Kernel Group, which worked onUnix kernel debugging.[2]
Taylor worked for id Software between 1993 and 1996, and was during the time involved with the development ofDoom andQuake. He createdports of both games toIRIX,AIX,Solaris andLinux, and helped program theAtari Jaguar ports ofDoom andWolfenstein 3D.[3] He also considers himself to have been the "spackle coder" onDoom, for adding things such as the status bar,sound library integration, the automap, level transitions, cheat codes, and the network chat system.[4] OnQuake, he wrote the original sound engine, theDOSTCP/IP network library, and addedVESA 2.0 support. One of the musical themes inDoom II, "The Dave D. Taylor Blues", was named after him byRobert Prince.[5]
The 2003 bookMasters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture mentions his habit of passing out frommotion sickness after prolonged playing ofDoom, 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 anAcura NSX withDoom money, his friendship withAmerican McGee, and his eventual departure from the company are also mentioned.[6]
Taylor founded a small game company calledCrack dot Com 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 ofAbuse, and that "he set out to prove that a person could sell 50,000 copies of a so-so game."[7] He then led the effort to buildGolgotha, afirst-person shooter /real-time strategy hybrid,[8] but the company folded before its completion.[9]
Between 1998 and 2001 he worked forTransmeta.[10] He was president ofCarbon6 from 2001 to 2002, there also working as lead designer and producer for theGame Boy Advance gameSpy Kids Challenger. Since 2002 he has been vice president ofNaked Sky Entertainment and since 2003 also an advisor and freelance game designer.[11] He is also willing to act as aLinux game porter for pay projects.[12]
In 2009, he producedAbuse Classic[13] for theApple iPhone andBeakiez for the PC.[14]
