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Game Engine Black Book: DOOM: v1.2
It was early 1993 and id Software was at the top of the PC gaming industry. Wolfenstein 3D had established the First Person Shooter genre and sales of its sequel Spear of Destiny were skyrocketing. The technology and tools id had taken years to develop were no match for their many competitors.It would have been easy for id to coast on their success, but instead they made the audacious decision to throw away everything they had built and start from scratch. Game Engine Black Doom is the story of how they did it.This is a book about history and engineering. Don’t expect much prose (the author’s English has improved since the first book but is still broken). Instead you will find inside extensive descriptions and drawings to better understand all the challenges id Software had to overcome. From the hardware -- the Intel 486 CPU, the Motorola 68040 CPU, and the NeXT workstations -- to the game engine’s revolutionary design, open up to learn how DOOM changed the gaming industry and became a legend among video games.
432 pages, Paperback
Published November 23, 2022
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 25, 2025
A bit more technical for me than I wanted. Made me feel a little dense at times, but still an interesting read/go through of how the 1993 Doom's engine was built by Carmack and iD Software.
Goes into the 4/5th generation Console ports as well (skipping the modern [6-on] ports of it, which weren't for the time). That section is a bit shorter and sort of a compare/contrast and not too technical. Something you could get from Digital Foundry.
You get an Appendix of Carmack, Tom Hall and some other former iD Software employees talking about design for the game in terms of engine, levels, and graphics. In addition to how Fabien Sanglard built the book (in LaTeX!) and how much data (in bytes) the individual sections/compiling the book from LaTeX into a .PDF took.
Overall, not really a book necessarily for me (too stupid), but if you're in the market for a technical fly-through and technical talk, you might enjoy it.
Goes into the 4/5th generation Console ports as well (skipping the modern [6-on] ports of it, which weren't for the time). That section is a bit shorter and sort of a compare/contrast and not too technical. Something you could get from Digital Foundry.
You get an Appendix of Carmack, Tom Hall and some other former iD Software employees talking about design for the game in terms of engine, levels, and graphics. In addition to how Fabien Sanglard built the book (in LaTeX!) and how much data (in bytes) the individual sections/compiling the book from LaTeX into a .PDF took.
Overall, not really a book necessarily for me (too stupid), but if you're in the market for a technical fly-through and technical talk, you might enjoy it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review