*Master of Doom* My takes (in random order): - Both Johns already bagged years of professional game development experience before ID was formed. Romero starte

*Master of Doom* My takes (in random order): - Both Johns already bagged years of professional game development experience before ID was formed. Romero started submitting games to magazines in mid-80s and Carmack in 1989. This probably explains why they managed to push out games so fast. - John Carmack went from Apple ][ tile mapped games (Shadowforge and Wraith) to horizontal smooth scrolling (Commander Keen) in about 1 year, and to ray caster (Wolfenstein) in about 1 year, and to BSP (Doom) in a bit more than 1 year, and to real 3D (Quake) in 2.5 years. And this is only the rendering part. He was super focused and super efficient. - Tools are really important to rapid iteration. Romero's 2D editor (forgot the name) was used throughout the early years, which says something. - Early programmers *have* to deal with assembly language routinely. This probably dispelled a lot of "magic" and one of the primary reasons why some of them were so good. Essentially everyone who programs games for long enough is a low level programmer. I wonder if modern programmers should take the same grinding. - This is probably controversial but I believe Romero leaving ID tipped the balance and I find ID games starting from Quake 2 are less interesting. - Everyone who wants to get serious about tech should take a few weeks off and concentrate on learning and working on difficult stuffs. Preferably more time but a few weeks should be the minimum.