5 ms·

How Doom got ported to NeXTSTEP (2013)

77 points by fezz 11y ago

dalerus 11y ago
Great read. I love to read anything about Carmack, it just blows my mind that he re-wrote all his engines from scratch. I can't even fathom developing at that level.
- tracker1 11y ago
  Yeah, every time I read something he's written, or written about him, it's a good read. I've always considered myself good at understanding how systems work together, mainly with web applications from front (html/css/js) to back (http/app/services/sql), but Carmack does that with very low level/detailed applications... It's hard for me to imagine.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    He is a great coder, but that is how we used to develop software before the web, you really needed to understand everything, specially the hardware.
    - lukego 11y ago
      In absolute terms I think there are more people than ever programming this way today. Just doesn't feel that way because there are even more people doing stuff differently.
  - justinsaccount 11y ago
    Check out http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3946/building_quake_live_carmack_speaks.php?print=1 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3946/building_quake_li... """ What really hurt us was the initial thought of putting a web interface on it. Some things surrounding the game were certainly overly trivialized by us. That's easy to do when you say, "Oh, we're hotshot game developers. This web stuff can't be too hard because so many people do it." There's a little bit of a humbling lesson there in how much work we did have to do with all the things on browser compatibility and backend database integration and optimization. """
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    Low level and also advanced geometry. IIRC he was one of the first to ship real time dynamic shadow rendering. I can't judge the math behind it, but it wasn't trivial for sure.
LennyHenrysNuts 11y ago
Let's not forget the port of Doom to the Atari Falcon either...
- fezz 11y ago
  ...and irix at the other end of the spectrum.
  - ctdonath 11y ago
    Had the joy of running Irix DOOM on a 16-processor Onyx which was, for the time, amazing. Over 180 FPS for software-rendered 3D stretched over 3 monitors was just glorious.
srott 11y ago
I thought Doom was developed on NextSTEP, at least wikipedia says so https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Doom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Doom "We wrote all of DOOM and Quake's code on NeXTSTEP" http://web.archive.org/web/20140310124554/http://rome.ro/2006/12/apple-next-merger-birthday.html http://web.archive.org/web/20140310124554/http://rome.ro/200...
- JamesBaxter 11y ago
  The author notes this in the post. I wrote Carmack a message which apparently had the subject line "Doom diddly doom!" and said something like, hey, since you wrote this game on NEXTSTEP but don't want to waste your time tuning it up for that platform (it kind of ran in a pseudo-PC-emulation layer) can Omni do it for you and release it for free?
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
irln 11y ago
NeXTSTEP was so ahead of its time. I wrote many sets of documentation (yes the printed kind) on my pizza box using FrameMaker. Best writing experience to this day.

77 points by fezz 11y ago

Great read. I love to read anything about Carmack, it just blows my mind that he re-wrote all his engines from scratch. I can't even fathom developing at that level.

tracker1 11y ago
Yeah, every time I read something he's written, or written about him, it's a good read. I've always considered myself good at understanding how systems work together, mainly with web applications from front (html/css/js) to back (http/app/services/sql), but Carmack does that with very low level/detailed applications... It's hard for me to imagine.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  He is a great coder, but that is how we used to develop software before the web, you really needed to understand everything, specially the hardware.
  - lukego 11y ago
    In absolute terms I think there are more people than ever programming this way today. Just doesn't feel that way because there are even more people doing stuff differently.
- justinsaccount 11y ago
  Check out http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3946/building_quake_live_carmack_speaks.php?print=1 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3946/building_quake_li... """ What really hurt us was the initial thought of putting a web interface on it. Some things surrounding the game were certainly overly trivialized by us. That's easy to do when you say, "Oh, we're hotshot game developers. This web stuff can't be too hard because so many people do it." There's a little bit of a humbling lesson there in how much work we did have to do with all the things on browser compatibility and backend database integration and optimization. """
- agumonkey 11y ago
  Low level and also advanced geometry. IIRC he was one of the first to ship real time dynamic shadow rendering. I can't judge the math behind it, but it wasn't trivial for sure.

LennyHenrysNuts 11y ago

Let's not forget the port of Doom to the Atari Falcon either...

fezz 11y ago
...and irix at the other end of the spectrum.
- ctdonath 11y ago
  Had the joy of running Irix DOOM on a 16-processor Onyx which was, for the time, amazing. Over 180 FPS for software-rendered 3D stretched over 3 monitors was just glorious.

srott 11y ago

I thought Doom was developed on NextSTEP, at least wikipedia says so https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Doom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Doom "We wrote all of DOOM and Quake's code on NeXTSTEP" http://web.archive.org/web/20140310124554/http://rome.ro/2006/12/apple-next-merger-birthday.html http://web.archive.org/web/20140310124554/http://rome.ro/200...

JamesBaxter 11y ago
The author notes this in the post. I wrote Carmack a message which apparently had the subject line "Doom diddly doom!" and said something like, hey, since you wrote this game on NEXTSTEP but don't want to waste your time tuning it up for that platform (it kind of ran in a pseudo-PC-emulation layer) can Omni do it for you and release it for free?
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

irln 11y ago

NeXTSTEP was so ahead of its time. I wrote many sets of documentation (yes the printed kind) on my pizza box using FrameMaker. Best writing experience to this day.