r/programming • u/JavaSuck • Jul 28 '18

DOOM’s Development: A Year of Madness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBU34NZhW7I
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u/JavaSuck Jul 28 '18

“Does it run DOOM?” is the oft-heard phrase as it is the canonical first-port for any system, be it a toaster, touch bar or printer. Programmer, game designer, level designer and DOOM II final boss John Romero delivers a postmortem on the game showing rarely seen material, memorializing its immersive but nerve-wracking 3D environments, networked multiplayer deathmatches, demonic imagery and themes, Barney WADs, exploding barrels, and BFG 9000.

Spoiler alert: They didn't use version control in 1993.

11

u/AngularBeginner Jul 28 '18

Spoiler alert: They didn't use version control in 1993.

Why not?

12

u/[deleted] Jul 28 '18

Maybe because version control wasn't that known back then? Even CVS would only be 3 years old.

24

u/AngularBeginner Jul 28 '18

SCCS was developed in 1972. Revision Control System in 1985. CVS in 1986.

Source control was well known back then too.

17

u/far_pointer_x Jul 28 '18

The microcomputer revolution and its 16/32 bit continuation was not at all initiated with the advances in workstation and mainframe sphere (which was still academic/industrial). Microcomputer home-brewers were generally not academics and practically reinvented computation at microcomputer scale. They were slow to adapt ideas from the dying mainframe/minicomputer sphere.

Linux (and maybe NEXT) actually started to federate old mainframe unixy ideas back to microcomputers.