Lee Killough (programmer)
Encyclopedia
Lee Killough is an American
programmer
who has contributed to the development of source port
s for the computer game Doom. He was part of the Boom team and is the author of Marine's Best Friend.
Lee Killough notably added many performance optimizations to the Doom engine
. The single most important efficiency improvement was replacing the linear search
used for looking up game data resources with a hash table
algorithm. This improvement in fact sped up the engine over 300%.
Between 1997 and 1998 he also operated a website with extensive technical information about Doom. In 2002, John Romero
, one of the programmers behind Doom, put up an archived copy of Killough's web pages on his own website. Romero calls the website "legendary" and writes that for many years Killough "was The Man to go to for any DOOM technical trivia".
In his regular job, he now tunes mathematical libraries
such as BLAS
to run fast on supercomputer
s. For several years, Killough also maintained a page on priority queue
s.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
programmer
Programmer
A programmer, computer programmer or coder is someone who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software. One who practices or professes a formal approach to...
who has contributed to the development of source port
Doom source port
A Doom source port is a source port of id Tech 1, the game engine used by the video game Doom. The term usually denotes a modification made by Doom fans, as opposed to any of the official Doom versions produced by id Software or affiliated companies.-Doom source release:The source code for the Doom...
s for the computer game Doom. He was part of the Boom team and is the author of Marine's Best Friend.
Lee Killough notably added many performance optimizations to the Doom engine
Doom engine
The Doom engine is the game engine that powers the id Software games Doom and Doom II. It is also used by HeXen, Heretic, Strife, Freedoom, and HacX, and other games produced by licensees. It was created by John Carmack, with auxiliary functions written by Mike Abrash, John Romero, Dave Taylor and...
. The single most important efficiency improvement was replacing the linear search
Linear search
In computer science, linear search or sequential search is a method for finding a particular value in a list, that consists of checking every one of its elements, one at a time and in sequence, until the desired one is found....
used for looking up game data resources with a hash table
Hash table
In computer science, a hash table or hash map is a data structure that uses a hash function to map identifying values, known as keys , to their associated values . Thus, a hash table implements an associative array...
algorithm. This improvement in fact sped up the engine over 300%.
Between 1997 and 1998 he also operated a website with extensive technical information about Doom. In 2002, John Romero
John Romero
Alfonso John Romero is a game designer, programmer, and developer in the video game industry. He is best known as a co-founder of id Software and was a designer for many of their games, including Wolfenstein 3D, Dangerous Dave, Doom and Quake...
, one of the programmers behind Doom, put up an archived copy of Killough's web pages on his own website. Romero calls the website "legendary" and writes that for many years Killough "was The Man to go to for any DOOM technical trivia".
In his regular job, he now tunes mathematical libraries
Library (computer science)
In computer science, a library is a collection of resources used to develop software. These may include pre-written code and subroutines, classes, values or type specifications....
such as BLAS
Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms
Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms is a de facto application programming interface standard for publishing libraries to perform basic linear algebra operations such as vector and matrix multiplication. They were first published in 1979, and are used to build larger packages such as LAPACK...
to run fast on supercomputer
Supercomputer
A supercomputer is a computer at the frontline of current processing capacity, particularly speed of calculation.Supercomputers are used for highly calculation-intensive tasks such as problems including quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, molecular modeling A supercomputer is a...
s. For several years, Killough also maintained a page on priority queue
Priority queue
A priority queue is an abstract data type in computer programming.It is exactly like a regular queue or stack data structure, but additionally, each element is associated with a "priority"....
s.
External links
- Lee Killough's Doom webpages
- Killough's page on priority queues
- Doom Archive Reopened - SlashdotSlashdotSlashdot is a technology-related news website owned by Geeknet, Inc. The site, which bills itself as "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters", features user-submitted and ‑evaluated current affairs news stories about science- and technology-related topics. Each story has a comments section...
article (December 19, 2002)