Jake Simpson (00:00)
Right, so I'm here with Dave Taylor. Now Dave Taylor is an old, old, old friend of mine. I mean looking at him on the video right now, he hasn't got any grey hair, which is kind of depressing. How old are you now, Dave?

He's just lent into the video to show me a little tiny bit of r of grey hair. How old are you now, Dave?

Dave Taylor (00:21)
I have to calculate this every time. fifty two.

Jake Simpson (00:26)
So you're about the same age as me then, okay, fair enough.

Dave Taylor (00:30)
is thirty four.

Jake Simpson (00:32)
Yeah.

Dave Taylor (00:33)
Is it I which I like a little better, I gotta say.

Jake Simpson (00:35)
I'm gonna have to tell my wife that. I think she'll like that a lot, yeah. So let's talk a little bit about Dave and let's just give those listening a little bit of a background in Dave Taylor. I've known you for I don't even know how many years, but I remember first coming across you as the the insane consultant in LA who would consult for free and then you'd pay him whatever you you thought he was worth.

Dave Taylor (01:04)
Do you remember that? Yeah, yeah. I learned half that trick from

What's his name? Keith Posky.

Jake Simpson (01:15)
Kitbowski, yes, the the lawyer, the the our lawyer friend who passed away a few years ago.

Dave Taylor (01:20)
Last person I thought would say anything like this, coming from a legal background and becoming an agent, right? Yeah, you know, half the time I just don't bother with the contract 'cause you can waste a lot of time on it and they're either gonna honor their deal with you or they're not. And if they're not, then life is short, just move on to someone else. I was like, What? You can do this? And

Jake Simpson (01:44)
Should should explain a little bit about your history and what what kind of services you're you're offering. I mean

Dave Taylor (01:49)
yeah. So I was basically like a producer. So I was help and but sort of and an advisor. I I really like sitting on advisory boards. I really like helping entrepreneurs sort of think crazy outside of the box sort of solutions to things and just helping with, you know, a lot of this stupid like networking stuff, pitching, figuring out, you know, the bits of tech that I understand if I could if I can help them with that and yeah, just

It it's typical consulting, just like whatever I'm useful at here. Give me a good rub, see if I see if something comes out.

Jake Simpson (02:27)
Yeah, we should we should point out your background is in engineering. You are a a a coder at heart. And I I know this I mean we've you know, you created your own assembly language at one point. Yeah, I've so you are a coder at heart, even though you're also you've got one foot in the coding f world and then the other firmly in the producing and creative aspects. you live in Los Angeles near Santa Monica, you know, a couple of blocks off the beach. And but you know, you you've got

Claims to fame as well. I mean, you worked on Doom, right? The original its software.

Dave Taylor (03:02)
Yep. So it's my first job out of college, so I I studied electrical engineering and I started doing these contests as an extracurricular activity where we would make a game in secret and then the contestants had to show up and we would give them the API and they would have to write an AI to play the game on their behalf in like twelve to sixteen hours.

Jake Simpson (03:04)
Tell me about that.

Dave Taylor (03:32)
And then it was hands off the keyboards and a big sort of like double elimination tournament between the AIs, right?

Jake Simpson (03:39)
This is a this is a college.

Dave Taylor (03:41)
This is in college, yeah.

Jake Simpson (03:43)
What college did

you go to? Because that is awesome.

Dave Taylor (03:46)
Yeah, it's pretty cool. it was UT Austin and they had done this at the state level before I got there. They they were just doing this with little simple PC games. And and basically they would give you a framework and you would plug your function for the AI into their code and it would compile it down to one executable and then it would play out the the two characters. I worked on one a little snake game, a little snake surround game, right? And

and all all your AI had to do is pick and do I just keep going forward or turn left or right, you know. What I turned it into was this more ambitious national scale one where we used Unix workstations and it was all networks and it was 3v3 AI games with client server architecture, you know. And then we w had a forty eight player free for all that you could do as sort of an exhibition contest on on a couple of them.

So yeah, so that so that that was my start doing games and I was win way over my head. but I learned a lot about producing from that because a lot of that trouble was like finding someone like IBM who's willing to like give you all the workstations and someone else who's willing to pay for the hotels and the flights to get all your contestants in and all that sort of thing. So

Jake Simpson (05:06)
And that's how you that's how you came to Id and John Carmack's attention or is is

Dave Taylor (05:11)
So yeah, I guess not. I guess that was my first experience doing real game development. And then even though it was just for AIs, but it was still, you know, very visual, it was real time visual thing. And then I started doing poor Ross Erickson, lovely guy who used to run the XBLA department did dev relations before he passed away from COVID, sadly. But he used to be the editor of Game Bytes magazine, which was one of the first electronic

game magazines circulating around the internet and often copied by floppies. And I was writing reviews for it and I thought, this is stupid. Anybody with an asshole can write a re review. And so I thought, well I'll do interviews of game developers because I've always wanted to do game design, get game development. So I interviewed the the only person I really gave a shit about, which was Richard Garriott. And I was like Yeah, and I was like, I don't care about interviewing anybody else. I guess I'll interview

Jake Simpson (06:04)
Lord British, yes.

Dave Taylor (06:10)
Chris Roberts because he's at the same company. So I did him next. And then I was then I was really getting desperate. But then Wolfenstein three D came out. I was like, wow, that's fucking cool. That's really fast and crazy. And so I'll ask and I heard about it working on Next Step. So I'll ask the geeky coder guy how he got direct access to the frame buffer on Next Step 'cause we had a next step computer at UT Austin and I I thought, well that would be the fucking coolest thing.

So I got on this phone call interview where I was interviewing them, just like you're interviewing me, and saying, Well, tell me about how you made the game and da da da and all this stuff. And it was a group call. So like a bunch of guys were on there, I think Adrian and Jay Wilbur and Kevin Cloud and Romero and Romero probably and Carmack was on there and basically all the questions that I wanted to know the answers to came from Jay Wilbur or John Carmack, right?

and I s really just started geeking at hard with Carmac and I was like, Okay, I gotta stop. And so I hung up the phone, wrote the little interview up and then sent a whiny little email to Carmack afterwards saying, you know, gee, how do I break into this game industry thing? You know? I've been doing this in college and I want to spend

Jake Simpson (07:25)
So it all started from

Dave Taylor (07:27)
That. Yeah. So he he brought I was supposed to come on I was still in college, and I was taking my senior year, my senior lab over the summer to my last thing. And he offered me a job to do the Sega Genesis port of Wolfenstein 3D. So I started studying the technical reference manual for the Genesis over the summer, thinking I would start when I'm done. He said, No, I want to hire you now. I was like, No, you

Fucking please, I'm at the end of this fucking thing. I gotta wrap this up. but God bless me, let me finish it. And and by the time I came on, even better, I didn't have to do that fucking port. Instead, he was like, Fuck it, we're late on Doom, help us ship Doom instead. So I was Yeah, please. That's the whole story.

Jake Simpson (07:59)
So spent the money.

I I have a I have to do a story. I have to inject a story here.

Yeah. Well I worked at Raven, as as many people will know, I worked at Raven for a while and I worked on Heretic II and also on Soldier Fort Jedi Knight and Soldier Fortune and Star Trek Elite Force. Star Trek Elite Force was our first use of the Doom Three no Quake Three engine, sorry, Quake Three engine. And before that Heretic Two was still Doom Two, I think.

And one of the things I had to do was make the audio system three D. And we had Aureal at the time and who was the other one? Creative Sound Creative Labs. Yeah, Creative Labs Sound Blaster. That's right, yeah. and I had to inject EAX sound and stuff and all of it. And I remember because you wrote that original sound system as I recall.

Dave Taylor (09:07)
I so I don't know if that I don't know if that made it into no you're saying this was the Doom Two? Yeah. So I didn't write the library we linked in. I I wrote the shit that sat on top of

Jake Simpson (09:13)
Yeah.

No, no, but you're

Yes, I know you did 'cause I because it's the same it was never upgraded. It was the same sound system that was used in one team two and in and in Quake Three, right? That was in the Quake Three.

Dave Taylor (09:32)
not no there's no it wasn't quite three, definitely wasn't quite

Jake Simpson (09:34)
Yes

it was. Because I was the guy that I had to because I recognized it because all the same code was there from from from Quake from Doom Two. All the same

Dave Taylor (09:42)
Well, I I know I wrote the sound engine from scratch on Quake One and then I think Carmac rewrote my rewrite.

Jake Simpson (09:51)
the

same code, put it that way. It was computers that hadn't changed at all. I mean lots of other things obviously in crypto changed with that Andrew. And I I thought it was really amusing that I'm I was working many years later on the same code that you wrote, which is you know small world, isn't it? Yeah. So okay, so Aid software, I mean, you know, height of their initial impact must have been an entertaining place to to be. I mean, you know, you've got the the infamous swearing and all the rest of it of John Romero and the then the network games and the I mean the

If there's ever rock stars of the Rolling Stone variety in video games, it was id of that generation. You know, and you were right there on in ground zero with it. You know, I I find that 'cause you know you know when we talk in in general terms and we we talk about a lot of things, we don't often talk about that time of your life really. I mean, you know, I I know you came out of it with a with a a very nice sports car, which you never drove in in you moved to LA and never drove and then ended up selling.

Dave Taylor (10:49)
Yeah.

Jake Simpson (10:49)
Remember the very first time I came to visit you, you still had the black it was black, wasn't it? Back in the park in La

Dave Taylor (10:53)
Yeah, well more of a black

as seen through layers of dirt.

Jake Simpson (11:00)
Yeah. Right. What was it like being there? It must have been like a camelot or something. I mean, what was it like?

Dave Taylor (11:06)
know, like it was it was nerve wracking for me because I felt underqualified. As you can imagine, like working for Carmack as your first boss. Yeah. I really wasn't expecting him I knew he was, you know, a bright guy. I didn't know how much brighter than most of the rest of the game industry he was, right? 'Cause this is the first this is my first job in the game industry. And so I really had no base of reference and

In electrical engineering, I had already learned to code as a kid, right? And so I came in sort of ahead of the class and was kind of used to being the big fish in this pond. And then I'm working for Karmac and I just feel like a moron. And that just that just got worse, right? Like he wasn't just like smart, he was getting smarter and faster. He was learning everything I could do, every every shred of knowledge I had. Right. And

And I w I was like I was like a small partition of John John's intellect, was it was Dave Land now. And so there was a sense of like trying to dog paddle, trying to keep up with him. But I think that I think my early assumption that I should be able to catch up, this naivete that I should be able to catch up was really good for me and that I swam all the harder trying to keep up with him, trying to

you know, stay what I thought would be s minimally employable. and I kind of burned myself out very quickly doing that and and a lot of my work there suffered from that. So Yeah, but it but it's but it was exciting too. Like it was a kind of a an emotional roller coaster for me. Just so you understand my mental perspective while I was there. it was exciting, but I'm distracted by weird aesthetic things like

I hate being in an office with those stupid rectangular ceiling tile things that what are they called? Yeah, chop ceilings. They look like shit. And and that super thin pile parklet carpet that that looks like it's designed for people vomiting on so it's easy to clean or something. I don't know what I don't know what the that's what it is. That's what it is. And just

Jake Simpson (13:11)
Drop ceilings.

Wheels on chairs.

Dave Taylor (13:33)
So being a sandwich between these two things in a perfectly cubic building in perfectly flat Dallas on the edge of Dallas in Mesquite, it's

Jake Simpson (13:45)
the Borg Cube. That's what Activision used to call it the Borg Cube because it was a perfectly cubed black build.

Dave Taylor (13:53)
cube and a very kind of like uninspired interior. and it just ha it to me it you you really had to be focused on what you're working on just to keep your mind off of your surroundings. for me. I I was sensitive to that sort of thing. And and but I was also just an emotional wreck. I was fresh out of college, two as I say, twenty nothing years old and just

a ball of testosterone and it was weird and and it was interesting, you know. It was weird and interesting and and I look back with I look back on most of my life with horror at who I was and who I must still be as as an implication. So you gotta understand my perspective. it's har it's hard to look back at any period, whether it's it or whatever, and go nostalgia. Yeah, exactly. For me. It's just

I don't know whether this was an influence of living in England as a kid and just wanting to apologize to everybody for everything, but it's just su it's a part of me.

Jake Simpson (15:00)
Well, no, I would would take umbrage with that a little bit in that I lived in England as a kid as well and I don't want to apologise to anybody. yeah

I go to Garden of England. god. That's right. It's a town I come from. It it had six dead centers 'cause there were so many old people. Anyway, yeah. So post it then, you know, you end up in Los Angeles and you're working with America McGee at the time, I think.

Dave Taylor (15:29)
After id was crack. and then that I did that. So that was my company and we did abuse and then aborted a game called Golgotha. Abuse came out pretty well.

Jake Simpson (15:43)
You have stories

about abuse though, don't you? I mean somebody ripped off the all the all the content basically and created another version for it the up for the iPhone and you had devil's own time getting that one killed.

Dave Taylor (15:51)
That was much later. I'm talking about the the fun nostalgic days. Yeah, so that was an experien actually I was making we were making that while I was at id, so I was financing it first and that was another little producing adventure. And so I didn't code at all on that. And so I just helped with financing and design and shit like that.

Jake Simpson (15:58)
As much as there are, yeah, right.

Just interrupt a moment and just explain that Dave's apartment is not too far away from LAX and so we are actually hearing planes come overhead every now and again.

Dave Taylor (16:25)
That's actually no this is from the Santa Monica private airport. is really if you please. This is this is quality airplane engine noise. This is

Jake Simpson (16:36)
This isn't yes seven three sevens, no.

Dave Taylor (16:38)
Yeah, so these are Gulf Streams, these are anachronistic World War Two planes that are being flown to show how

Jake Simpson (16:47)
There's

an airport just down the right road from me, Falcon Field, that has B fifty two bomber in it. yeah, it's got some really old stuff in it. and in fact they fly around and and I believe in fact that Matt Booty, who's the number three man at Xbox in Microsoft, he's his one of his hobbies is photographing World War Two planes from the air.

And I believe that he's actually taken pictures of the planes that are out over here in the air 'cause they actually maintain them and keep them flying, which is kind of interesting. But anyway, sorry, an aside we should get back to the the the riveting life of Dave.

I just curious, I mean, the things you've done, the things you've seen, you know, without going through, you know, complete chronology, I should say that the the stories you've told me, I mean, you live in Los Angeles, you've you've had your fingers very deep in lots of different entertainment aspects. You ran a thing called the table for a while, right? The the web service for the table. We should explain what that is.

Dave Taylor (17:43)
Yeah, that was an interesting group I bumped into. So long story short, so I started acting as a hobby, as a like a lur you know, studying acting as a hobby.

Jake Simpson (17:57)
You live in LA, you have to, right, isn't it that law?

Dave Taylor (18:00)
It never even occurred to me until well, a friend's girlfriend suggested I try it, saying because I was in a project that I was very, very frustrated with. And she suggested it as a vacation from yourself where you get to pretend to be somebody else for a little while. And I was like, I like that. Yes. And

Jake Simpson (18:19)
Great idea.

Dave Taylor (18:22)
Yeah, and so I thought, okay, I this sounds great, and of course it's gonna be taught by people that know the shit in LA and so let's try this. And so I went to bounce around a few different teachers. and that ended me up in a class where there's this on the C B S Radford lot in

Bur Burbank. so yeah, up there in the valley somewhere. they have a program with a college in Chicago, some fancy pants private school, where they send these rich kids down to take screenwriting and directing courses from actual screenwriters and directors working, right? And then they used our class as like digestible proteins to test their words on.

Right. So they would write something and then we'd say, Okay, dance monkey, say the words and show these budding screenwriters what their words look like when they're acted out. Right. And then we did the same shit for the directors where the they would get like a working TV director to shoot a skit that they wrote, and then they would shoot the same thing on the actual lot in the sound stages, and they would shoot it with the same same actors, the same students.

and just see how their shit looks when they're shooting it the way they want to direct it. And I thought that was fascinating and really fun. And that's where I met Mark Sacree. he was, I guess, giving a lecture to one of these classes of screenwriters about whatever the fact, probably networking and getting shit in the

Jake Simpson (20:13)
He is yeah, the networking king, isn't he? In he's the networking king in LA.

Dave Taylor (20:17)
Yeah, so that's how I met Mark. And he had this thing called the Hamptons Round Table. Because I guess he started in the Hamptons when he lived out there. And yeah, it's the idea is that everybody, bunch of entertainment folks get together every week. They go around the table, they say, Hi, my name is. This is what I'm working on. I need help, getting the script ready or pitch ready, or I I'm trying to meet so and so and we can tell people tell me what to do to prepare, right? And then people would raise their hands and say, I can help you with this, I can help you with that.

Just a way for like filmmakers to help each other out and I

But yeah, I guess so. Although very inclusive, whoever the one whoever wanted to come could

Jake Simpson (20:58)
Yeah, you didn't have to, you know, roll your trousers up and and do silly handshakes and and wear eight.

Dave Taylor (21:03)
Silly handshakes, yeah. They just when I when they were meeting at they were meeting at a restaurant in Burbank pretty regularly and and I I just offered to help set up a website and an email server for them, a moderated email system. and I did that for I think a couple of years until I got sick of it. I trained up another fella on how to do the moderation, he was pretty good at it. So

Past the torch.

Jake Simpson (21:34)
a lot of projects came went came and w and went in that particular thing. I mean I'm I'm still on the the email thread so you know I still see it. is it still going? It's still going. So yeah. and I've been to a couple of those meetings actually when I was in Los Angeles and there's actually one here in Phoenix as well. cool. Which I've been to a couple of times but it's mostly about screenwriting and to be honest it's mostly wannabes rather than have done's. But still, you know it's always good to to have somebody else's view on on whatever you're working on. So so now but now though

I mean you did a lot of contracts consultancy in Los Angeles, sort of business deals and all sorts of interesting things and you're still to a certain degree doing that now, aren't you?

Dave Taylor (22:15)
Yeah. I'm a little more settled down now, I think. so I've got a plain old employee style job, working on a photogrammetry ingest pipeline. And I'm working on a game with a friend, just informally.

Jake Simpson (22:38)
You you had the other game, Band Together. Talk a little bit about that. So you had a a partner who is creative director at Blur, is that right?

Dave Taylor (22:42)
And together, yeah. Mm-hmm.

no. I don't think so. John Chalfant, yeah. He's a a brilliant artist. first made his big splash at Blizzard. I I became a huge fan of if you remember those Warcraft three trailers, the ones where they've got sort of the close up of the raven pecking at the ground and furtively as the these this horde of works crests a hill. that was

John's amazing work and there's another great one where there's just a human fighting an orc in this epic battle and it's interrupted by this big comet dude that comes in and fucks them both up. And remember what I'm talking about? And there they're i in my memory there were two of the best trailers I had ever seen come out of the game industry. And that was my first exposure to John. And

Jake Simpson (23:33)
As you do, you know.

Cinematic eye, isn't he? I mean, John's I've met this kid the guy and he's amazing and he's a font of creativity and it I mean in the same way that Carmac is kind of a genius when it comes to code and architecture, John has that same kind of ability with visuals. Yeah. You guys got together and made that that the

Dave Taylor (24:08)
Yeah,

so he he agreed so he had made this band together IP first. and then I was teaching these kids game production up in San Francisco and I said, Hey, you know, what would you feel about partnering with some of my better students to do a commercial iPad version of this? He's like, Yeah, sure. So he did the art.

the students did everything else. I I only worked on a tiny piece of the code for this page flipping thing to help with some AC just some stuff that seemed a little bit unpleasant for these kids that weren't weren't trained in programming.

Jake Simpson (24:51)
Sorry, sorry, you you're using the words unity and unpleasant in the same sentence. I d I don't I don't understand how you

Dave Taylor (24:57)
I don't understand. Yeah. Yeah. Well, once you start doing asynchronous things in Unity, you know, it's like you're you're off into the weeds if you do it wrong.

Jake Simpson (25:05)
C is not designed for that, is it?

Dave Taylor (25:08)
No. So anyway, that that got actually highlighted by Apple and we got a got a lot of love for it. so John and I started working on a follow-up, like a re remake, but all three D instead of two D. And and it it became sort of a learning vehicle for us so that we could learn more about Unity. and

you know, I wanted to ship it, but I got caught in this sort of ugly transition from Unity three to four to five. And I was trying to use these fancy procedural textures from algorithmic. I was on their advisory board. I was very excited about their tech. And and so we were on this custom build of Unity and it wasn't altogether entirely stable. And so I get

Jake Simpson (26:06)
Astounded that you could ever say that about Unity. It's not a stable, how dare you.

Dave Taylor (26:10)
Exactly. And and it it it seemed like they were never totally taking procedural texture truly procedural textures truly seriously. And so that that kinda got me stuck there. And, you know, I I I was making all these systems to sort of overcome what I thought were these limitations of unity, but I was pushing Unity too hard. You know what I mean? Anyway I got I got frustrated with Unity, but really I got frustrated with myself and so I sort of put that on the shelf, did other things.

Jake Simpson (26:39)
We should we should talk a little bit about the game design 'cause I really I I just wanna talk about this 'cause I think this is such a great idea. 'Cause so there's this old game from years ago, from

Dave Taylor (26:48)
Limmings, right?

Jake Simpson (26:49)
Yeah, I I can't remember whether it's D N May design or whether it was Team Seventeen. I don't remember, but it Lemmings was i if you've seen Band Together, there's a a visual history that that subscribes to Lemmings, except it's the anti Lemmings, because in Lemmings you're desperately trying to keep all the Lemmings alive. Whereas in Band Together you're doing quite the opposite. You're trying to build rogue goldenberg design machines that that kill things. No

Dave Taylor (27:14)
completely

backwards. That's what we were trying to do is the develop the play the players were trying to save the the bandies. Yeah. It was exactly it was exactly the same as Lemmings as far as that goes. What we didn't ha what Lemmings had that we didn't have was destructible worlds. So our ours is all you know custom

Jake Simpson (27:17)
That's what I'm saying. Yeah.

It looks so great. All the the animation was so beautifully done. It was a two D game, but it was still and I remember your three D version of it was also extremely you know, seeing the the the crushing machines in, you know, in was wonderful. And it was the other thing that had that was I thought was astoundingly great was that it was all done as a as a kid's drawing.

Dave Taylor (27:49)
Yeah, right.

Yeah, as if it were made by kids out of thumbtacks and glue and cardboard. Yeah, I love that aesthetic.

Jake Simpson (28:05)
Was just brilliant. There's a there's another game that was that had that same kind of aesthetic called Drawn to Death, which was

Dave Taylor (28:13)
Dave Chaffee.

Jake Simpson (28:14)
Yes, Dave Jaffey did drawn together, which was a two there's a three D multiplayer, but it was again kids kids drawing all this stuff. So but I love that study. I think it was great. And nobody's done it either. I I I haven't seen it again since. So I think it was quite unique. i i if the listeners aren't getting this yet, I should point out that I've ruthlessly tried to push Dave into finishing it because I think it's an absolutely outstanding product and I was

Dave Taylor (28:38)
I I I I agree and I should. I do think about it sometimes. But in the middle of fighting all that Unity stuff, I found out from friends that the sort of the s the market had dropped out of the bottom of steam for most indies.

Jake Simpson (28:57)
You're competing against a lot of people out. And and it's all about eyeballs and there is no there's just no way to get eyeballs these days.

Dave Taylor (28:59)
A lot of people

Exactly.

Exactly. So I I saw this sort of thing where I learned an important lesson from TransMeta changing subjects radically from one of the founders of TransMeta. after it had an IPO and it made him scads of money, he said, I got some advice for you, Dave. Never ship product. as soon as you ship product, you set the valuation of it. as long as it's a demo, as long as it's the promise of a product and a future.

It's worth ten times more. And I was like, wait, you're you're joking, right? But then I realized, no, he's not joking. There there's this there's something to this. You get sort of one chance to launch an IP, and if it and if it falters, then the next time you pitch a new variant of that IP, they're going to ask you.

Yeah, that precedent. And that precedent says, Well, this is not commercially viable IP, therefore we're not doing this, when in fact it could have d been one to do with like a number of different variables.

Jake Simpson (30:12)
I

wonder if that's why SpaceX has never been never gone on the market. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think it's more about Elon Musk's desire for control, but still Yeah.

Dave Taylor (30:19)
you mean gone public, yeah, yeah. I

mean like going public like don't don't public you know, d don't release your product, is was his point. And and so I I sort of get a sense of that of like, you know, it is actually worth something quite a bit more, I think, as a IP right now, as a pristine IP, an unreleased IP, as opposed to something that I might have

know, semi botched by putting it in a market where it didn't quite belong and I wasn't willing to do all the proper F two P ish things to you know what I'm saying? So it's it's it's a tough call, right?

Jake Simpson (30:54)
I

don't buy that. I think that's that's I I'd buy that because the reality is that yeah, it's unreleased IP and it's pristine and all the rest of it, but the rac the reality is it's worth nothing. Because no one's actually nobody's actually giving you any money for it. So it's a great statement to make if you actually get someone to give you money, but if you haven't given any everyone's given you money, what's the point? It's a great statement to make.

Dave Taylor (31:14)
No no no, no. My point is

Jake Simpson (31:16)
You're saying the value of the IP is the fact that you haven't released it. Fine. But the fact is that that value So the value is is underpinning. Yes, but the fact the reality is no one's giving you any money for it.

Dave Taylor (31:28)
That's true, but they're giving me money for doing other things, which I'm gamefully employed doing.

Jake Simpson (31:32)
Right, right, but that's got nothing to do with with band together though, is it?

Dave Taylor (31:35)
Yeah. So nothing

to do with the a hundred other things that could do well that I'm also

Jake Simpson (31:41)
I'm

just saying, I I I find that I I don't know, I think that's a little disingenuous myself 'cause I just think like I don't know, it it's saying that the value is is of more value as a pristine IP, it's still zero because no one's given you any money. I don't know, it's just my thought. It's undefined. It's undefined, it's not zero. Well well yeah, but undefined might as well be zero because you can't buy anything with it. You can't roll in and I don't know. I I

Dave Taylor (32:04)
Hate to get current, but if you released those critters as NFTs, you know how well they'd do.

Jake Simpson (32:11)
that's a good point. my god, yeah. What an interesting idea. Yeah.

Dave Taylor (32:16)
And can and can you say the NFT has as much value if it's been already pre released as a as a game?

Jake Simpson (32:24)
Question. I have no idea. That's an interesting thought. You could actually do that, couldn't you? I'm just saying

Dave Taylor (32:31)
There's like other factors in this stuff. At least this is what I'm doing to to grasp onto my thin rationalization drown of regret.

Jake Simpson (32:42)
I you know, it's funny. so we we've got an internal project which I have and we are we're selling cards in this product and I showed it to Graham Divine, who's a really good friend, and he's you know, he's producing a product right now that is NFT based and it's a card game that he's doing and it's all online and it's it's based around an IP that he owns for many, many years.

Out there now. And when I showed it to him, his immediate his first response was almost immediately, you know, you could sell these as NFTs. And I was like, God. I mean, it's it's a great idea, and he's right. It's just one of those markets that I don't really think I have the expertise or the desire to get into. Do you know? many years ago I worked with an older engineer at Midway, many, many years ago, and he was probably in his late 30s, early 40s at the time. And he I remember him being really frustrated one day because

C was now the new thing. We were starting to write games in C. The first C game I think we did was a NFL Blitz, I think, was the first C game. Anyway, which is starting, and and we were having to learn it, and he was crusty and old, and from my perspective of those days, you know. I mean he's a fucking child now, but he was not crusty and old. And he I remember him saying that the older you get, the less inclined to learn new stuff you get. You know, and there comes a point as an engineer's life.

Where you just go, No, I'm done. I'm not learning anymore. You know, I'm like I I feel like as an engineer, I've learned, you know, I've learned my C, I've learned my C, I've learned my Python, I've learned my Objective C, I've learned my you what I mean? I've done all these things. I've learned Java for for Android and all the rest of it. And I've got all these things. And now Apple comes along with Swift and and you know, Google comes along with Cotin for for the languages. And these things look like Pearl because they've got question marks and it's horrible language to look at.

And I've just reached the point in my life where I'm fifty three years old and I've just gone, No, I'm done. I'm not learning anything new. I know enough now. I'm really pretty good at things I know. I'm just gonna I'm just ugh, I can't can't spend my time starting back at the beginning again and not knowing a clue, you know?

Dave Taylor (34:50)
You're not learning, you're learning more deeply about the things you already know. Yeah.

Jake Simpson (34:55)
True. Yeah. Well depth, but and and C plus plus is still relevant even though it people keep keep trying to turn it into C sharp with all this stupid iterator crap that they got. But it's it is a weird thing in that you do reach a point where you just go, No, I don't want to learn anymore. I'm just kind of I'm content with what I've got and I'm really, really good at what I've got. I don't just don't want to learn all this new stuff. Yes. god Yes, that's certainly true.

a certain truth. So you mentioned Transmitter, so why don't we talk a little bit about that? I mean what 'cause you know, Transmitter's history now. So what what was it? What were you doing there?

Dave Taylor (35:30)
So I had done the Unix ports of Doom and Quake back in the day. I found out that Linus, who had made some changes to the kernel for me for the sound support, was working on Travis by the

Jake Simpson (35:44)
Can I just say, yeah, that is power. That is power when you can email the guy who created an entire operating system that pretty much the entire internet sits on top of these days, right? You can call him and he'll change the kernel for you for a video game. That is power.

Dave Taylor (36:04)
Well not not many people were releasing games for Linux back then. And so I think he was keen to have to have it you know, feel a little more performant, right? It was a you know, the basically I was having to latency, right? Let's shorten the latency on sending the output to getting it through the speaker, that's all it was. yeah, so I was talking to him and he mentioned he was working at TransMeta. He explained that they were a processor company that was

Doing software decompilation of X eighty six assembly, turning it into its own native VLIW code, and then executing it without a lot of wasted transistors to do that sort of thing in hardware, thereby dramatically lowering the the power. The idea is that you do this translation once, it's very expensive, but then you cache it. And then from then on, you're not actually running X eighty six code anymore, you're just running

native Eli W code, only you've gotten rid of a bunch of transistors and whatnot. And that was kind of the gist. And I came up

Jake Simpson (37:07)
Less power, less heat.

Dave Taylor (37:08)
Less powerless heat, fewer transistors, which is all kind of the same thing. I came on because I mean, ostensibly because they had this one issue where one game everything worked fine, but for some reason half the screen was dim, right? And they had no, you know, it wasn't a crash bug, so they couldn't like look at a stack trace and say, What's going on with this? And so they asked me to sort of dive in there and figure out.

why, you know, what were what they were doing. It turned out to be a floating point bug. and you know, in the game industry you learn all these horrific techniques to debug. And so I just kinda pulled out my my terrifying toolbox and jumped into it and found it. And they were they were they were they were stunned. They're like, give a talk and I'm like, I don't think you're gonna like what you hear in this talk.

Jake Simpson (38:02)
You know, I I think that's a that's a really great name for a an album, you know, Dave's Terrifying Toolbox.

Dave Taylor (38:10)
From the game industry. Yeah. yeah, no, you know you know what it's like when you're debugging crazy shit and it's all real time and you can't stop anything. Or like debugging a shader, right? Have fun, good luck.

Jake Simpson (38:22)
Yeah, yeah. Do

you know I I I say this much. talking with a mechanic friend of mine a little while ago, and it it became very apparent to me how similar his job is to mine. like my car has been upgraded and and modified and it has a a a turbocharge on it. And you know, there are certain situations that happen with the car, sometimes backfires or whatever, and I take it in there, and they are asking me all sorts of questions about the conditions under th under which it backfires or whatever. And eventually I realized that.

They they are doing the same thing that I do when a bug comes up, now what's conditions? How many players are there? What have we done? What you know, that kind of stuff. Because they're diagnosing an engine that's running and you can't see. You can't see inside of it, you can't pause it, you can't look at the stats or anything. It's like, Okay, well, could be this, could be this, could be this, let's start playing with this, let's start playing with that. And it's exactly the same thing we do for video games. It's bizarre how much you know, we're software mechanics is what we are. You know, they use wrenches and we use Visual Studio. It's the same kind of thing, but yeah.

Dave Taylor (39:21)
These days I understand it's more software for them than it is.

Jake Simpson (39:24)
That's

true, yeah. They they do have a lot of s well, because it's all computer driven these days. But I mean if you y even looking at things like Jeeps today, it's still very mechanical, so

Dave Taylor (39:33)
Wouldn't it be cool if you could interface to your car and say, pop off the o oil filter and it just drops out of the chassis?

Jake Simpson (39:42)
No, not really because somebody would hack in and do that while you're doing a hundred and ten down the explosion.

Dave Taylor (39:46)
Press wipe. I know it'd be

cool for a few minutes right before you get hacked. I just think it would be cool if you could do that. just like essentially disassemble your car from the software interface.

Jake Simpson (39:58)
Kind of interesting idea, yeah. If it's all you know, if it was all magnetically connected or something, I don't know. Yeah. But I don't know that that would actually work really if we think about it. you know, that's

Dave Taylor (40:10)
Absolutely it would work brilliantly without any problem w whatsoever.

Jake Simpson (40:15)
So if you security issues if you want to buy hire Dave, he's available.

Dave Taylor (40:20)
Exactly. Everything turns out great with Dave's code.

Jake Simpson (40:24)
Yeah, Dave. Well his and his terrifying toolbox. Nudge nudge.

Dave Taylor (40:27)
So

that's how we got on the subject how did I f I'm having I think I may have blown my stacks. How did we get on the subject of Transmeta? I can't remember.

Jake Simpson (40:37)
we were you were talking about advice that was given to you.

Dave Taylor (40:42)
Yes, so that's that's yeah, that's where it came from. That was my first exposure to going through an IPO. So I actually worked on the IPO roadshow demo for that. And that's where I learned. And he taught me about, you know, you want to sell the sizzle, not the steak, right? Right. And that was kind of a sad but important lesson, I thought.

Jake Simpson (41:06)
Yes, isn't life full of those? So we should talk a little bit about the parties as well. So again, I need to give a little bit of background here. So there's a a game developers conference, for those of you aren't aware, there's a a massive game developers conference, probably the biggest one in the world, that happens yearly in or used to anyway, happen in San Francisco, it hasn't for the past two years, but it's a massive gathering of pretty much every game developer who's worth his salt wants to go, at least once.

And I'd say that fifty percent of the business is not actually done at the convention anyway. It's all done in in the bars around it and pubs and hotels and all that kind of stuff around it. I mean I go every when I every year, but I never actually buy a ticket because the the the conference sessions themselves, most of them I find

Dave Taylor (41:53)
As you say, so much of the value is happening.

Jake Simpson (41:54)
Yeah, well, it's also that, but it's it's a lot of younger people who are announcing things that we've we saw ten years ago or fifteen years ago and it didn't work then, it's probably not gonna work now. And the interesting the can't the the the sessions that are interesting and never actually have the real data that you need to go with it, you know? It's like people saying, Well, our experience has been that this works best. Really? Okay, give me the details, give me the give me the numbers. Show me the numbers that show you that you know that this does best. Well, no, we can't do that. That's a sp that's a company's

Dave Taylor (42:23)
It's not academically rigorous.

Jake Simpson (42:25)
Yeah, it's it's just someone got and and it's always contextual. Everything is always so contextual anyway. But anyway, one of the things that happens at this convention is that there's often a party. And I actually kicked this off, starting off a particular party for a particular group of people with a friend of mine who had a house in San Francisco, downtown San Francisco. You can imagine what that's worth now. and so he let me have the house for a night. So we had these parties and I did it for like two or three years.

the party gaining size each year. The last year was really amusing because I was working at EA at the time and I actually had an email from EA, the EA recruiting group, who were quite pissed off because inadvertently I had scheduled my party against their recruiting party and nobody showed up at their recruiting party. And they found out that I was holding my party and in fact my producer that was working at EA

showed up at my party. He wasn't invited, but he showed up anyway. And I was like, what are you doing here? And he went, it's supposed to be the place to be. And I got an email from EA asking if they could sponsor the party for next year. And I was like, Yeah, I don't think so. I'm I'm not making this an EA recruiting party. That's not what I'm doing. Yeah. It's not the same. So but anyway, I moved away from San Francisco, h to here, in fact, to flo to Phoenix. And at that point, they volunteered to step in and take over these party organization. And

Dave took it to a whole new level. I mean, mine was just like a couple of kegs and some bottles or whatever and come on in and we we we went and got Chinese from the local Chinese restaurant and spread it about the place and that was it, you know. Yours, your parties, they were to write home about. So you should talk about some of those. I mean, you got real proper sponsors, didn't you?

Dave Taylor (44:06)
Yeah.

I yeah, so I think I think the reason we had no trouble raising money for those is because they were very much focused on the things that other parties weren't delivering. And I'm sure part of why your parties were upsetting EA, you were being unfortunately too focused on the guests and giving them a good time and being real, whereas they wanted to put together a front and to and to do a song and dance and

Jake Simpson (44:39)
Yeah.

They had an aim in mind and I didn't. I was just like like for example, your party's never had music and neither did mine because because the whole point is I want people to talk to each other. Whereas yeah, Microsoft was was renting out here and

Dave Taylor (44:55)
Exactly. And so that that

quality conversation was the mission statement of those parties. And and so to that end, everything revolved around that. So it's like make sure the guests are interesting to talk to, make sure you're not inviting too many assholes. make sure the really drunk ones are escorted out promptly. make sure that we have

bar stool so that the seated people are at roughly the height of the standing people so that they're not crating their necks as much in a chat.

Jake Simpson (45:28)
Wow, I had no idea that that you'd gone to that degree. That's

Dave Taylor (45:31)
no, there is more than that. Like the wait staff at one of these was trained to look for people that looked like they were holding court too long in a group so that they could sneak food under literally underneath this imagined volume of their discussion. so that you could sort of add it as a sub note of like as opposed to interrupting them. and because they can't escape

being the centers of attention sometimes. And so you need to feed them because they can't get to the food. So yeah, no, it's all focused on c and as you say, and and then the drinks. Now you had shit that people wanted to drink, like beer. Yeah. which I kept getting requests for, but I said no because because I'm like the fascist version of your party. I said no because if it's a beer you could get it anywhere. but it

Jake Simpson (46:26)
An experience you could only get there.

Dave Taylor (46:28)
Yeah, exactly. 'Cause then you can talk about it. It's a conversation piece. So we had these cocktails that were named after shit happened that year or or specific members maybe or or or not members but

Jake Simpson (46:39)
Yeah, you name one after me at one point, which I was quite surprised at. But there's yeah, I remember those parts. And you're also your locals were fantastic. You remember Yeah, you did one on an unfinished floor of a downtown skyscraper in San Francisco. So it's astonishing, it's an unfinished area that you're just wandering around in with these big floor to ceiling windows, you can look over the st it was amazing. And you're right, you also had you had people

Dave Taylor (46:41)
Exactly. Yeah.

One good venue.

Jake Simpson (47:05)
You know, you did the you let you finalized your guest list the day before and nobody who wasn't on the guest list was ever getting in. There were people on the door and you had to show ID and that was it. You weren't getting in. If you weren't on that list, you weren't getting in. And I remember that. And that again, you did all the right things in that way. I will

Dave Taylor (47:21)
wanna know who's showing up. It's that that's the point of the party, right? Like I want to know who I'm going to go meet.

Jake Simpson (47:28)
It was y what Dave did to these parties made them the the highlight for most people. A lot of our my friends used to go to the G D C in order to go to this party, because it was the highlight. Dave something else you did that I thought was so outstanding was you had a photographer, who set up a photographer booth. Not a not a stupid booth, but you know, a proper photographer with a whole background and then he provided a whole ton of

For you to use with pictures. So you could go in to get your pictures taken with everybody you wanted. And the beauty of it is it was all taken care of, the money was all taken care of. And about a week after the event, a website would prop up with all of these pictures and you could just download whatever pictures you wanted. And it was it was amazing. That was such a brilliant idea. because we all got drunk and did stupid stuff, and there's always pictures of us all. Yes. And there was also, yeah, because I mean half half the time he would work at the booth and some of the time he'd wander around

Dave Taylor (48:16)
And there were some great pictures, I guess.

Jake Simpson (48:23)
And just take it.

Dave Taylor (48:24)
Fantastic photographer, of course.

Jake Simpson (48:26)
Went

out the hell was also at the time your my roommate as well, but yeah.

Dave Taylor (48:29)
Yeah. I mean this is you know, you were saying earlier how amazing that you get to call Linus and and here's this thing that runs the internet. But it's and Hal, by the way, now is like stalking half the photography the world is using right now. He's like a big wig at Getty Images, traveling all over the world shooting stuff. And I think a lot of this is just, you know, right now there's a new Linux, right? And it's probably the functionally based operating system that replaces it is based on

no procedural stuff of anything. And it's probably got all of three apps that you can run on it. and nobody but a bunch of has Haskell retards are are playing with it, right? but it sure as shit, it's gonna be the next big thing, right?

Jake Simpson (49:16)
Are you calling Tim Sweeney a r a Haskell Retard? I mean

Dave Taylor (49:19)
Well, I I say it with affection. I I wish I wish I were one. I mean I spe speaking of aesthetic sensibility issues, like I understand that I'm reading a superior language, a more expressive, concise language, but I I also, you know, just rebel at some of the syntax of these things. And and so I I haven't found the functional language for me yet, but I'm trying to write all of my procedural code functionally now.

and so I it's I'm in this horrible you were saying like I don't I don't wanna learn any more things. I desperately do want to learn that one last thing. I wanna learn the the the C of functional languages. I just don't know what the fuck that is yet, right? no one's told me is it Haskell, is it Lisp, is it Clojure, is it yeah, is it r it's not Rust, 'cause Rust only does bits of it.

Yeah, Rust I had no problem with. Rust is Rust is makes a lot of sense to me. But anyway, so to me that's my enduring frustration is that I want to find I want someone to invent a language, and if they don't do it soon, I'm just gonna have to do it myself. where where I can actually read this shit and still write functional code.

Jake Simpson (50:41)
Yeah, that mean that is Dave in a nutshell, honestly though. It's it's if it doesn't exist, I'll make it exist. And that I envy you your time and ability to do that kind of thing. You know, it's like I'm I got so much going on in my life these days with the kids and you know, new new dog. well I just actually to be honest with you, I got it wrong when I posted that I had that I just hired my twelfth employer. I'm actually wrong, I was my fourteenth.

Dave Taylor (51:00)
And how many employees?

You're losing track of employees. This is the second forgotten employee? No.

Jake Simpson (51:12)
Well,

But yeah, it's it's getting a bit O D T and by April hopefully we should be around thirty mark. But anyway, it's it's yeah, there's a lot going on in my life and I just don't have the time because I'm I'm surprised that I'm finding the time honestly for the for doing a podcast, to be honest with you, but it's you know, it's a bit of fun and a bit of silliness and

Dave Taylor (51:33)
You've always impressed me with all the kinds of shit you can stack on your plate.

Jake Simpson (51:37)
Well, yeah, life's short, you know, make the most of it. That's what I look at it. And I'm you know, I think that's also why we're kind of kindred spirits though, because I look at the things you've done. Like I said, you generated your own assembly language. You know, I know you wrote a compiler for it. There's no processor that runs it, but he did it anyway, and that to me is like holy cow

Dave Taylor (51:53)
Well my yeah, my my virtual processor runs it. Well, you know.

Jake Simpson (51:58)
You know what, you could probably, you know, talk to Jamin and get him to build you one, you know. yeah.

Dave Taylor (52:02)
I tried to sell him on it.

Yeah. He wasn't moved. I don't think it was I don't think it was game console y enough.

Jake Simpson (52:09)
right. Okay. Jamin, by the way, is a a friend who works with a Sony actually no, he works for a naughty but I thought he's a naughty dog employee, isn't And he's a massive, massive Japanese fan and but he's also he builds what he's calling the J Station, which is his own console, which is kind of amusing. Bearing in mind he works for Swingish Yeah.

Dave Taylor (52:19)
Owned by Sony.

Down to the fucking transistor.

Jake Simpson (52:37)
That's a that's a strange expression, isn't it? When you say I make something from scratch, you know, it when you say I've made my breakfast from scratch, that to me induces all sorts of disgusting images of somebody scratching their head and making dinner out of the I don't know. I don't know what the etymology of that particular phrase.

Dave Taylor (52:50)
Yeah.

F P D A, right?

Jake Simpson (52:56)
Well, yeah, quite. Okay. Yeah, it's I mean that's I mean sounds essentially what Transmetal was really when you come down to it in lots of ways. but yeah.

Dave Taylor (53:05)
Yeah, but he was just a one man band. He's he's an amazing dude.

Jake Simpson (53:09)
that's true. Well, yeah, a lot of bandwidth. so so where are you doing now? I mean, you know, you're are you still doing the six months on, six months off thing?

Dave Taylor (53:20)
No, I'm mostly half useful all the time now. so yeah, so I've I've been working on this mostly this photogrammetry ingest pipeline for Blue Vishnu. and it's called the XX array. And it's a bunch of nice Nikon D S L R cameras, about you know it it's configurable anywhere from like a dozen to like a couple hundred of

Jake Simpson (53:25)
All right.

Dave Taylor (53:49)
generally all pointed inwardly, radially, on a subject. the software synchronizes them to all shoot at the same time and ingest everything and kinda get them into a three D solver so that you can get a textured mesh out of it.

Jake Simpson (54:05)
Do you get lighting information out of them?

Dave Taylor (54:07)
So using cross polarizing filters you can separate out your diffuse and spec maps and separate shots. Yeah. So you can do that. but it's I it's obviously a little bit more involved. And all of these things involve a certain amount of cleanup, of course.

Jake Simpson (54:23)
Yeah, they always do the same motion capture for for movies do the same thing, you know. It's it's all clean up this sort question of how much do you change the object when you're cleaning it up is the question. And that's why James Cameron, his motion capture movies are so much better than everyone else's, is because he shoots and shoots and shoots and shoots and shoots until he gets what he wants and doesn't do an awful lot of touch up. Whereas like that's why Avatar cost half a million dollars, because he kept shooting the same scene again and again and again until until he got

Dave Taylor (54:44)
interesting.

Jake Simpson (54:51)
Performances from everybody in exactly the way that he wanted. Whereas if you look at something like Bob Zemeckis' movie, Bob will do a shot and he'll take half an hour of it and then move on. And what he'll do is he'll take twenty takes of that same shot and he'll go, Right, I want the performance from person A from shot four, and then I want the performance from person B from shot six, and I want the I want half of this performance from s from this one and half of that performance. And the problem you've got is the timing.

For each of those performances is slightly out. So there's an amount of massaging that has to happen to the animations in order to make them line up. And that's when and that's when they start to look synthetic. Because they're not the raw data anymore. It's a it's the raw data that's then been massaged in order to make it so that one person hand shaking hands with another actually lines up. And Cameron doesn't do that. Cameron just waits until everybody's performance is exactly what he wants. And that's why his ones are so much more expensive, but also why his stuff looks better. Again

Dave Taylor (55:31)
Interesting.

Didn't know that.

Jake Simpson (55:50)
Yeah, but then I really wasn't making this about me. I didn't want to make this about me. okay, so sorry, just experience. So okay, it's been a pleasure talking to you. I think I find you're a fascinating individual. Your breadth of experience is so wide and so interesting. You know, we could sit there and spend an hour on each one of these subjects, frankly. because I think I find you such a fascinating human being. And I I am very grateful that I know you and that you're a part of my friends' circle because I've

truly do believe that a man is as rich as the friends circle that he has, and in which case I am extremely rich. Although I wouldn't mind if someone wanted to to send me a couple of million bucks.

Dave Taylor (56:31)
Okay.

Jake Simpson (56:35)
Yeah, I do you know it's funny, every time I go to LA Dave takes me out to some other vegan restaurant and I sit there and go, Another vegan restaurant. Because I am confirmed I'm a confirmed meat eater and he takes me to these a and it's not even just vegetarian restaurants, it's vegan restaurants as well. You don't even get eggs for breakfast.

Dave Taylor (56:43)
Yeah.

That's right. That's right. And I I thrive in convincing people that vegan food can be delicious.

Jake Simpson (57:02)
Hm, well, one day that will happen.

Dave Taylor (57:05)
I mean it's okay.

Jake Simpson (57:10)
I should also point out that Dave and I have a running battle as well regarding Linux versus Windows. because Dave is a Linux head of Epic Proportions and and his ability and knowledge of the the the operating system is ex encyclopedic. anytime I have any kind of issue it's always like, Dave, how do I do this? How do I do that? And then he asks me the same questions about Windows and expresses his frustrations about Windows to me and it's extremely amusing to me. 'Cause

Dave Taylor (57:34)
Lord.

Jake Simpson (57:36)
Half the time when he asks me how to do something, I'm like, Yeah, I don't think you can do that in Windows, dude. and he's like, Whereas it I've got to admit that every time I ask you how to do something in Linux, you know how to do it. It's always possible.

Dave Taylor (57:40)
Yes.

I like Linux so much.

Yeah, it's it's one of those things. It's mostly possible.

Jake Simpson (57:57)
All right. Well it's been a pleasure talking to you and yeah, thanks for being part of the inaugural podcast for me and it's it's been an exciting time.