Justin Weiss's Reviews > Game Engine Black Book: Doom

I really liked this, but got less out of it than I did the Wolfenstein 3D GEBB. Which is surprising, because Doom is one of my all-time favorite games, and Wolf3D is... not.

It seemed like this had so much to cover that it couldn't go as in-depth as the Wolfenstein book, and I would have been totally lost if I hadn't just finished that one a few days earlier. This book has lots of call-outs and references to that one, and I loved not having to re-read the same stuff in both books -- but it's something to keep in mind if you're starting with this one.

As far as the content, I found the Wolf3D book incredibly easy to understand, and the details of the engine were covered in such detail that I felt like I could build something similar on my own if I wanted to. Maybe I couldn't, but that's the feeling I came away with. This one was amazing in what it covered, but it felt less comprehensive. Like "these are how the most interesting parts of the Doom engine works" and not "This is how the Doom engine works." Even if it wasn't covered in detail, I felt like I was missing the connections between each of these neat pieces. It's long, but one of the rare books where I would have liked it to be twice as long.

Still, both these books are incredible and very much worth reading if you grew up in that era of PC gaming.