Talk:Doug Bell (game designer)

Verification
Someone had put on the {verify} tag. As far as I can see, the claims in this article are pretty self-supporting. The book and articles mentioned can be located. Employment history may not be mentioned as publicly, but is usually not subject to a lot of contention on bios (unless there's some real doubt). The resume I located for Bell seems to support the particular job titles that are mentioned.

Are there any specific issues that editors feel need citational support? Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters 06:30, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Resume
I found a resume for Doug Bell, but only in the Google cache. Maybe we can find a live copy. In any case, it may be posible to use some of this material on the bio:

Douglas A. Bell OBJECTIVE

A challenging senior-level position developing creative Java solutions for a growth-oriented company.

PROFESSIONAL EMPLOYMENT 1999 to Jan 2001 	Chief Java Architect, Research and Development 	Britannica.com; La Jolla, California

* Responsible for the architectural design of all Java projects at Britannica's research and development lab.

* Headed the development effort by nine engineers and computer scientists to transition Britannica's legacy research projects, written in Perl, C and C++, to the pure Java WebLogic environment used by the company's Britannica.com website. To facilitate the transition, designed and developed servlet and JSP interfaces to the EJB middle tier and Oracle 8i back end. Developed a plan for the efficient transition of the search, navigation, data mining and visualization research projects to the EJB and servlet architecture.

* Designed and developed the Research Assistant module of the Britannica CD/DVD 2000 and 2001 versions. Research Assistant is a Java application using JFC (Swing) that provides an outline organizer to facilitate collecting text and image notes from the encyclopedia and other sources. Notes can be organized and edited using the visual interface and used to generate reports with footnotes. Research Assistant uses a model-view-controller architecture that allows multiple simultaneous views and editors for any data element. The 35,000-line Java program consists of 150 top-level classes and the initial version was designed, implemented, debugged and thoroughly documented by myself within an aggressive five-month deadline.

* Designed and directed the development of a diagnostic tool used to design and fine-tune the data mining and search algorithms used by Britannica’s research and production projects. The tool, implemented as a Java servlet, takes as its inputs a set of XML files and a user-supplied engine. The XML files describe input parameters and test files. The tool displays an HTML interface based on the input parameters that allows the user to manipulate the inputs and create test sets. The tool invokes the engine with the inputs and displays the outputs, allowing the user to view, compare, and save the results. The servlet is a powerful, easy-to-use tool that allows its users to create custom multi-user tools that validate, test, and fine-tune various algorithms without requiring any interface programming.

1997 to present 	Consultant & Java Instructor 	University of California, San Diego; La Jolla, California

* Developed courseware and lab materials for Java III & IV, Java Network Programming, and Java Multithreaded Programming UCSD Extension courses.

* Currently teach Advanced Java Programming Structures (Java IV) each quarter. The course covers advanced topics such as multithreading, networking, JFC Swing, design patterns, and using interfaces, abstract classes and inner classes.

* Currently teach Java Multithreaded Programming Techniques one quarter each year. Course material includes threads and setting thread priorities, thread synchronization, using wait/notify and thread groups, how to avoid common problems such as race conditions, starvation and deadlock, and concurrent object-oriented design patterns and techniques.

* Previously taught Object-Oriented Java Programming (Java III) and Java Network Programming Techniques.

* As a consultant helped set up the current comprehensive Java curriculum offered by UCSD Extension.

1986 to 1995 	Technical Director 	FTL Games; San Diego, California

* Managed and directed all aspects of FTL's software development cycle from the design phase through product delivery. Responsibilities included product design and management, hiring personnel and purchasing equipment, in addition to writing critical sections of code.

* Designed and developed a proprietary object-oriented system for cross-platform software development. This driver-based system allows a common set of C source code, graphics, sound and text to be developed and compiled on either a Macintosh or IBM PC for execution on a variety of computers and game machines. Simultaneous development for multiple platforms, rapid prototyping and off-site language translation are a few of the system's benefits.

* Led a team of five programmers and artists in the design and development of Dungeon Master, a fantasy role-playing game first released in December 1987 on the Atari ST and subsequently on the Amiga, Apple IIGS, NEC PC-9801, Sharp X68000, FM-TOWNS, Super NES, and IBM PC. Dungeon Master won dozens of top industry awards and set numerous sales records internationally, and was the all-time best selling product on the Atari ST. It established a new genre for fantasy role-playing games and is considered one of the all-time classic computer games. Dungeon Master, developed in 22 months, consisted of about 65,000 lines of C and Assembly.

* Led the development of Chaos Strikes Back, the sequel to Dungeon Master. Chaos Strikes Back became a number one selling game, and was released in November 1989 on five platforms and translated into five languages. This project was developed over 18 months by one to six people, and involved about 85,000 lines of C and Assembly code.

* Led a six to nine person team in developing Skullkeep, a game in the Dungeon Master product line. Skullkeep was first released in Japan in 1993 where it became the number one selling product in the week following its release and was nominated for the prestigious Japan Software Award in the entertainment category. Skullkeep was translated into six languages and released worldwide on six platforms. The 250,000-line C and Assembly project, developed over 34 months, includes sophisticated memory and resource management for handling nearly 10,000 data elements on RAM-limited target machines.

1985 	Project Leader 	FTL Games; San Diego, California

* Led a three-person team in rewriting Sundog, a science fiction role playing game released on the Atari ST in December 1985. Sundog was the number one selling product on the Atari ST in 1986. Sundog had originally been written for the Apple II, and was rewritten to take advantage of improved graphics and computing abilities on the Atari ST. The 30,000-line Pascal and 68000 Assembly project was completed on schedule in ten months despite having to port pSystem Pascal to the Atari, unreliable development hardware, and lack of support and tools for the then unreleased Atari ST.

1981 to 1984 	President 	PVC Dragon; Redlands, California

* Co-founded PVC Dragon with a friend to develop games for the Apple II. Actively involved in all aspects of forming, financing, and managing the company.

* Designed and developed an original fantasy role-playing game for the Apple II, written in Pascal and 6502 Assembly. The game was sold to FTL Games in 1984 and was never released.

SKILLS

Languages 	Java, C, C++, Pascal, 680x0 Assembly, Power PC Assembly, 6502 Assembly, Prolog, others. Web / Enterprise 	Servlets, JSP, EJB, RMI, JNDI, JINI, JDBC, SQL, Applets, HTML, XML, BEA WebLogic, others Operating Platforms 	Java, Macintosh, Windows, Unix, and more than a dozen other personal computer and game console platforms. General Exceptional object-oriented design skills; superior management and organizational skills; excellent writing and communication skills; strong financial and accounting skills.

PUBLICATIONS

Wrote several chapters in late 1998 as co-author of the book Inside Jini in conjunction with Sun Microsystems which provided in-depth access to the Jini development team and internal documents. The book was to be published by Addison Wesley as part of Sun’s official Java Series, but personal reasons prevented the other co-author from completing the book.

Java Game Programming for Dummies. 1998. Foster City, California: IDG Books Worldwide, Inc.

Make Java Fast: Optimize! JavaWorld, April 1997, http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-04-1997/jw-04-optimize.html

Authored over a thousand posts to the comp.lang.java newsgroups in 1996 and 1997 answering questions on Java. Authored several FAQ answers on Java at jGuru, http://www.jguru.com/jguru/guru/viewfaqs.jsp?EID=113602

OTHER

* Co-founded the San Diego County Java Special Interest Group in May, 1996 and actively participated in running the SIG for three years.

* Appeared as one of four panelists on the Java Gaming industry panel at Sun Microsystems’ 1997 JavaOne conference. Independently developed a high-performance Java version of Apple Computer’s QuicktimeVR™ technology that I demonstrated during the session.

Any self published information such as a resume would need external verification. But it could be used as a starting point for research. HighInBC (Need help? Ask me) 18:52, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Confusion
You know, my name is Douglas Bell, and I'm definitely not a computer game developer, but thanks to this article, everyone asks me if I am, which is totally not true. One of those cases where Wikipedia can be quite annoying... 68.167.206.2 01:39, 2 December 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry, the comment above was mine; I didn't realize that I wasn't logged in. Webmacster87 01:41, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

I Really Think That This Article Should Be Deleted
I don't see the point for why this article is here, nor why this person is so significant that he deserves to be the only Douglas Bell with a Wikipedia entry. This article should have been SPEEDY deleted in my opinion. As the SPEEDY page says under the Articles section, #7: "An article about a real person, organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. This is distinct from questions of notability, verifiability and reliability of sources."

This article does not state why the subject is important or significant, and has absolutely no sources whatsoever. It simply lists the names of games that this guy helped to create and then lists two publications that this guy made. There is no reason for him to be here, and none has been presented. To be honest, the information shown on this page would be better on this guy's own website, if he had one--the article doesn't even link to one.

This article has also made my online life very chaotic because my own name is Douglas Bell, although I am a completely different Douglas Bell born thirty years later. However, because this unsourced and unnecessary article is the top result on Google for "Douglas Bell," everyone thinks that I'm some old computer game developer, which is not true. If I was sharing a name with someone who had a clearly defined, significant purpose to be on Wikipedia, fine. But that is clearly not the case here.

I am not advocating for the deletion of this article to be self-serving--I do not want nor deserve my own article on Wikipedia. However, whoever this "computer game developer" Douglas Bell is does not either, and unless someone can put forward some clear evidence and sources for why this article belongs on Wikipedia, I will be recommending its deletion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Webmacster87 (talk • contribs) 03:11, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

External links modified
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