Programmer John Carmack

John Carmack is a legendary personality in the gaming industry, he invented revolutionary programming techniques that made games more realistic, with the participation of such masterpieces as Wolfenstein 3D, Quake, Doom and many others.

John Carmack: Biography

Carmack was born on August 20, 1970 in the suburbs of Kansas City (USA). As a child, John was fond of chemical experiments, simulated rockets, read fiction. But most of all he liked fantasy role-playing games, for example, Dungeons and Dragons.

With the advent of the computer age, Carmack's life has changed. He became obsessed with electronic gadgets, but parents could not buy an expensive toy. When the future genius was fourteen years old, he tried with a group of friends to steal the computers of Apple II from school. They were caught, and John Carmack spent the next year in a special institution for minors.

After release, Carmack became quiet and started programming. He learned to write codes on his own. Parents saw that his son had an unusual potential, and they cut out the means for buying the first computer.

Carier start

After a failed study at the University of Missouri, John Carmack became a freelancer. For some time he worked as an independent contractor for Apple, but earned very little money. In the end, the young man got a job as a programmer at Softdisk. One of its first developments was the two-dimensional arcade Invasion of the Vorticons.

Carmack's colleagues were two fan-obsessed fans: John Romero (1967) and Adrian Carmack (1969). During the day they developed games for Softdisk, and at night they experimented with coding. Soon the friendly company created its video game called Commander Keen.

Own business

Inspired by the success of the game, the trio left Softdisk in order to form the ID Software company in 1991. Later, John Carmack and John Romero for decades will become fashion trendsetters in the gaming industry.

Being young people, Carmack and Romero were happy to play computer games. Especially they were carried away by the project Castle Wolfenstein. Soon they released their own version - Wolfenstein 3D. Three-dimensional image in the modern sense was not, but Carmack came up with technical tricks that created the illusion of volume. The hero examined the labyrinths of the Nazis, fought against enemies and collected treasures. The project overnight became incredibly successful. Due to the fact that the game was played by the first person, the players for the first time could feel themselves participants of realistic adventures. The gamer saw the world through the gun sight and could direct it to the target.

Wealth and diligence

Wolfenstein was so popular that each of its creators earned $ 120,000 per month. John Carmack, whose photo began to appear on the covers of publications, became a rich man at the age of 21.

However, the money little worried about John. He worked daily more than 8 hours to correct and improve the coding. In the ID world, the balanced, assembled Carmack was the king of coding, embodying the ideas of three-dimensional reality into life. Romero was assigned the role of screenwriter, mastermind, responsible for the atmospheric games, landscape design and characters.

The Age of Doom

In 1993, the team released the revolutionary Doom hit. They created a three-dimensional virtual world so powerful, convincing and exciting that it changed the game industry. The plot of the game could fit in one and a half lines: the hero in the research center on Mars fights with the attacking demons. However, the graphic performance was truly unique, complex and very realistic for its time.

Prior to Doom, most video games were pretty flat and unrealistic. Carmack's programming techniques allowed the fantasy world to become more natural, detailed. In 1994, the project brought $ 7 million in profit, despite the fact that the copies were sorely lacking. The game has become one of the best-selling in history. John Carmack and Romero became legends.

Quake

In 1996, the duo presented the game Quake. Gamers were offered an even higher level of realism. The multiplayer project became the legislator of the "arena" genre, when real players are fighting over the network with each other.

Quake became both a bestseller and a cult phenomenon. Quake II was released later - in 1996. Quake III Arena was released in 2000 and is an online game that allows a large number of participants to fight simultaneously.

Best games

John Carmack is involved in the development of 44 games. The most famous are:

• The Commander Keen series (1990, 1991);
• Hovertank 3D (1991);
• Wolfenstein 3D (5.05.1992);
• Spear of Destiny (18.09.1992);
• Doom (10.12.1993);
• Doom II (10/10/1994);
• Heretic (December 23, 1994);
• Quake (06/22/1996);
• Quake II (9.12.1997);
• Quake III Arena (2.12.1999);
• Doom III (3.08.2004);
• Quake IV (18.10.2005);
• Wolfenstein (18.08.2009);
• Quake Champions (announcement 2017).

Nowadays

Now Carmack oversees the Oculus Rift project. He believes that the future is beyond virtual reality. It was incredibly captured by this idea - so much so that John left ID Software, which gave the 22 best years of his life. Even earlier, the ways with John Romero broke up. Two creative personalities had too different views on the future of the gaming industry.

Carmack is an advocate of open source software. He made ID Tech 1, 2, and 3 available for download and said that eventually ID Tech 4 and ID Tech 5 would be open source. He also opposes the notion of patents in software.

John is married and has two children. His wife was Katherine Kang, who was the director of business development in ID Software.