John Carmack

John D. Carmack II[3] (born August 20, 1970) is an American computer programmer, video game developer and engineer. He co-founded the video game company id Software and was the lead programmer of its games Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake and their sequels. Carmack made innovations in 3D graphics, such as his Carmack's Reverse algorithm for shadow volumes. In 2013, he resigned from id to work full-time at Oculus VR, where he serves as consulting CTO.[2]

John Carmack
Carmack at the 2017 Game Developers Choice Awards in March 1, 2017
Born (1970-08-20) August 20, 1970
Shawnee Mission, Kansas, U.S.
Alma materUniversity of Missouri, Kansas City (dropped out)
OccupationComputer programmer, video game developer, engineer
EmployerOculus VR
Known forCo-founding id Software
Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, Rage
TitleConsulting CTO, Oculus VR[1][2]
Founder, Armadillo Aerospace
Spouse(s)
Katherine Anna Kang (m. 2000)
Children2

Biography

Early life

Carmack was born in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, the son of local television news reporter Stan Carmack. He grew up in the Kansas City metropolitan area, where he became interested in computers at an early age. He attended Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, Kansas and Raytown South High School in nearby Raytown, Missouri.

Carmack was introduced to video games with the 1978 shoot 'em up title Space Invaders in the arcades during a summer vacation as a child. The 1980 maze chase arcade game Pac-Man also left a strong impression on him. He cited Shigeru Miyamoto as the game developer he most admired.[4]

As reported in David Kushner's Masters of Doom, when Carmack was 14, he broke into a school to help a group of children steal Apple II computers. To gain entry to the building, Carmack concocted a sticky substance of thermite mixed with Vaseline that melted through the windows. However, an overweight accomplice struggled to get through the hole, and opened the window, setting off a silent alarm and alerting police. Carmack was arrested, and sent for psychiatric evaluation (the report mentions "no empathy for other human beings" and describes Carmack as "a brain on legs"). Carmack was then sentenced to a year in a juvenile home.[5][6]

He attended the University of Missouri–Kansas City for two semesters before withdrawing to work as a freelance programmer.[7]

Career

Softdisk, a computer company in Shreveport, Louisiana, hired Carmack to work on Softdisk G-S (an Apple IIGS publication), introducing him to John Romero and other future key members of id Software such as Adrian Carmack (not related). Later, Softdisk would place this team in charge of a new, but short-lived, bi-monthly game subscription product called Gamer's Edge for the IBM PC (DOS) platform. In 1990, while still at Softdisk, Carmack, Romero, and others created the first of the Commander Keen games, a series that was published by Apogee Software, under the shareware distribution model, from 1991 onwards. Afterwards, Carmack left Softdisk to co-found id Software.

Carmack has pioneered or popularized the use of many techniques in computer graphics, including "adaptive tile refresh" for Commander Keen, ray casting for Hovertank 3-D, Catacomb 3-D, and Wolfenstein 3-D, binary space partitioning which Doom became the first game to use, surface caching which he invented for Quake, Carmack's Reverse (formally known as z-fail stencil shadows) which he devised for Doom 3, and MegaTexture technology, first used in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars.

Carmack's engines have also been licensed for use in other influential first-person shooters such as Half-Life, Call of Duty and Medal of Honor. In 2007, when Carmack was on vacation with his wife, he ended up playing some games on his cellphone, and decided he was going to make a "good" mobile game.[8][9]

Carmack giving a speech after receiving an award for "Lifetime Achievement Award" during the 10th annual Game Developers Choice Awards ceremony in 11 March 2010

On August 7, 2013, Carmack joined Oculus VR as their CTO.[10] On November 22, 2013, he resigned from id Software to work full-time at Oculus VR.[1][11] Carmack's reason for leaving was because id's parent company ZeniMax Media didn't want to support Oculus Rift.[12] Carmack's role at both companies later became central to a ZeniMax lawsuit against Oculus parent company Facebook, claiming that Oculus stole ZeniMax's virtual reality intellectual property.[13][14][15] The trial jury absolved Carmack of liability, though Oculus and other corporate officers were held liable for trademark, copyright, and contract violations.[16]

Carmack speaking about “The Dawn of Mobile VR” during the Game Developers Conference 2015

In February 2017, Carmack sued ZeniMax, claiming the company had refused to pay him the remaining $22.5 million owed him from their purchase of id Software.[17] By October 2018, Carmack stated that he and ZeniMax reached an agreement and that "Zenimax has fully satisfied their obligations to me", ending the suit.[18]

On November 13, 2019, Carmack announced that he is stepping down from the Oculus CTO role to become a "Consulting CTO" in order to allocate more time to his work on artificial general intelligence (AGI).[2]

Armadillo Aerospace
Carmack during the 2005 X PRIZE Cup in Las Cruces and Alamogordo, New Mexico

Around 2000, Carmack became interested in rocketry, a hobby of his youth. Reviewing how much money he was spending on customizing Ferraris, Carmack realized he could do significant work in hobby aerospace. He began by giving financial support to a few local amateur engineers. Carmack funded the company out of his own pocket, for "something north of a million dollars a year."[19] The company of hobbyists made steady progress toward their goals of suborbital space flight and eventual orbital vehicles. In October 2008, Armadillo Aerospace competed in a NASA contest known as the Lunar Lander Challenge, winning first place in the Level 1 competition along with $350,000. In September 2009, they completed Level 2 and were awarded $500,000.[20][21][22] The company went into "hibernation mode" in 2013.[19]

Open-source software

Carmack is a well-known advocate of open-source software, and has repeatedly voiced his opposition to software patents, equating them to robbery.[23] He has also contributed to open source projects, such as starting the initial port of the X Window System to Mac OS X Server and working to improve the OpenGL drivers for Linux through the Utah GLX project.

Carmack released the source code for Wolfenstein 3D in 1995 and the Doom source code in 1997. When the source code to Quake was leaked and circulated among the Quake community underground in 1996, a programmer unaffiliated with id Software used it to port Quake to Linux, and subsequently sent the patches to Carmack. Instead of pursuing legal action, id Software, at Carmack's behest, used the patches as the foundation for a company-sanctioned Linux port. id Software has since publicly released the source code to Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3 and lastly Doom 3 (and later the BFG Edition), all under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The Doom source code was also re-released under the GPL in 1999. The id Tech 4 engine, more commonly known as the "Doom 3 engine", has also been released as open-source license under the GPL.[24] The source code for Hovertank 3D and Catacomb 3D (as well as Carmack's earlier Catacomb) was released in June 2014 by Flat Rock Software with Carmack's blessing.[25][26] On the other hand, Carmack has several times over the years voiced a skeptical opinion about Linux as a gaming platform;[27] for instance in 2013 he argued for emulation "as proper technical direction for gaming on linux"[28] and in 2014 he voiced the opinion that Linux might be the biggest problem for the success of the Steam Machine.[29]

Carmack contributes to charities and gaming communities. Some of the recipients of Carmack's charitable contributions include his former high school, promoters of open-source software, opponents of software patents, and game enthusiasts.

Personal life
Carmack & Dennis Fong (Thresh), May 1997

Carmack was so successful at id that by mid-1994 he had purchased 2 Ferraris; a 328 and a Ferrari Testarossa.[30] In 1997, he gave away one of his Ferrari (a 328 model) as a prize to Dennis Fong, the winner of the Quake tournament "Red Annihilation".[31]

He met his wife Katherine Anna Kang at the 1997 QuakeCon when she visited id's offices. As a bet, Kang challenged Carmack to sponsor the first All Female Quake Tournament if she was able to produce a significant number of participants. Carmack predicted a maximum of 25 participants, but there were 1,500.[32] Carmack and Kang married on January 1, 2000 and planned a ceremony in Hawaii. Steve Jobs requested that they would postpone the ceremony so he could attend the MacWorld Expo on January 5, 2000. John C. declined and suggested making a video instead.[33] Carmack and his wife had a son in 2004. Carmack has a blog last updated in 2006 (previously a .plan), an active Twitter account, and also occasionally posts comments to Slashdot.

As a game developer, he differs from many of his contemporaries by avoiding commitment to a final release date for any game he is developing. Instead, when asked for a release date on a new title, Carmack will usually reply that the game will be released "when it's done."[34] Employees at Apogee, in their past years the publishers of games by id Software, adopted this business practice as well.[35]

Carmack supported the 2012 presidential campaign of Republican Ron Paul.[36]

Carmack is an atheist.[37][38]

Carmack loves pizza. During his time at id Software, a medium pepperoni pizza would arrive for Carmack from Domino's Pizza almost every day, carried by the same delivery person for more than 15 years. Carmack had been such a regular customer that they continued to charge him 1995 prices.[39]

On occasion he has commended the efforts of similarly focused programmers — first Ken Silverman, who wrote the Build engine for 3D Realms, and later with Tim Sweeney of Epic Games, who writes the Unreal Engine.[40]

Recognition
DateAwardDescription
1996 Named among the most influential people in computer gaming of the year and of all time #1 and #2 in GameSpots lists.[41][42]
1997 Named among the most influential people of all time #7 in Computer Gaming World list, for game design.[43]
1999 Named among the 50 most influential people in technology #10 in Time's list.[44]
March 2001 Award for community contribution for the Quake 3 engine Used in 12 games. Bestowed at 2001 Game Developer's Conference Award Ceremony.
March 22, 2001 Inducted into Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame The fourth person to be inducted, an honor bestowed upon those who have made revolutionary and innovative achievements in the video and computer game industry.
2002 Named to the MIT Technology Review TR100 Included as one of the top 100 innovators in the world under the age of 35.[45]
2003 One subject of book Masters of Doom Masters of Doom is a chronicle of id Software and its founders.
2005 Name in film The film Doom featured a character named Dr. Carmack, in recognition of Carmack who co-created the original game.
March 2006 Added to the Walk of Game Walk of Game is an event that recognizes the developers and games with the most impact on the industry.[46]
January 2007 Awarded 2 Emmy Awards Carmack and id Software were awarded with two Emmy Awards. The first was Science, Engineering & Technology for Broadcast Television, which includes broadcast, cable and satellite distribution. The second was for Science, Engineering and Technology for Broadband and Personal Television, encompassing interactive television, gaming technology, and for the first time, the Internet, cell phones, private networks, and personal media players. id Software is the very first independent game developer to be awarded an Emmy since the Academy began honoring technology innovation in 1948.[47]
September 2007 Television appearance Appeared on Discovery Channel Canada Daily Planet featuring his rocket designs along with the Armadillo Aerospace team.
2008 Honored Carmack was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for Quake's pioneering role of user modifiability.[48] He is the only game programmer ever honored twice by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, having been given an Emmy Award in 2007 for his creation of the 3D technology that underlies modern shooter video games.[49] Along with Don Daglow of Stormfront Studios and Mike Morhaime of Blizzard Entertainment, Carmack is one of only three game developers to accept awards at both the Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards and at the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Interactive Achievement Awards.
October 2008 Won X-Prize Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace won the $350,000 Level One X-Prize Lunar Lander Challenge.[50]
March 11, 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award Was awarded the Game Developers Conference Lifetime Achievement award for his work.[51]
March 7, 2016 BAFTA Fellowship Award Honoured with the Academy's highest honour, the Fellowship for "work that has consistently been at the cutting edge of games and his technical expertise helping the future arrive that little bit faster".[52]
May 3, 2017 Honorary Doctorate Received a Doctor of Engineering Honoris Causa from the University of Missouri, Kansas City for "his work in cutting edge tech & comp sci".[53]

Games

Titles are listed below in reverse chronological order.

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Release date Title Developer Publisher Credited for
May 13, 2016 Doom[54] id Software Bethesda Softworks Former technical director, former engine programmer, former developer
October 16, 2012 Doom 3 BFG Edition id Software Bethesda Softworks Technical director, engine programmer, developer
October 4, 2011 Rage id Software Bethesda Softworks Technical director, engine programmer, developer
September 28, 2007 Enemy Territory: Quake Wars Splash Damage Activision Programming
May 1, 2006 Orcs & Elves Fountainhead Entertainment Electronic Arts Producer/programmer/writer
October 18, 2005 Quake 4 Raven Software Activision, Bethesda Softworks (republished 2012) Technical director
September 13, 2005 Doom RPG Fountainhead Entertainment id Software Producer/programmer
April 3, 2005 Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil Nerve Software Activision Technical director
August 3, 2004 Doom 3 id Software Activision Technical director
November 19, 2001 Return to Castle Wolfenstein id Software Activision Technical director
December 18, 2000 Quake III: Team Arena id Software Activision Programming
December 2, 1999 Quake III Arena id Software Activision Programming
November 30, 1997 Quake II id Software Activision Programming
March 31, 1997 Doom 64 Midway Games Midway Games Programming
June 22, 1996 Quake id Software GT Interactive Programming
May 31, 1996 Final Doom id Software GT Interactive Programming
October 30, 1995 Hexen: Beyond Heretic Raven Software id Software 3D engine
December 23, 1994 Heretic Raven Software id Software Engine programmer
September 30, 1994 Doom II: Hell on Earth id Software GT Interactive Programming
December 10, 1993 Doom id Software id Software Programming
1993 Shadowcaster Raven Software Origin Systems 3D engine
September 18, 1992 Spear of Destiny id Software FormGen Software engineer
May 5, 1992 Wolfenstein 3D id Software Apogee Software Programming
1991 Catacomb 3-D id Software Softdisk Programming
1991 Commander Keen in Aliens Ate My Babysitter! id Software FormGen Programming
December 15, 1991 Commander Keen in Goodbye, Galaxy! id Software Apogee Software Programming
1991 Commander Keen in Keen Dreams id Software Softdisk Programming
1991 Shadow Knights id Software Softdisk Design/programming
1991 Rescue Rover 2 id Software Softdisk Programmer
1991 Rescue Rover id Software Softdisk Programmer
1991 Hovertank 3D id Software Softdisk Programming
1991 Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion id Software Softdisk Programming
1991 Dark Designs III: Retribution Softdisk Softdisk Programmer/designer
December 14, 1990 Commander Keen in Invasion of the Vorticons id Software Apogee Software Programming
1990 Slordax: The Unknown Enemy Softdisk Softdisk Programming
1990 Catacomb II Softdisk Softdisk Developer
1990 Catacomb Softdisk Softdisk Programmer
1990 Dark Designs II: Closing the Gate Softdisk Softdisk Programmer/designer
1990 Dark Designs: Grelminar's Staff John Carmack Softdisk Developer
1990 Tennis John Carmack Softdisk Developer
1990 Wraith: The Devil's Demise John Carmack Nite Owl Productions Developer
1989 Shadowforge John Carmack Nite Owl Productions Developer

References
  1. McWhertor, Michael (November 22, 2013). "id Software founder John Carmack resigns". Archived from the original on November 22, 2013.
  2. Lawler, Richard. "John Carmack takes a step back at Oculus to work on human-like AI". Engadget.com. Retrieved November 14, 2019.
  3. Orndorff, Patrick (August 20, 2008). "Happy Birthday John Carmack!" – via www.wired.com.
  4. "All the RAGE: John Carmack". Bethesda Softworks. Archived from the original on March 20, 2017.
  5. "John Carmack Answers". Games.slashdot.org. October 15, 1999. Archived from the original on October 5, 2012. Retrieved November 27, 2012.
  6. Kushner, David (April 24, 2003). Masters of Doom. Random House. p. 21. ISBN 978-1-58836-289-6. Archived from the original on March 2, 2015.
  7. Jones, Steve (December 10, 2002). Encyclopedia of New Media: An Essential Reference to Communication and Technology Encyclopedia Of New Media. SAGE Publications. p. 53. ISBN 0-7619-2382-9. University of Missouri–Kansas City john carmack.
  8. Kang, Anna (October 18, 2007). "Q&A: Fountainhead's Kang Talks Orcs & Elves DS, Wii Possibilities". Archived from the original on January 17, 2013.
  9. Snider, Mike (July 18, 2007). "Q&A with id Software's Kevin Cloud and Steve Nix". USA Today. Archived from the original on May 23, 2008.
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  11. Wilhelm, Alex. "Doom's John Carmack Leaves id Software To Focus On The Oculus Virtual Reality Headset".
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  27. "id on Linux: "disappointing" and "support nightmare" Archived 2015-04-28 at the Wayback Machine from Slashdot (John Carmack, December 08, 2000)
  28. Chalk, Andy (February 6, 2013). "John Carmack Argues Against Native Linux Games". The Escapist. Archived from the original on January 13, 2014. Retrieved September 29, 2013. He reiterated his support for improving emulation as the "proper technical direction for gaming on Linux," noting that native ports don't do much that a good emulator wouldn't be able to handle.
  29. Plafke, James (October 21, 2013). "John Carmack thinks the Steam Machine's biggest problem is Linux". extremetech.com. Archived from the original on August 26, 2014. Retrieved August 22, 2014. Carmack specifically noted, Linux might be the Steam Machine's downfall
  30. Lombardi, Chris (July 1994). "To Hell and Back Again". Computer Gaming World. pp. 20–24.
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  33. John, Carmack. "Facebook". Facebook. Retrieved March 18, 2020.
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  37. @ID_AA_Carmack (December 23, 2010). "@eastwood333 I don't believe in god, but I don't see any correlation between religiosity and human virtues. Merry Xmas everyone!" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  38. "Having a reasonable grounding in statistics and probability and no belief in luck, fate, karma, or god(s), the only casino game that interests me is blackjack," he wrote in a .plan file." — John Carmack, David Kushner, as quoted in Masters of Doom: How two guys created an Empire and transformed pop culture (2003).
  39. Thomsen, Michael (June 2011). "The Deathmatch Daydreams of Tim Willits". Electronic Gaming Monthly (248): 23–24.
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  43. CGW 159: The Most Influential People of All Time
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  48. Contact Brian Ashcraft: Comment (January 8, 2008). "2008 Tech Emmy Winners". Kotaku.com. Archived from the original on May 25, 2012. Retrieved November 27, 2012.
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  50. "Armadillo Wins Lunar Lander Challenge Level 1, Crashes On 2". Gizmodo.com. October 27, 2008. Archived from the original on October 9, 2012. Retrieved November 27, 2012.
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  53. "They Have Touched Our Lives | UMKC Today". info.umkc.edu. Archived from the original on January 5, 2018. Retrieved January 5, 2018.
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Further reading
  • Kushner, David (2003). Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture, New York: Random House. ISBN 0-375-50524-5.
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