John Carmack

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

John Carmack
Carmack at the 2006 E3
Born	August 20, 1970 (age 36) Shawnee Mission, Kansas
Occupation	Technical Director, id Software Founder, Armadillo Aerospace
Spouse	Katherine Anna Kang

John D. Carmack II (born August 20, 1970) is a widely recognized figure in the video game industry. A prolific American programmer, Carmack co-founded id Software, a computer game development company, in 1991. Carmack was the lead programmer of the highly successful id computer games Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, and subsequent sequels to Doom and Quake. His revolutionary programming techniques, combined with the unique game designs of John Romero, led to a mass-popularization of the first-person shooter genre (FPS) in the 1990s.

Though Carmack is best known for his innovations in 3D graphics, he is also a rocketry enthusiast and the founder and lead engineer of Armadillo Aerospace. He has aspirations of suborbital space tourism in the short term, eventually leading to orbital space flights.

Contents 1 Youth 2 Game programming 3 Aerospace 4 Free software 5 Personal 6 Other activities 7 Recognition 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links 10.1 Articles

[edit] Youth

Carmack, son of local television news reporter Stan Carmack, 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. As reported in David Kushner's Masters of Doom, "when Carmack was 14, he broke into a school to steal Apple II computers, was arrested, and sent for psychiatric evaluation (the report mentions "no empathy for other human beings"). Carmack was then sentenced to a year in a juvenile home."^[1] He attended the University of Missouri - Kansas City for two semesters before withdrawing to work as a freelance programmer.

[edit] Game programming

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

He has pioneered or popularised the use of many techniques in computer graphics, including binary space partitioning which Doom became the first game to use, surface caching which he invented for Quake, Carmack's Reverse which he devised for Doom 3, and MegaTexture, used in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. While he was not the first to discover Carmack's Reverse, he developed it independently.

Carmack's engines have also been licensed for use in other influential first-person shooters such as Half-Life and Medal of Honor.

[edit] Aerospace

Around the year 2000, Carmack became interested in rocketry, a hobby of his youth. Reviewing how much money he was spending on customizing Ferraris, he realized he could do significant work in rocketry and Aerospace. He began by giving financial support to a few local amateur groups before starting Armadillo Aerospace. He taught himself rocket engineering and is the lead engineer of the company. Since then he has made steady progress toward his goals of suborbital space flight and eventual orbital vehicles. Although too early to say, it's possible Carmack's contributions to private space exploration may someday outweigh his gaming fame.

[edit] Free software

Carmack is a well-known advocate of open source software, and has repeatedly voiced his opposition to software patents, which he equates to "mugging someone".^[2] 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 and most recently Quake 3, all under the GNU General Public License (GPL). The Doom source code was also re-released under the GPL in 1999.

Carmack is also noted for his generous contributions 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. In 1997 he gave away one of his Ferraris (a 308 model) as a prize to the winner of the Quake "Red Annihilation" tournament, Dennis Fong.

[edit] Personal

Carmack met Katherine Anna Kang at QuakeCon 1997 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. At the time, female FPS computer gamers were more myth than reality. Kang's tournament had over 600+ registered female gamers vying to win a trip for 2 to California to win $2,000+ worth of prizes.^{[citation needed]} Among them were Kornelia, KillCreek, and the PMS Clan: some of the most famed female players at the time.^{[citation needed]} Carmack and Kang married in January 2000 and had a son in 2004.

In a QuakeFinger blog post, Carmack mentioned that he has "no belief in luck, fate, karma, or god(s)".^[3]

[edit] Other activities

Carmack has a blog (previously a .plan). He also occasionally posts comments to Slashdot.

[edit] Recognition

• In 1999, Carmack appeared as number 10 in TIME's list of the 50 most influential people in technology.[2]
• On March 22, 2001, Carmack became the fourth person to be inducted into the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences' Hall of Fame, an honor bestowed upon those who have made revolutionary and innovative achievements in the video and computer game industry.
• In 2003, Carmack was one of the subjects of the book Masters of Doom, a chronicle of id Software and its founders.
• In 2005, the film Doom featured a character named Dr. Carmack, in recognition of Carmack who co-created the original game.
• In March 2006, Carmack was added to the Walk of Game, an event that recognizes the developers and games with the most impact on the industry.^[4]
• In January of 2007 in Las Vegas, Nevada, John Carmack and id software were awarded with two Emmy Awards. The Science, Engineering & Technology for Broadcast Television, which includes broadcast, cable and satellite distribution, and secondly, 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.^[5]

[edit] References

1. ^ Masters of Doom by David Kushner. Quoted in The Weekly Standard, Vol. 012, Issue 23. [[1]]
2. ^ "Are video game patents next?" Slashdot article
3. ^ http://www.celebatheists.com/index.php?title=John_Carmack
4. ^ Walk of Game
5. ^ Emmy Awards

[edit] 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.

[edit] External links

• John Carmack's Blog
• John Carmack's Blogged Dev Diaries
• Doom and Quake creator's dev diaries are blogged
• id Software's website
• Armadillo Aerospace site
• User Account on Slashdot
• User Account on the Space Fellowship
• Slashdot - John Carmack Answers
• John Carmack profile on MobyGames
• Carmack's QuakeCon 2006 Keynote Speech at Google Video
• Carmack's X-Prize video at Google Video
• E3 2006 Interview at YouTube

[edit] Articles

• "TIME Digital 50" snippet on Carmack
• "The Age Of Doom", TIME article (2004)
• "The Egos at id", a Wired magazine feature article (1996)
• CES 2007 Interview
• Slashdot interview
• "MegaTexture" technology

Persondata
NAME	Carmack II, John D.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Carmack, John
SHORT DESCRIPTION	American game programmer
DATE OF BIRTH	August 20, 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH	Kansas City, Kansas
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH