While we’re travelling down memory lane, it might be worth remembering ecstatica - that was nothing but curves! ;D (not to mention being one of the hardest games I ever played!)
Ah yes I remember that one, that was an intriguing game. 
The curves were not bezier patches though, but all balls and ellipses and such, right?
Actually, I also just remembered a long time ago I wrote a blog post about emulating an early, quite smoothly moving first person shooter from 1983 on MSX:
http://jemu2.blogspot.com/2006/08/old-msx-classic.html#links
One of his secrets that he revealed was that he read a lot of material from local universities and high schools. He has this huge luck for discovering really young talent, which makes himself look good. In other words, he knows how to invest in others. Whether he does it in a good or bad manner, I don’t know since wisdom comes in both equally good and evil varieties. Like Bill Gates, he used other people’s ideas and made them happen along with his own.
It just so happens that he had a friend who had connections for financial backing, and after Doom caught the attention of major corporations both in software and hardware, his product helped other products sell by presenting free content.
As far as Quake goes, his development team found themselves forced to listen and cooperate with their art studio team. Quake had so many bugs, but the open source community cleaned up a lot somehow. Someone in his group organization had the keen sense of keeping a clean divide between the free and non-free content.
Its odd how software developers are suppose to get paid more yet code goes to the ownership of others. On the other hand, artists typically receive less pay, but their content has the highest protection in a premium environment. In fact, artistic endeavors add the definition of premium to code in the first place. John Carmack would be nowhere without artists, who happened to consist the bulk of his “visionaries.” After that, I guess luck took over.
That’s pretty much my view of it. He was obviously smart enough to understand and apply the papers he read from other people’s research and I’m sure he contributed many of his own ideas… but I would bet several of the regulars here are equally talented. Carmack is unique because he made a few key decisions that made him very rich.
Take a look at the timeline of games from id (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Carmack) E.g. Wolfenstien 3D was 1992 at that time I had already seen some interesting things done with realtime 3D rendering on PCs where I was going to university http://www.ece.uwaterloo.ca/~broehl/rend386.html. This was a hot topic at the time and lots of people were comingup with rendering algorithms - Carmack got it on a shareware game that was very popular so his name is now permanently associated with the birth of 3D computer graphics.
So let me get this straight:
- His game engines were amongst the very best
- … as were the hugely successful hit ID games using them
- He was an early adopter of new techniques and ideas
- He surrounded himself with the best talent
- “He was obviously smart enough to understand and apply the papers he read from other people’s research”
- "I’m sure he contributed many of his own ideas… "
- “…he made key decisions that made him very rich”
…yet he’s overrated because the Q2 source didn’t look nice, because he didn’t invent all the techniques he put in his engines and because he isn’t a programming language designer
I think I get it
During the development of the games that made him and id software big, he had few committments and was doing what he loved day in day out - games programming.
Now he has other committments and is doing what he loves now - X prize/rocket challenges - so I think it’s only natural that life and other interests have started to take time away from his once constant love of games programming…
http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News
That’s not to say he won’t continue to drive excellent tech in his own company and with others (still on the Open GL ARB too I think?) but he himself has sung the praises of others doing grand job (e.g. Epic) and knows id software couldn’t rule the roost forever. Besides, he just wanted “to make great games”.
Don’t worry Doom fans, I’m sure he’ll take time out his rocket building and make time for games when it counts: (from ArmadilloAerospace) : “John has been so busy with his duties at id Software”
You are overstating my objection. I simply think he is overrated because he gets credit for the parts he didn’t do and a significant portion of what made him famous was largely a side-effect of being in the right place at the right time. He has skills and deserves credit for them… but he’s put on this pedistal that is significantly too high. E.g. Duke Nuke’m had a better 3D engine than what id had at the time but nobody cares.
The Quake code being butt ugly and poorly architected is just an indicator that he and the others at id weren’t the sort of super-beings that they are often made out to be.
Pls, people in the Mobile business have been complaining about this (and other stuff) since before mr Carmack even began doing anything with mobiles.
People act like he is Columbus, when there were more people that have already discovered America before him.
But I said it before and I will say it again, the Carriers and the Phone manufacturers do not care what mr Carmack says.
If they even know him.
He might be a visionary when it comes to gfx development but I hate to say this but otherwise there is not much in those games.
…so you criticize him for saying something that is true. Just because he is not the only one saying it.
Was not directed at him and I do not think that part of my reply indicates this in any way.
It is in fact directed at the people who somehow think that this some kind of new thing that only mr Carmack could have figured out.
Kinda like some kind of revelation from their messiah or something.
I don’t understand, every sentence directly referenced him. How’s that not directed to him?
[quote]…that he and the others at id weren’t the sort of super-beings that they are often made out to be.
[/quote]
If people take Carmack & Co as some kind superbeings, that’s their business and we should not take them (the people seeing him as a superbeing) too seriously.
But it seems to me that this sort of invokes this knee-jerk reaction with some people here, that doesn’t allways seem very justified.
Just because this topic revolves around his keynote, not every line need be a reference to him or his keynote.
I find it kinda strange that this is so hard to understand.
Actually I have the feeling people do not care what is being written, just that their hero is not being praised and lashing out at the authors, thus causing this topic to quickly become ridiculous.
Who’s lashing out? As far as I can see Carmack is taking flak for not being God, and a couple of people are pointing out that maybe that’s not entirely fair.
Actually, from where I standing, it looks like some people are claiming he’s god, and others are saying that he might just be human. 
That’s exactly my point! I couldn’t have said it better
Just to be clear, I’m actually not at all concerned with mr Carmack that much and certainly not one of his worshippers (if that’s what some people are thinking). Actually I much preferred working with the Unreal engine over Carmack’s engines back in the days when there was still a fair comparison.
[quote]Actually, from where I standing, it looks like some people are claiming he’s god, and others are saying that he might just be human.
[/quote]
Nobody here is claiming he’s god though
Nice discussion. I think Carmack is one of the greatest game engine programmers of his generation. There is only one person i would put on the same stair with Carmack and thats Tim Sweeney. Both of 'em could be seen as big geeks who have been walking through the right doors at the right time. Though their achievements and ideas have been taken from various math formulars and contributed to the gaming industry. In the last interview with sweeney i read, he said would not have get all that cool math thingy without his engineering study.
In the end i think, every programmer in the gaming industry that contribute something really valuable in the industry is being weighted by his fans more or less. Therefor a comparisson with today and previous won’t be fair. They just used the right door
hopefully i haven’t screwed up the whole grammar ^^"
Don’t forget that some technologies of ID Software promoted by John Carmack are based on some French scientific researches, for example some algorithms used in the implementation of the Megatexture. He is talented, he says some pertinent things but I don’t share his “neutral” vision of the computer science, I disagree with him concerning some critics of Java and OpenGL. He is not God and I’m sure the next “John Carmack” will be a Java programmer, one of you. Go on programming nice games, ok guys?
I’m quite sure 68.2% of the ideas are from Dutch scientific research. I wonder who gives a damn.
I have always wondered why he didn’t embrace Java a bit more fully. I mean - he basically keeps on reinventing Java over and over with all of that QuakeC rubbish and scripty stuff and mods etc.
Cas
Megatextureing is based on clipmaps that has been around for a long time. The unique thing ID software has done is to use on all geometry not just terrain. Don’t think anyone else has done this. More importantly they have used it in a real game. Creating all the tools and infrastructure need to generate all the data needed, and compressing it onto a dvd.