A founder member of
Id Software, John Carmack is probably the most talented
programmer working in the field of
computer games at this time. He has played a major role in the development of all Id's game engines. Some notable achievements (technical and otherwise) of his include:
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Writing scrolling routines for EGA games, leading to the Commander Keen series and several others in the early 1990's.
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Creating the first 'modern' first-person shooter engine in Wolfenstein 3D.
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Creating the mind-bogglingly fast and capable (for the time) DOOM engine, single-handedly propelling the PC to the status of a mainstream games platform.
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Creating (with his one-time mentor, Mike Abrash) the Quake engine, the first fully 3D, TCP/IP networkable (and basically amazing in every way) game engine.
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Popularised making game engines open-ended for enthusiasts to develop new levels, extensions and modifications.
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Popularised the licensing of game engines to other development teams, drastically reducing the overheads of developing first-person games.
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Pioneered (with Quake and QuakeWorld) the networked gaming model, to the point where multiplayer functionality is expected from nearly all new PC games.
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Provided incentives for gamers to upgrade their PCs, in particular greatly increasing the uptake of 3D acceleration cards. More recently he has been more closely involved in the direction of 3D hardware development.
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Becoming personally very rich by exploiting the shareware distribution model as well as the conventional commercial route.
His hobbies include model rocket building and driving expensive red cars.
Comments to the effect that John Carmack is 'unable to do anything new' or 'obsessed with shooters' indicate a breath-taking lack of understanding on the part of the commentator. (Yeah, and that Antonio Stradivari only knew how to make violins.) PC games would still be around the Solitaire level of advancement without the contribution of Carmack and others like him.
Also, he added dynamic lighting to the Quake engine in just over an hour, according to Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book. Porting Quake to OpenGL took a while longer (a weekend!).
Corrections to GuPH's writeup below:
Slordax was written in C? And so? DooM was written in C.
Quake 1 was "internet enabled" as you put it. QuakeWorld added stuff like prediction.