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While working at SoftDisk, John Carmack, John Romero, and others created the first Commander Keen Game in 1991. This game was one of the first sidescrolling platformers on PC due to its innovative Adaptive Tile Refresh technique. -
Hovertank 3D releases, utilizing the innovative technique of 'ray-casting' to render its 3D levels. -
Making use of raytracing just like its predecessor Hovertank 3D, Wolfenstein 3D utilized raytracing to create its 3D worlds. However, Wolfenstein 3D is commonly viewed as the grandfather of all FPS games, due to pioneering many mechanics that would go on to define the FPS genre. -
While Wolfenstein 3D pioneered the modern FPS, Doom perfected it. Drawing on a more advancing form of Wolfenstein 3D's raytracing, it also used the innovative technique of Binary Space Partitioning to help render the game's expansive map. -
Innovating on the techniques Doom used in both rendering and gameplay, Quake became one of the first games to use many techniques that 3D FPS games utilize to this day, such as culling and light mapping. -
Expaning on Quake 1, Quake 2 featured a more advanced lighting engine that was based on the idea of radiosity. This allowed for Quake 2's maps to have bounce lighting, as opposed to only direct lighting like the original Quake. -
Quake 3 Arena built on the same rendering engine used in Quake and Quake 2. Though this time around, it made use of the Fast Inverse Square Root algorithm, becoming one of the first notable games to use the algorithm to aid in 3D rendering. -
At 28 years old, Time Digital placed John Carmack at #10 in their list of the 50 most influential people in the field of technology. -
While taking a departure from the previous entries in the series gameplay-wise, Doom 3 continued the trend of featuring revolutionary graphics rendering technology. Specifically, it used an innovative technique for creating Stencil Shadow Volumes called Carmack's Reverse. -
Due to his many contributions to the world of game development, the Game Developers Conference awarded Carmack with a Lifetime Achievement Award. -
To focus full-time on his position as CTO at Oculus VR (Now Meta VR), John Carmack resigned from id Software. -
John Carmack sued ZeniMax, claiming they never paid him the $22.5 million they still owed for their purchase of id Software. -
For his numerous contributions in the fields of technology and computer science, the University of Missouri, Kansas City awarded Carmack with a Doctor of Engineering Honoris Causa. -
ZeniMax paid off the money owed to Carmack, and both parties released all claims against each other. -
To further pursue the development of an AGI(Artificial General Intelligence), John Carmack resigned from his position as consulting CTO at Meta VR to work at Keen Industries full-time.