On august 20th 1970, John Carmack was born. John Carmack is a game developer who revolutionised pc gaming, before working on some of the most memorable games of all time, he worked at softdisk, a company known mainly for a magazine it produced that would come with games and utilities loaded onto a floppy disk; this magazine was named diskmag John carmack met John Romero who would be his partner up until he release of quake in 1996; during the year of 1990 Tom Hall and Adrian Carmack (no relation) would join the team. Catacomb is often considered to be the start of id software. In September 1990 dangerous face in copyright infringement, as the name suggests it took part in heavy copyright infringement, being a tech demo that had full smooth 2d scrolling in all directions. Id software took their system and pitched a full port of super Mario Bros 3. Nintendo turned them down, not thinking that their games would have the need to leave their own consoles. Id then went to apogee software; apogee had quite the interesting business model, allowing free versions of games to be released, payed for only if chosen to, but then releasing games based on the shareware titles, effectively marketing the paid games with the free ones. Commander keen episode one was released on December 14th that year and the other two not far behind. He shareware nature of commander keen allowed it to flourish in the market at the time, although they were technically still in contract with softdisk, who were unhappy at the prospect of their developers working at other companies; they agreed to let them off the contract provided that the new company would provide a game every two months for gamers edge. Id software became a real company in February of 1991. In April of 1991 Hovertank-3D was born, a 3d ray casted game that would open the door for future titles, the first of those titles being Catacombs 3d, which also followed to be the final game on their softdisk contract. And in five months time the grandfather of first person shooters was born, Wolfenstein 3D, a 3D labyrinthine game about shooting nazis into the dirt. In 1993 they released what I would call their magnum opus. Doom; a game about shooting demons and avenging your bunny. With inspirations such as alien, evil dead II, and dungeons and dragons. Next released was doom II, a new set of levels with a new gun and monsters, while quake blew everyone away. Quake had full 3D models... with polygons! Quake would go on to become the backbone of many games, including the ones that threatened to shadow its existence entirely, CoD, Half life, tf2, were all made with the quake engine as a backbone. I personally believe the thing that made him and his company successful was the innovation in the creation of programs that push the limit of hardware to its limits, while still giving a smooth and playable experience. While John Carmack left id in 2013, id still goes strong with doom 2016, quake arena, and doom eternal under its belt.
