Carmack’s reply!

As I’m finishing up my game, Rot Gut, these days I was trying to remember all the people helped me during the process to at least thank them in the additional credits page. As I was remembering people, I remembered how at some of the hardest parts of last year that I mostly spend on learning flixel and developing Rot Gut with it, one of the most inspirational videos that I used to watch, as always, were Carmack’s talks on several occasions, from old press conference of ID Software at a tiny room that he is asked by journalists about whereabouts of DOOM to Visits to ID software videos up to E3 demos featuring RAGE on PC/PS3/XBOX360 running at the same time to his invaluable QuakeCons that gave me energy to see how people are doing such great stuff and thus how my problems perhaps have solutions.

If I want to talk about my deep love towards id Software I have to go on and on and this post will probably never end so as it’s 4am here let me cut to the point today out of the blue I thought to tweet him and ask if he would give me permission to state his name under “Lifetime Inspiration” and then the most amazing thing in a very long time happened, he replied with a very very very modest reply “I would be honored”.

My jaws were, and to be honest with you still is, dropped on the floor. He is co-founder of id Software with 54k followers on tweeter and just tweets once or twice every 2-3 days.

My words cannot express my feelings, so I think I better stop typing and just leave you with the screenshot I made from that tweet:

John Carmack’s Lifetime Award

I just heard that Smartest Man Alive a.k.a. John Carmack will be presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s Game Developers Choice Awards, in recognition of “two decades of groundbreaking technical contributions, and his role establishing the first-person shooter genre with landmark titles like DOOM and Quake.”

Gamasutra did a good job of recapping Carmack’s many achievements:

John Carmack and his team at id Software, the company he co-founded in 1991, pioneered real-time 3D graphics in game, setting the pace and the standard for other developers to follow. Carmack and his colleagues at id are credited with essentially creating the modern-day first-person shooter (FPS) genre with the PC game Wolfenstein 3D in 1992, and helping to popularize networked multiplayer gaming on PCs with the release of Doom in 1993.

id has gone on to create other major FPS and action game franchises such as Quake, and Carmack and id Software are currently in development of a number of projects, including the free-to-play, web-based title Quake Live, the upcoming new franchise RAGE, and Doom 4.

As a largely self-taught technology purist, Carmack has devoted himself to pushing the limits of hardware and software. He’s helped to set the technical and gameplay standard for modern 3D gaming – and in the process, created some of the most popular video game franchises in history, which is why he’s being honored by the Game Developers Choice Awards this year.

Of course I’m always after a reason to honor my wretched blog with bits about his honor.

The Book of id.

Logo of id Software.
Logo of id Software.

I, as always, was searching the Web to find well-hidden gems from id Software that I reached a collector’s edition of id that contained 19 games from the pre-Quake II era. *sighs*. I was browsing its contents that I found out that there was a book with the package, so guess what. After 5 seconds I found it. No you don’t need to read this post anymore, so here is the rapidshare link that I uploaded and I encourage you to download from it, and here is the direct link to the book. Its around 5MiG.

For the love of Carmack, smarters man alive.