In 1991, after a 28-hour coding spree, the efforts of John Carmack ‘Doomed’ us all

Business coach Terry Kim has posted an extended thread highlighting the achievements of John Carmack. Kim explained how Carmack single-handedly and permanently changed the scope of both gaming and aerospace by coding the original id Tech engine for Doom over 28 hours, creating a modular approach to building games (and later rockets) that forever changed the two disparate industries.

As Kim spins it in the full thread, which includes some video excerpts from Carmack interviews throughout the years, “This is the power of true innovation: It’s not just about solving the problem in front of you. It’s about developing principles that can transform entire industries. […] Greatness requires obsession. When Carmack coded for 28 hours straight, he wasn’t just meeting a deadline. He was pushing the boundaries of what is possible.”

But let’s look at this critically — is John Carmack really that much of a pioneer? Well… yes. Even if he’d stopped at making the id Tech 1 engine that shaped Doom and a legacy of several other engines and series that would spawn from id Tech (including GoldSrc/Source from Valve and its games), John Carmack’s place as an industry pioneer would long be solidified. His later work with Oculus VR and Armadillo Aerospace is really just a more modern cherry on top of these all-time great achievements.

Additionally, let’s not forget the output of id Software prior to Doom. Doom and the eventual full-3D-logic Quake wouldn’t exist at all without Wolfenstein 3D, which runs on what some people call “id Tech 0” and came out years ahead of Doom. This 3D gameplay engine came to be after id Tech’s creation of Commander Keen, and has similar (but less visible) restrictions as Doom, where gameplay can only be calculated on a 2D plane (so rooms layered over each other, aiming up/down, etc are impossible).

What Terry Kim, fortunately, didn’t skim over was Carmack’s time with Softdisk, where they developed Dangerous Dave, the first major series of side-scrolling platforming games made for PC rather than console. Of course, there were still limitations — namely per-screen challenges rather than seamless side-scrolling. During this time, Softdisk also developed and pitched a Super Mario Bros. 3 port to Nintendo, based on their progress in making a proper side-scrolling game engine for PC. This work was later used for id Tech’s Commander Keen, whose success would fund all of id Tech’s future advancements for both themselves and the industry at large.

Silly example: but did you know that among dozens of other games, titles as recent as Half-Life: Alyx are still using code derived from id Tech? Granted, it’s Quake-era id Tech 2, but we don’t have that without Carmack, John Romero, and the rest at id Tech, either.