Game Development Giant

In fact, if you look at the biography of John Carmack in Jester's mind, it is difficult to accurately define a career for Carmack.

How should I put it? Although he has many honorary titles such as the father of FPS games, the father of 3D engines, and the greatest programmer in the world, you can't just call him a game producer. Look down on his brain.

In fact, to borrow the words of Doom: Apocalypse, Carmack is loyal to something called 'technology', and he is full of interest in everything that has an 'engine'.

When he was still a semi-freelancer tinkering with games in his garage, Carmack had already taken action on his Jaguar and used the modified Jaguar to complete his first long trip in life. He is not yet twenty years old.

The success of Doom led Carmack to buy his first Ferrari. Afterwards, he drove the Ferrari into the car modification team's workshop for a simple reason - the car wasn't fast enough. He was unhappy with the engine.

Carmack was an extremely simple and straightforward man who followed his wishes and worked hard to achieve them. Anything he deems inappropriate will be removed. This is true for the kittens he has raised for many years but run wild on his territory, as well as for his partner John Romero, who has worked with him for many years but has differences in technology and design. The same is true for the real career of gaming for many years. But it also ensures that he develops the best game engine.

In fact, Jester is also a little worried now.

Although he is now very happy to cooperate with Carmack, no one can figure out the true thoughts of this genius.

Maybe he is very happy to work with you now, but maybe one day he will knock on your door and tell you that he is leaving. The reason is not that he is dissatisfied with the job, but that he has lost the job. The same passion and interest as always.

It may sound incredible, but for some geniuses. This is what they really think, and the geniuses here are not those who casually say that they can score 100% on some exams and can do a few math puzzles, but are people who can turn the entire industry upside down with the power of one person. And John Carmack is undoubtedly this kind of person.

In the original history, why did Carmack lose interest in game development? To be precise, it was because of his interest in some engines.

Just because with the progress of the times, the engines to be developed are becoming more and more complex, and this kind of work has exceeded the situation that can be completely changed by one person's efforts. He has lost sight of this kind of work that requires collective efforts and is becoming more and more convergent. interest. He is a genius. How can a genius do this kind of work?

So, he started not doing his job properly.

Now with the development of 3D engines, this phenomenon has become more and more direct.

I'm afraid that within a few years, Carmack will continue to start his destined erratic career.

Jester thought so.

So in the original history, what did Carmack do when he was not making games?

It may sound a bit unacceptable, but he went to work for the Rockets.

Carmack loved rockets and bombs as a boy. He started from his own handicraft workshop, and later established Armadillo Aerospace and officially devoted himself to the aerospace industry.

Although Armadillo Spaceflight is a private research project. Carmack is also a semi-monk, but his attitude is by no means a trivial matter. Carmack has repeatedly made breakthroughs in the embedded programming of rockets; on the company's website, videos of its successful launches of small rockets are released from time to time; they even funded the establishment of the 'Carmack Award' fund to reward those who can create projects that can launch to 100,000 A rocket builder who goes into space and recovers GPS data.

However. Over the past few years, Carmack has invested more than $8 million in his aviation dream, all of which Carmack earned from game development. In addition to winning the NASA Moon Landing Challenge Award twice and winning a total of US$850,000 in prizes, Armadillo Aviation not only failed to realize Carmack's dream of becoming an astronaut. He didn't get any sponsorship, which made his aerospace career difficult.

The rocket development failed, and Carmack did not return from the lost path. He discovered a new 'toy' - a head-mounted display. It's an extension of his original desire to make virtual reality happen while playing and developing games. To this end, he even used id software's resources for research and development. Later, when he discovered the oculus VR prototype on a geek website, he not only personally modified the firmware program, but even brought it to e3 for recommendation. Later, he left id software and served as the chief technology officer of oclus.

Carmack's behavior caused strong dissatisfaction with the parent company Zenimax, and both parties will go to court. Although the outcome of the lawsuit is still unknown, the good news is that oculus VR is making continuous progress. Carmack announced at GDC that the universal version of Gear VR will be available at the end of the year. Players can finally look forward to the engine god bringing us another virtual reality surprise.

When he thought of this, Jester's eyes lit up a little.

In Jester's eyes, investing in the development of rockets is simply a way of burning too much money. It has no meaning at all. It's not that this matter is meaningless, but that it is meaningless for an individual to do such a thing. The project requires the state to take the lead and invest tens of billions of funds for ten or twenty years, and the cooperative development of thousands of R\u0026D teams is not something that can be solved by individuals.

But the research and development of VR or virtual devices is different.

Although it was a bit too early to say this in the mid-1990s, this was after all a clear development direction for future games. When later generations of hardware came to the door, everyone was vying to enter the industry.

Since Carmack was just interested in this, when he lost interest in the development of game engines, why not ask him to cooperate in the development of VR equipment?

This kind of development work will not make Carmack spend ten years in vain on the research and development of rockets, so that they will be forgotten by some new players.

It can also accumulate some extremely valuable experience for the development of virtual reality equipment that I will inevitably carry out in the future.

Although this thing and rocket research and development are both tasks that will not produce any significant results in more than ten years, for a game company, this is a completely different thing, and for Carmack, it is also a completely different thing. life. (To be continued...)