Brilliant programmer and I don't want to take away from what he achieved in his younger years, but if he's so smart, why has he been running into walls ever since Romero and Hall left?
iD's been on a massive backslide since Doom 3, yeah. But Quake 3: Arena rocked.
I partially blame it on Carmack building graphics engines over building games first and foremost. And for that, it allowed Epic to make Unreal Engine a new middleware when iD was
the middleware company before. After that, it's basically his company has been sucked dry because he no longer has the middleware licenses to back up that development time. It's basically the George Brossard effect but less "when it's done."
I'll give him props though: He's a good coder and GPL's his engines.
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probably not anymore since Beth bought them. :'(
Something that I wish more companies would do. :'( Would be nice to see how some engines run after they've become "old-hat"/out of date and no longer are selling like hotcakes.