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Comment by gpm | Hacker News Reader

For those wondering, Carmack founded the now defunct Armadillo Aerospace (as well as being a well known video game developer).

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IIR, Carmack spent a lot of his own money on Armadillo Aerospace and most of the people who worked on it were volunteers. They had many ideas including custom designed rocket engines and self contained composable pieces that could be built into large systems.

It was very up Musk's "first principles" alley, but wildly underestimated the capital needed to be successful.

"game developer"... He created a couple of small time indie titles : DOOM, Quake, with a hobby company called ID software

Actually, Commander Keen could be called an indie title by today's standards. The success put them in a position to make DOOM.

At least, I think that's how the history went. I could be wrong.

Everyone always skips Wolfenstein 3D

Ah, yes. FPS #0

People tend to seem to start from #1

Wolf3D wasn't even Carmack's first FPS. Before that there was Catacomb 3-D.

I did say "well known"

But seriously, is there a better title to give him for that part of his work?

Pioneer? God?

Pioneer is a good suggestion, thanks :)

Pioneer – thirty years after Spacewar? Hum…

Edit: Pioneering achievements, yes, certainly, but pioneer as in "game development pioneer"…

I believe John Romero appropriated the 'God' title, making it unavailable for Carmack, no matter how appropriate.

Think of it as what it might sound like to a Christian if you called Jesus a "well known" religious figure.

As well as being a carpenter

Father of the First Person Shooter and Patron Saint of Low Latency

You can say "Creator of Doom and Quake" and/or "Founder of ID software"

> But seriously, is there a better title to give him for that part of his work?

Omnissiah or Machine Spirit.

They're very underground, you've probably never heard of them.

Are those not games he developed?

John is one of the great engineering minds of our generation. Don’t forget Oculus.

He was years ahead of the curve [0] on mobile-first VR. By that I don't mean "stick a phone in Google Carboad," but truly self-contained and portable VR built on mobile chipsets. The success of the Quest and Quest 2 is proof of that, especially in the context of years of slow PC-only VR user growth.

[0] https://venturebeat.com/2016/10/07/oculus-john-carmack-argue...

Who doesn't know Carmack on HN?

Other people don't know all the things you do and vice versa. I would bet that less than half of the monthly active users on HN know who John Carmack is.

And I'd bet that half of those that do know who John Carmack is don't know he spent awhile building rockets, it's not exactly what he is known for.

I concur, I know about Carmack since I started coding games 15 or so years ago, we've even met in person. Yet, somehow, I didn't knew about Armadillo until this thread. Wow.

Thanks for sharing these obscure facts with us, man. I guess it does not harm. At the very least you made a lot of people giggle

In any case, it's funny he's still using the I'd handle on twitter. Whatever happened to that lawsuit

Finally somewhat on topic: I really thought they had a chance when armadillo won that NASA moonlander prize.

> I really thought they had a chance when armadillo won that NASA moonlander prize.

Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge.

I'd really wish John would put fingers to the keyboard and write the history of Armadillo Aerospace. From buying a peroxide engine from Juan Lozano (?) to decision not to continue, even with that grand CNC behemoth as a birthday gift.

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