id Software LLC is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack.
Quake III Arena is a 1999 multiplayer-focused first-person shooter developed by id Software. The third installment of the Quake series, Arena differs from previous games by excluding a story-based single-player mode and focusing primarily on multiplayer gameplay. The single-player mode is played against computer-controlled bots. It features music composed by Sonic Mayhem and Front Line Assembly founder Bill Leeb.
Quake is a first-person shooter game developed by id Software and published by GT Interactive. The first game in the Quake series, it was originally released for MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows, and Linux in 1996, followed by Mac OS and Sega Saturn in 1997 and Nintendo 64 in 1998.
John D. Carmack II is an American computer programmer and video game developer. He co-founded the video game company id Software and was the lead programmer of its 1990s games Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake, and their sequels. Carmack made innovations in 3D computer graphics, such as his Carmack's Reverse algorithm for shadow volumes.
Deluxe Paint, often referred to as DPaint, is a bitmap graphics editor created by Dan Silva for Electronic Arts and published for the then-new Amiga 1000 in November 1985. A series of updated versions followed, some of which were ported to other platforms. An MS-DOS release with support for the 256 color VGA standard became popular for creating pixel graphics in video games in the 1990s.
A LAN party is a social gathering of participants with personal computers or compatible game consoles, where a local area network (LAN) connection is established between the devices using a router or switch, primarily for the purpose of playing multiplayer video games together. LAN party events differ significantly from LAN gaming centers and Internet cafes in that LAN parties generally require participants to bring your own computer (BYOC) and are not permanent installations, often taking place in general-use venues or residences.
Direct3D and OpenGL are both application programming interfaces (APIs) that can be used in applications to render 2D and 3D computer graphics. As of 2005, graphics processing units (GPUs) almost always implement one version of both of these APIs. Examples include: DirectX 9 and OpenGL 2 circa 2004; DirectX 10 and OpenGL 3 circa 2008; DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4 circa 2011; and most recently, DirectX 12 circa 2018. GPUs that support more recent versions of the standards are backwards compatible with applications that use the older standards; for example, one can run older DirectX 9 games on a more recent DirectX 11-certified GPU.
QuakeCon is a yearly convention held by ZeniMax Media to celebrate and promote the major franchises of id Software and other studios owned by ZeniMax. It includes a large, paid, bring-your-own-computer (BYOC) LAN party event with a competitive tournament held every year in Dallas, Texas, USA. The event, which is named after id Software's game Quake, sees thousands of gamers from all over the world attend every year to celebrate the company's gaming dynasty.
The Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) was a professional sports tournament organization specializing in computer and console video game competitions. It was established by Angel Munoz on June 27, 1997, hosting biannual tournaments in hotels. The CPL's World Tour in 2005 marked a global expansion of esports, but concerns arose about fan engagement and attracting new audiences. The post-tour era saw increased competition from the WSVG, and the CPL faced financial troubles including the loss of its main sponsor, Intel, to WSVG in 2006. Shortly after, WSVG's Matt Ringel purchased the 2006 CPL Summer event, leading to a decline in the CPL's influence. The CPL attempted a "World Season" in late 2006, hosting fewer events with reduced prize money. Rumors circulated about the league's health, and in March 2008, the CPL ceased operations. Later that year, the CPL was acquired by an investment group in Abu Dhabi, later becoming solely owned by WoLong Ventures PTE of Singapore. The CPL continued hosting annual competitions in China in collaboration with the municipal government of Shenyang.
Dennis Fong, better known by his online alias Thresh, is an American businessman and retired professional player of the first-person shooter video games Quake and Doom. He is a co-founder of Xfire, an instant messenger and social networking site for gamers, which was acquired by Viacom for US$102 million in April 2006. He also co-founded Lithium Technologies, a social customer relationship management (CRM) company. In his playing career his highest profile victory came in 1997 at the Red Annihilation Quake tournament, where he placed first and won id Software CEO John Carmack's Ferrari 328. Fong is recognized by the Guinness World Records as the first professional gamer.
Enemy Territory: Quake Wars is a first-person shooter video game developed by Splash Damage and published by Activision for Microsoft Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game was first released in the PAL region on September 28, 2007, and later in North America on October 2. It is a spinoff of the Quake series and the successor to 2003's Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory.
Rendition, Inc., was a maker of 3D computer graphics chipsets in the mid to late 1990s. They were known for products such as the Vérité 1000 and Vérité 2x00 and for being one of the first 3D chipset makers to directly work with Quake developer John Carmack to make a hardware-accelerated version of the game (vQuake). Rendition's major competitor at the time was 3Dfx. Their proprietary rendering APIs were Speedy3D and RRedline.
Mplayer, referred to as Mplayer.com by 1998, was a free online PC gaming service and community that operated from late 1996 until early 2001. The service at its peak was host to a community of more than 20 million visitors each month and offered more than 100 games. Some of the more popular titles available were action games like Quake, Command & Conquer, and Rogue Spear, as well as classic card and board for more casual gamers. Servers and matchmaking was provided through a proprietary client. Initially, the service was subscription-based, but by early 1997, they became the first major multiplayer community to offer games to be played online through their network for free. This was done by relying on advertisement-based revenues.
The AMD Professional Gamers League (PGL), founded around 1997, was one of the first professional computer gaming eSports leagues. The PGL was run by Total Entertainment Network and was sponsored by AMD. The first professional tournament they held was for StarCraft in September 1997. The league was official unveiled at a press conference at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on November 3, 1997. It was sponsored by Microsoft, Nvidia, and Levi Strauss & Co. The organization raised over $1.2mil USD in sponsorship money.
Total Entertainment Network (TEN) was an online gaming service that existed from September 1996 until October 1999. T E Network, Inc., which created and operated the TEN service, was formed from the merger of Optigon Interactive and Outland in June 1995 when they received their first round of venture capital funding from Vinod Khosla, a general partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
id Tech 5 is a proprietary game engine developed by id Software. It followed its predecessors, id Tech 1, 2, 3 and 4, all of which had subsequently been published under the GNU General Public License. It was seen as a major advancement over id Tech 4. The engine was first demonstrated at the WWDC 2007 by John D. Carmack on an eight-core computer; however, the demo used only a single core with single-threaded OpenGL implementation running on a 512 MB 7000 class Quadro video card. id Tech 5 was first used in the video game Rage, followed by Wolfenstein: The New Order, The Evil Within and Wolfenstein: The Old Blood. It was followed up by id Tech 6.
Rage is a first-person shooter video game developed by id Software and published by Bethesda Softworks, released in October 2011 for Microsoft Windows, the PlayStation 3, and the Xbox 360, and in February 2012 for OS X. It was first shown as a tech demo at the 2007 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference and was announced at the QuakeCon. Rage uses id Software's id Tech 5 game engine and is the final game released by the company under the supervision of founder John Carmack.
Quake Live is a first-person arena shooter video game by id Software. It is an updated version of Quake III Arena that was originally designed as a free-to-play game launched via a web browser plug-in. On September 17, 2014, the game was re-launched as a standalone title on Steam.
Challenge ProMode Arena is a freeware modification for id Software's first-person shooter computer game Quake III Arena (Q3A). CPMA includes modified gameplays that feature air-control, rebalanced weapons, instant weapon switching and additional jumping techniques. It also supports the unmodified vanilla Quake III (VQ3) physics, multi-view GameTV and demos, enhanced bots artificial intelligence, new maps, highly customisable HUD and many other features.
