How one programmer helped build Doom's 3D engine

A closer look

While modern AAA games require thousands of developers crunching for years to make a horse's tail look realistic, John Carmack largely built the revolutionary 3D engine for Doom by himself. Working in the early nineties, he used obscure mathematical tricks to force primitive computer processors to render 3D environments at lightning speeds. He essentially birthed the entire first-person shooter genre through sheer willpower and excessive programming hubris.