id tech is the family of game engines designed and developed by id software. Doom series games were the first to use this software; Doom is credited to its fame. After the release of Doom, id tech became one of the most famous software in the gaming world. Prior to release of Rage an id tech-5 based game, engine was lacking an official designation and was simply referred as Quake engine, because of the name of the game to be launched on id tech. id tech numbers 1, 2 and 3 have been released as free software under the GNU general Public License.

id tech 1

Also called, as Doom Engine id tech 1 is the game engine that supports the id Software games Doom and Doom II. Other than Doom and its series it was also used by HeXen, Heretic, Strife and HacX, and other games produced by licensees. John Carmack created it, with supplementary functions written by Mike Abrash, John Romero, Dave Taylor and Paul Radek. Originally, it was developed on NeXT computers, it was transferred to DOS for Doom’s initial process and later it was ported to several game consoles and operating systems. Source code for Linux version of Doom was released to the public in 1997. it is not a true 3D engine, as it is not possible to look up and down properly, and two sectors cannot be placed above and under each other. However, an elegant system allows pseudo- 3D rendering. At the time of its launch, Doom was revolutionary because of its ability to provide a fast texture environment that passed for 3D.

id tech 2

id tech was formerly known as Quake II engine, is a game engine developed by id Software for use for use in their games, most remarkable of them Quake II. Since its release, it has been licensed for use in several other games. Id tech II‘s most notable feature was out of the box support for hardware accelerated graphics. Specifically OpenGL, along with the traditional software renderer. Another interesting feature was the subdivision of some of the components into dynamic–link libraries. This allowed both software and OpenGL reindeers, which were switched between by loading and unloading separate libraries. Libraries were also used for the game logic, for two reasons:
# id could release the source code to allow modifications while keeping the reminder of
the engine properties.
# they could run faster than Quake’s solution, which was to run the game logic (QuakeC)
in a limited interpreter. Because they were compiled for a native platform instead of a
Interpreter.

The level format known as BSP is used in id tech 2. Lightmap method is used to lit levels .in which system is precalculated and stored as an image in the level file, which in then used to determine how much light intensity each mode should receive, but not its direction.

Famous games using id tech 2 software are Quake II, Heretic II, and SIN.

id tech 3

id tech 3 is a game engine developed by id software for Quake III arena. Because of its use in Quake III arena, it is commonly known as Quake III engine. And has been used in many games. In its salad days, it competed with Unreal engine and both games are widely licensed. Id tech 3 is a substantial improvement from the Quake engine and id tech 2. id tech 3 was derived from the id tech 2, but most of its part id new or re-written. Id tech 3 was succeeded by id tech 4, which was derived from id tech 3, but had very little of the original code. id tech 3 is loaded with 3D models in the MD3 format. The animation’s featured in MD3 format are superior to those in id tech 2’s MD2 format because an animator is able to have a variable key frames per second instead of MD2’s standard 10 keys frames per second. This allows for more complex animations than the models found in Quake II.
The engine is capable of three different kinds of shadows. One just places a circle with faded edge at the characters feet, commonly known as the “blob shadow” technique. One  more additional feature id tech 3 was loaded with is inclusion of a high-level shader language and a mehid of handling traffic. Many games are listed on this engine’s use, few of them are – Call of Duty, Medal of Honor, Soldier of Fortune.

id tech 4

id tech 4 is a computer game engine formerly known as Doom 3 engine. id software was first use in the PC game Doom 3. Like other engines like Doom and Quake John Carnack also develops this engine. These engines are considered marketing significant advances in the field.  Id tech 4 began its advancement from to id tech 3. Original plan was to write whole renderer completely, while retailing other subsystems as file access, and memory management. But in between decision was taken to switch from C to the C++ programming language, necessitating a complete restructuring and rewrite of the rest of the engine. Today even though id tech 4 contains code from id tech 3, much of it has rewritten.

The id Tech 4 added several new graphical features that were absent in its predecessor. This includes bump mapping, normal mapping, and specular highlighting. Primary innovation of id Tech 4 was its use of entirely dynamic per pixel lighting. Whereas before that 3D engines had primarily relied on pre-calculated per vertex lighting or lightmaps and gouraud shading. Doom 3, Quake 4, Prey are some of the famous games released with id Tech 4.

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