"We have very few things that are very significant left to be done [to the technology]," said Carmack. "We are 'light at the end of the tunnel,' going into the home stretch."

Carmack said that a change to the animation system is coming soon, and that a few tweaks need to be made to the MegaTexture system, but that the heavy lifting is mostly over.

The programming wizard reflected on the long development period for the id Tech 5 engine, which first began some three years ago.

"Here we are, three years later, still working on elements of it," he said, noting that he has spent the vast majority of his time working on Rage.

Carmack mentioned that the Rage code will mostly be carried over to Doom 4, where the focus will then be mainly on level design and creative aspects.

"We're going to have a working set of tools for them to do the most creative work with it," Carmack said of the Doom 4 team, while noting that his work on the engine won't end.

"I want to be able to provide at least one strong graphical hook for [Doom 4]."