Tim Willits

Tim Willits
Contributions	Quake, Quake II, Quake III Arena, Quake 4, Quake Live, Quake Champions

   

Tim Willits is the creative director and former co-owner of id Software.

Early Life

Willits is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and a former member of the University of Minnesota Army ROTC program. Willits was the battalion cadet-command sergeant major (C/CSM) during his junior year and attended ROTC Advanced Camp at Fort Lewis, Washington during the summer between his junior and senior years of college. After an injury during the summer, Willits completed two rotations, being assigned to both the first and seventh cadet regiments during that summer. He held the rank of cadet-major (C/MAJ) during his senior year and was assigned as the battalion training officer.

Career

Willits worked with Rogue Entertainment on Strife from March to December, 1995.

Tim Willits joined id Software in the same year after impressing the owners and development team with his Empire and Raven Series of Doom PWADs that he forged in his spare time and distributed free over the Internet. Working in the same building as id Software during the development as Quake, he was relatively close to the team prior to being officially part of the project.

Since joining id Software, Willits has worked on Quake, Quake II, Quake III Arena, and Quake III: Team Arena.

Willts was lead designer on Doom 3 and the executive producer on Quake 4. He was also the creative director on Rage and Quake Live. He is currently working on Quake Champions.

Quake Levels

• E1M2: Castle of the Damned
• E1M3: the Necropolis
• E1M4: the Grisly Grotto
• E1M5: Gloom Keep
• E2M7: the Underearth
• E3M5: the Wind Tunnels
• E3M6: Chambers of Torment - With American McGee
• E4M1: the Sewage System
• DM1: Place of Two Deaths
• DM5: The Cistern
• DM6: The Dark Zone

Trivia

• Tim Willits is the only level designer for Quake to have a level in each of the Episodes of Quake, ignoring the special Introduction and Shub-Niggurath's Pit placements.
• When making his levels, Tim Willits put a lot of priority in trying to make it based on an overall Level Theme. He felt, even with modern levels, that level designers obsess too much on trying to put a massive number of textures into a level as opposed to trying to have consistency.
• Tim Willits had a lot of competition with John Romero during the development of Quake. While past games such as Doom involved competing with other companies, Quake had more of a mindset of the developers competing to output levels. Romero in particular felt threatened with Willits due to the latter's newer status and yet rapidness with designing levels. American McGee felt that Tim Willits was trying to take over, while Sandy Petersen felt that Willits was the designer who was pushing the most competition.
• His favorite game of all time is Quake III Arena.
• Due to his heavy involvement with id Software and being constantly busy, Willits has never bothered to make levels with editors that were not made by id Software. He felt it would be too much work to learn them when he had editors he knew better.