Director ID Software Tim Walls leaves the company after twenty -four years of work. A quarter of a century is a serious period, and the developer spent the time really: without his participation, many legendary studio projects would probably look completely different. It's funny that the beginning of Tim's career laid the first Doom – It was after her that Willis decided to develop video games. He was so impressed by the ID shooter that Witalls made several cards for him, which the studio members liked. In 1995, Tim was hired – he became a level designer for the future Quake. Working on Quake 2 And Quake 3 , He repeatedly showed his talents and grew up as a specialist, so he began to work on ** doom 3 ** as a senior designer. And in 2011, when it came out Rage, Willits headed ID Software.
We express a deep respect to the gamedeer and share the retrospective of his games.
Quake (1996)
What Witallits did: Created levels for the plot campaign and multiplayer (Level-designer and game designer).
What is the important game for him: The first game that Willit has developed in ID.
Why the game is important for the industry: Quake introduced a full -fledged 3D and laid the foundation for e -sports.
In 1996, Quake was released – the first game on Quake Engine, which officially worked in 3D (unlike, for example, from Doom, where a two -dimensional card with information about height was used before). We owe this technical leap to John Karmak and Michael Arbash – Ullita colleagues. Artists Adrian Karmak, Paul Styd and Kevin Claud drew terrible monsters for Quake, who really looked like fanseded hell, and composer Trent Rezor wrote a viscous soundtrack.
As for the designers of Tim Willits and American McGi, they diluted the dark fantasy style of the game “Duma” technogenic, therefore, at the first levels of the hero, soldiers in spacesuits with shotgun and blasters are waiting for the hero. The most amazing thing is that all these elements were somehow combined with each other and worked together for the atmosphere, although Tim Willians himself calls the first quake “excellent, but still a mess”.
The concept of "e -sports" is in use largely due to Quake: the first official e -sports tournament Red Annihilation was held in 1997. The money was not yet played out, but John Karmak gave the winner his Ferrari 328 GTS
Quake 2 (1997)
What Witallits did: Created levels for the plot campaign and multiplayer (Levele-designer).
What is the important game for him: gained experience.
Than the game is important for the industry: ID came up with a Reilgan; The video cards market began to develop.
Quake 2 continued the technological race, which in 1996 began the first part: the new ID Tech 2 engine, like Quake Engine, wrote John Karmak. True, because of this, Quake 2 did not work without a video card, unlike most games of those years: 3D acceleration was still a rare phenomenon. Tim Walls recalled that Activision , publishing Quake 2, I was worried that the game would be poorly sold due to high iron requirements-but in the first few months it parted in a circulation of 250 thousand copies.
For Quake 2, Tim Walls made locations more diverse: a processing workshop, prison, mines appeared. According to him, they were more easily remembered and thanks to the elaboration of the environment they told a story better than the monotonous quake corridors. Paul Syde, who previously worked on Wing Commander, made for the game an impressive cinematic introduction and animations for the stricts, which, in turn, was drawn by Adrian Karmak. And John Cache conceived a Reilgan – a gun that will become a favorite weapon of multiplayer fans, will appear in Quake 3, and then in other shooters.
The novel "Polosat1y" Tarasenko (in the photo on the left) came up with the "Russian style of play" in Quake – with a keyboard on his knees. Tarasenko had an injury to the brush, because of which it was simply inconvenient to hold his left hand on the table, but later many other “quakers”, including foreign ones, adopted this style
Quake 3: Arena (1999)
What Witallits did: Created levels for the plot campaign and multiplayer (Level-designer and game designer).
What is the important game for him:Willitas's favorite game.
Than the game is important for the industry: a new era of e -sports has come.
The fact that Quake 3 was left without a plot, we owe John Karmak. He decided to remove a single campaign, although the comrades did not support him: after Half-Life make a game without a storyline seemed strange. But Karmak reasoned differently: the players will pass the campaign in a few hours, and hundreds will play in the multiplayer – so why chase two hares? As a result, the developers found a compromise – they made a campaign, but for a tick: in battles with bots, the player simply got used to the frantic speeds of the network Quake 3.
But on the technical and designer side of Quake 3, the predecessor again surpassed – and, of course, the game also required a video card. According to John Karmak, the third part is no longer a movie, like Quake 2, but sports. And this is true: balanced guns, bright and functional arenas – Arena has become a kind of benchmark for skill. Tim Williats also admitted that he loves the third Kvaku most of all. It was after its release that he became a leading designer in ID.
Doom 3 (2004)
What Witallits did: Headed the project (leading designer).
What is the important game for him: approached the position of ID director.
Than the game is important for the industry: For Doom 3 Karmak wrote ID Tech 4.
In 2000, John Karmak decided to make a remake of the first doom, but with new technologies. Not the entire team was delighted with this solution, but who will show the world real technological progress, if not Id Software? And on the E3 of 2002, the audience was struck by realistic shadows and voluminous textures of the future doom 3. Waiting for her for Christmas 2003, but the game was released only in 2004-and a few days before the release of her brazenly spidel. Still, doom-not quake: most players were not interested in multiplayer, so they did not need a licensed code for its activation.
But the third part did not live up to the expectations of many fans. The first games were spacious, fast and bright, and Doom 3 turned out to be slow and dark. The sharp change of style had technical reasons, namely, the ID Tech 4 engine: the locations were narrowed and darkened to make the game work normally on new systems. But doom 3 still remained in the hearts of many players – at least those who did not play in previous parts.
Quake Live (2010)
What Witallits did: promoted the game to the masses, talked with the press (creative director).
What is the important game for him: Quake Live She became a forerunner Quake Champions .
Than the game is important for the industry: returned interest in the series after Quake 4, which was made in Raven Software.
In 2005, Quake 4 was released – it was developed by the Raven Software studio, known for Heretic, Hexen And Soldier of Fortune (Later the team released Singularity, And then she helped Treyarch And Infinity Ward C Call of Duty). Not all fans liked it – and in the hope of returning the series to their former glory (and at the same time attract new players), ID decided to reissue Quake 3 for browsers. Quake Live announced in 2007, and in 2009 the game went to the CBT and in the first six hours 113 thousand users registered in it, and by the end of the year there were more than a million of them. ID Software attracted young animals not only “Friedele”, but also by social functions: in Live the players themselves made up the lists of friends and monitored the competition schedule. In 2014, the game went to Steam, and since 2015 is sold for money.
We can say that Quake Live continued the Quake 3 case: on it they also held many tournaments who laid the road to large e -sports for many talented players. In addition, it was on her experience that Quake Champions were later built (she still has not left early access); Thinking about how to extend the life of Live, designer Adam Pyle suggested that Willites give the characters different abilities.
Rage (2011)
What Witallits did: promoted the game to the masses, talked with the press as ID director.
What is the important game for him: The predecessor of Rage 2, after which Willits quit the studio.
Than the https://sister-site.org/spin-my-win/ game is important for the industry: Karmak has developed ID Tech 5 with megateterts on which Machinegames Later developed Wolfenstein: The New Order.
In 2007, the players showed the announcing trailer Rage with rapture: they were promised a frantic action and racing in the desert – just like in "Mad Max". ID had a huge credit of trust, so the fans had no doubt that the game would be excellent. The public interest was also heated by the advertising campaign: the vice president of ID Software Pete Hinz and Willit himself, who by that time had already become the director, had been fame for glory. Rage was shown in two episodes Breaking Bad , And the NBA basketball player Blake Griffin starred in a commercial, where he scored the ball into the basket, jumping over the tiger – so he wanted to get into Rage. It may be good that I didn't get.
For the first shooter in the open world, John Karmak developed the ID Tech 5 engine, whose main chip became megatektors. The entire desert of the first Rage covered one large picture with a resolution of 128,000 x 128,000 pixels, which was loaded into the video card as needed. It sounded cool in words, but in reality there were more problems from megateks than good: they had to squeeze them so that a huge image did not weigh the whole terabyte, and users were annoyed by constant loading right during the game.
And this was not the only problem: Rage did not seem to be completed at all. The intensity of madness did not reach the promised, the races did not develop to serious championships with sponsors, and instead of the traditional multiplayer with Deathmatch and the “capture of the flag”, nine cooperative missions and several cards for the same network pokatushki made. Unless there were no complaints about shooting at Rage: the guns felt differently in their hands, sounded realistically and really looked like weapons from the dusty 2135. But there was nothing more to boast of the game.
Doom (2016)
What Witallits did: Headed the process (ID Director).
What is the important game for him: ID breathed a new life into Doom.
Than the game is important for the industry: For her they wrote an ID Tech 6 engine, on which Machinegames will later develop Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus And Youngblood.
At first Doom called Doom 4-Karmak hinted at it back in 2007. But over the game, it was on the game until 2013, and there they completely abandoned the project for several years. Just at that time, John Karmak and the Executive Director of Todd Hollenshead left ID – he said that the game is likely to be a remake of the second part. Then, already under the leadership of Tim Willits, the game was redone – according to him, in the original project there was no soul and passion inherent in all ID games. And, judging by how crazy and wild it turned out to be the 2016 doom, it was the right decision.
She works on the ID Tech 6 – the next new engine, which this time helped to make a Tiago Souza, a former leading engineer Crytek. Thanks to him, DOOM gives out enviable 60 FPS in 1080p on consoles and boasts all fashionable effects like dynamic lighting, HDR and the like. Another engine inherited the ID Tech 5 megate steaks, but in Doom they, fortunately, are no longer loaded on the move, because the new consoles were added to the memory.
With a restart in Doom, the spirit of the old school returned: frantic speed, guts, chainsaws – from global innovations there only a masterpiece soundtrack from Mick Gordon. Unless the multiplayer did not look like a doom or even on Quake – many users generally called Halo in memory. But this did not affect the press assessments and the love of ordinary players: the audience unanimously approved the project as a whole, and the ID Software returned to its place at the forefront of the industry.
Rage 2 (2019)
What Witallits did: Headed the process (ID Director).
What is the important game for him: The last game that came out at Willites.
Than the game is important for the industry: nothing.
The original Rage confirmed the proverb "First pancake lump". But the studio did not abandon the franchise – for nine years the developers thought over mistakes and invented new gameplay chips. And after Doom, which reminded the whole world that the ID was alive and still capable of a lot, the studio finally came up with a “correct” formula Rage 2: They decided to transplant part of the mechanic from Doom there.
The development was entrusted to the guys from Avalanche – They already knew how to make open worlds. The engine was also taken from them – in an interview, Willice admitted that the ID wants to make Rage 2 primarily fascinating, and technology interests the team less. Say, the megatektors in Rage were sophisticated, but did not affect the gameplay and, in addition, divided the game into pieces. But Rage 2 due to the APEX engine will do without downloads, and the action will be more in it. It was the last that the ID studio itself took up: she developed shooting.
As a result, only the combat system pleased the players. It was as boring to explore the open world of Rage 2 as in the first part: Avalanche gathered a large sandbox with monotonous activities. Nevertheless, already on the day of Rage 2, Tim Williats told The Hollywood Reporter that the studio plans to develop Rage 3. However, given that Willita soon left the studio, and the second part was not sold as well as the publisher was expected, it is too early to talk about the future of the franchise.
We thank Tim Willits for his work and wish him success at the next workplace – he is not going to leave the industry yet. And what games from his track record you remember most of all? And where do you think he will go to work in the future? Share your opinion in the comments – and stay with the gambling!