Out of all OG Quake content, "Tim Willits" levels (henceforth, TW-levels) interest me now by far the most.
The general idea "every mappers makes his own version of Quake, uses same tools to his ends, thus self-expressing" - okay, got it.
Petersen like walled himself into his corner and was doing his own thing, which is 7 of his released levels plus beta ending - okay, also understandable.
What interests me most in TW-levels is that they represent like the polar opposite to the Petersen's levels from the viewpoint of the general idea of "each mapper makes his own Quake essentially". Petersen, out of four is the one who adhered to this the most precisely. It's literally 7 consecutive levels, some of which are absolutely not intended for shotgunstart + beta end, that was meant to follow immediately after.
TW-levels represent polar opposite in that they sort of dabble in every pie, so to speak. There is techbase level (E4M1), there are two levels of their own with unique gimmick, flying stones (E1M2, E1M3), there is a collaboration with McGee (E3M6), a Romero-like level, I guess (E2M7), dunno how to classify E1M4 yet, E1M5 could be maybe viewed as Petersen-esque a bit? maybe not - and, finally, there are Wind Tunnels, which are like, what the fuck that even is.
Out of those levels, the last one to fall into place was either Underearth or Wind Tunnels. Underearth contains credits secret (TW&TC, raven.wad) and is the only level that's missing from the early level listing Romero once shared, if not mistaken? While Wind Tunnels, in beta3, doesn't have any enemies making it obvious they were last month's addition. By the way, there being no enemies or pickups makes it apparent the Wind Tubes hurt you on landings in the way very similar to how Petersen did it in E4M2 and some other levels, so it might be a sort of dab on Petersen after all.
Anyway, what I mean to say, is that TW-levels comprise a sort of vertical slice of the game, they somewhat dab in(cont)