Who, or what wad(s) or level(s), inspired (or inspires) you the most?

What other mappers have you drawn the most influence from for your own works?

I'm not good at emulating styles and sometimes you'd be hard pressed to see any influence but Esselfortium, Mechadon, Rottking, Ralphis and AlexMax have had the most influence on my maps.

Doomkid is the one influencing me the most now.

TimeOfDeath for progression , layouts and sometimes combat.

Death-Destiny for traps ideas , item and monsters placements , difficulty

Other mappers for other things like detailing.

Insane_gazebo for gameplay and visuals too somewhat, Ribbiks and Dannebubinga for visuals on outdoor areas and somewhat gameplay, and for layout, probably a subconicous smorgasborg of a million other mappers. Layout mostly comes from my own head.

Being an inveterate egoist, I'm inspired by myself

One of the first mappers to influence me was Adam Windsor, the author of Demonfear. Next to him, I've been influenced by lots of other mappers. Almost every wad of mine was inspired by a different mapper, though the inspiration has only been in regards to visuals for the most part.

I have not finished a map thus far (just cannot seem to finish what I start), but probably Azamael, Shadowman and other russian mappers, I just cannot help myself but insert tons of pointless detail. Now, however, I have been fascinated by The Innocent Crew's early '94 wads, so I am attempting to make a cramped Ultimate DooM map.

I think there's a difference between conscious and unconscious influence, since I often try to look at some of the things I've found interesting and see what I can do with similar ideas. But here are also cases where I'm pointed out influences I might not have noticed myself.

It's hard to choose only a few, since I usually look at a lot of different stuff. Lately, most of my conscious inspiration within the Doom community has come from Ribbiks, skillsaw, tango, Esselfortium, antares031 and Insane_Gazebo. Some of them factor in more on the visual side of things, while others provide interesting insights into gameplay. Stardate 20x6 is a recently discovered favourite of mine in it's oppressive atmosphere and clever and focused gameplay. I think in my latest maps that particular inspiration is very dominant.

Unconsciously though, hard to say. Some of the aforementioned are probably there too, and additionally I'd say Urthar and Dragonfly, since DotB and Eviternity were some of the wads I played when I really got back into mapping.

@Tormentor667, @skillsaw, @Khorus, @Enjay and Erik Alm inspire me to get ambitious with my solo projects, @esselfortium inspires my visual style and texture usage and the Doomer Boards Project guys (@Big Ol Billy, @vertigo, @Jaxxoon R, glenzinho and the Krew) give me the drive to get something done most months, and working alongside them gets me to step up what would be little throwaway maps to try and make them stand out a bit more. I'll confess that seeing what @joe-ilya came out with for DBP23 impressed me enough that I started on something a lot more grandiose than I was likely to turn up with otherwise.

@Tango and @Doomkid have given me a bit more of a love for shorter, themed episodes and messing with the formula a little, which is very cool in my book. Also @Bridgeburner56 for keeping the speed mapping dream alive (and pentagrams...)

We map in a societycommunity.

@Memfis, @skillsaw, @Jaska, Erik Alm and American McGee are my inspiration troves (in order).

Memfis inspires me with all of his maps, particularly Kuchitsu with its various aesthetics and relaxing tones.

Skillsaw with the tightly knit encounters.

Jaska with the openness of Lost Civilization.

Erik with the compact map design in Scythe.

McGee with aesthetics from the first 7 maps in Doom 2, and gameplay.

Definitively Romero and Petersen, i would often look at their style on the IWADs looking for what made those map stand out so much compared to modern maps, and try to imitate the abstract style that made the IWADs so memorable to me. Z0k whose early work he used to share with me was a big influence on my early days of mapping, his realistic style is amazing and i reference it a lot too when doing more complex maps, BTSX was also a big influence, particularly the maps by esselfortium, Mechadon and skillsaw, the same goes to Double Impact by Ralphis and Rottking, an amazing mapset that i still reference to this day when looking for inspiration.

But if anything i think one of the biggest influences on my mapping is Dragonfly whose eviternity mapping streams not just where hugely influential by seeing him explaining the process and ideas behind his maps, but also helped me be more efficient with my own mapping by catching a few tricks he showed on stream. Not to mention eviternity is a great mapset to look for ideas or inspiration
 

I take something from every wad I play, but the one that inspires me the most has to be Kama Sutra, by Gusta and Method (although I don't Method's levels that much). For me, KSutra desobeys every invisible rule about level design people can make up, and just makes something mindlessly fun and unique in its own style. I wish to make levels with as much life and soul. 

I often watch speedruns of different wads on youtube to research some unique encounters I could use in my maps, so it's a lot of different sources.

But when it comes to individual mappers who inspired me the most, Ribbiks, Dragonfly and Skillsaw would be in the top 3.

The longer I sat here, I'm sure I could continue to think of an increasingly longer and longer list of people who have inspired me, and continue to do so. In the grand scheme of things, Erik Alm will always have a special place in my mind and heart, due to the fact that Scythe 2 was the first PWAD I ever played, and was the first time I felt an overwhelming desire and need to create something of my own. 

If I had to narrow it down to a handful, then off the top of my head I'd name @esselfortium, @Kristian Nebula, @Mechadon, @skillsaw and Jeffrey Graham, in no particular order.

Hmmm Hard to say

Biggest inspirations for me would be @nicolas monti and Erik Alm. The first for the map layouts, flow and non-linearity, and the second for the tight and punchy maps.

Also the Casali Brothers from Plutonia (basically everything), @riderr3 and @antares031 for the layouts, non-linearity and map variety, BTSX crew, Daniel from neodoom for the new enemies, weapons, zdoom stuff and ruins/jungle theme, Jimmy especially for MIDI inspirations, also feedback received from everyone, which has been helping me a lot to improve myself.

My inspirations remain roughly the same: Alien Vendetta - in particular levels by Johnsen/Malde, Requiem, and to a degree Eternal Doom. I map for doom2.exe exclusively, so I basically can't look to "compete" with most modern level sets. I also like to make "homages" to other 3D games and try to translate specific scenes to a "2.5D" counterpart. Mostly using stock textures.

natural tvventy, xaser, malcolm sailor, timeofdeath, bob evans, jim flynn, lainos, dobu, ribbiks, tourniquet, benjo, shadowman, jaska

also the designers for various old dungeon crawlers and weird adventure games

plus a hundred people i'm forgetting

i try not to learn from mappers who make really elegant stuff cos I prefer weird junk, sorry about that :))))))))

Skillsaw and Ribbiks inspire me to never take up mapping.

@rdwpaSometimes I thought in your levels that @dannebubinga and/or @Ribbiks are high on your inspirations list. Would I be correct?

@TheOrganGrinderWhat are your released levels? I only see one in DMP2017 (which does look quite cool) and another recent speedmap (in Isolation, IIRC).

12 hours ago, FrancisT18 said:

What other mappers have you drawn the most influence from for your own works?

probably my testicles, they do pretty much nice mapping on beach sand.

===

In all seriousness tho I think that I had to dig some inspiration from Insane_Gazebo, Dragonfly and BPRD before. Not that I followed their style, I have my own... but they inspired me to keep going when I felt I give up on what I had to do.

Actually there are a shitton of good and god-tier mappers, all of them are good in their own way and we still can learn something new from OR WITH them.

There is no mapper from whose I have taken a "notorious inspiration" or something, more like those who helped me not stop mapping and instead helped me know visually (As in, through playing their WADs) how to achieve X and Y effects.

@elend, @Jaska, @Remilia Scarlet and @Tango (Along his Supercharge mod) have been great motivations, elend because when I played Hurt I was amazed as to how he greatly achieved a Hellish landscape like I've never seen, Jaska because his nature and urban layouts along great realism, some surrealist areas and non-linearity has helped me understand how to achieve that non-linearity on my mapping (Which is paused for now due to complications), Remilia was the mapper who made me love Lovecraftian mythology and Eldritch Horrors even more than I already did, as the topics her WADs had were great for me, and that's what made me say "Alright, let's make TCTOA have that Lovecraftian mythology touch here and there, mentioning how the Great Old Ones "broke" a contract with Humans.", and lastly Tango whose maps along Supercharge were awesome to me! The gameplay was great the first time I played it, and seeing how balanced/unique it could be, that's what helped me understand on part how to be balanced layout and enemy wise (Along a great friend who is not on this forum, but he has helped me greatly on those aspects!).

So yeah thanks to you guys!

Erik Alm & Espi were early influences on me, the ideas of Erik Alm are always in my mind when designing maps & gameplay encounters. A more recent influence, but still a classical designer, would be Tom Mustaine who has been a huge influence on my mapping style ever since TNT: Revilution & even slightly before that to some extent. Modern influences would be Tarnsman & Jimmy, maybe not their maps directly, but their design insights are very important in the development of my mapping skills.

I feel like I'm kind of an unusual case in this regard. I honestly never really 'played' doom that much, I just love putting levels together - just like I've never really 'listened' to music, I just love putting notes together. I've only played the first episode of The Ultimate Doom. In fact I think the only large non-IWAD mapsets I've ever completely played through, in singleplayer, are Daedalus, Eviternity, and I suppose Speed of Doom as I was testing it a bit in development. I have, however, seen a lot of AV/HR2/a few other wads because of survival/coop online games.

So my mapping influences tend to be from outside Doom. The only art I've ever really felt a strong connection with is that of Escher - I love everything with interesting geometry and patterns. In terms of computer games I think Marathon, more than anything else, has been the biggest influence on my own mapping style. This is because growing up my only computer was a Macintosh, and Marathon came with a level editor which endlessly fascinated me. I don't think I even played much of the game itself! It was way too scary for me (I can't remember how old I was but I must've been around 6/7). But just like with other Macintosh games, I loved creating levels, even though I had no idea what any of the textures, objects, or weapons meant. I just liked making rooms and arranging things in patterns. I've not really changed much since then - if you ever play one of my maps and think 'This texture is not being used correctly at all' it's because I didn't have a clue what the texture was meant to represent, I just liked how it looked.

I even have very vivid memories of finding a program called 'WolfEd' on the Macintosh. I'd never even heard of Wolfenstein at the time, and it certainly didn't come with the game - it was just a standalone editor that I had for some reason. It was grid based and you would just place walls and objects down. I hadn't the slightest clue what any of it meant and I couldn't play the levels but I loved making them and fantasizing about how it all worked.

As far as music influences go (if anyone's interested), the four composers whose music has had the greatest effect on me (in order of my exposure to them) are Dmitry Kabalevsky, Claude Debussy, Leos Janacek, and Philippe Hurel. It's kind of a coincidence that I happened upon each of these, because I don't tend to seek out new music that much, but each one is utterly instrumental in my current style. I could easily go into a lot more detail about this but I don't know if there would be enough musicians who would be interested. Still, if anyone has a bit of time and is curious about these things, I would highly recommend listening to something by these composers, not only because they write really enjoyable music, but you might also hear some of its influence. For example, Kabalevsky's 'Overture to "Colas Breugnon"', which had a great influence on my Speed of Doom music, or Janacek's 'Cunning Little Vixen', which had a huge impact on much of the Ancient Aliens soundtrack. You will know it when you hear it! Philippe Hurel's 'Loops II' has less of an impact on my Doom music but a much larger impact on my more 'contemporary' compositions. It just so happens that all three of those pieces are ones that I've performed/played myself, which is probably why they left such an impression on me.

Discovering Okuploks Sunder maxes on Youtube back in 2013 was the key point that got me interested in Doom mapping so guess i have to mention Insane_Gazebo first. The grand scale architecture was just mind blowing and awe inspiring. Nowadays I kinda prefer drawing layouts in a 45 degree angle, i've basicly adapted this from Sunder Map08 and got used to it.

Second would be both Ribbiks & Dannebubinga, Stardate20x6 as well as both Combat Shock 1&2 were massive inspirations. Regardless of the fact that Sunlust and Sd20x7 are much more refined, i still consider Sd20x6 as my favorite set of all time. The 'tons of brown + a fancy color' formula just burnt into my mind.

Other authors that influenced me in way or another over the years are B.P.R.D, Darkwave0000, Death_Destiny as well as Mechadon, Mouldy, dobu gabu maru & Cannonball.

For me Michael Krause has influenced me a bit with his big opened styled maps, also a bit of credit to Kristus who is a genious, but my main influence is definetly Samuel 'Kaiser' Villareal. His style is almost perfect.

Can i recommend concrete maps  are specially influenced me making a specific wad?

There's actually quite a few participants here who I've seen few if any levels from, ie didn't even know they were mappers. So I would be interested in knowing what levels you have publicly released:

@Decay

@Senor500

@MFG38

@rdwpanothing in last three years I can find

@TheOrganGrinder only can find one map in DMP2017 & one in Isolation

@Uncle 80

@Archanhell

and @Wereknight only see one level in DMP2016

And @19Wraith yes, it's fine to say a specific level or wad inspired you (as opposed to all of an author's works).

@FrancisT18 : Public releases of mine include one map in Dragonfly's confinement 256 (?) project. I think. I haven't actually played it, as I don't have gzdoom. And I submitted one level to a 1024 plutonia project sometime, but I don't know how that went or if it even was included as my computer broke down at that time and I was without it for a few months unable to follow up on the forum thread. My main body of work remains unreleased. I'm thinking of releasing a 3-4 level miniwad sometime "in the future" if I can find the time to make the final touch-ups required between work, kids, band practice, etc etc etc :-)