Your favorite Map Authors/Mappers?

@Jimmy has a true talent. It makes sense why he has so many WADs added to the Unity port. In close second is @Xaser. Those hubs in BTSX Ep. 2 almost made me die from how beautiful they were!

9 minutes ago, LiT_gam3r said:

@Jimmy has a true talent. It makes sense why he has so many WADs added to the Unity port. In close second is @Xaser. Those hubs in BTSX Ep. 2 almost made me die from how beautiful they were!

Funny enough, I haven't tried Deathless and BTSX. Gosh, so much more maps to play. ^Yesss.

Just now, Endless said:

BTXS

BTSX is a must play! That's on the same level as WADs like Alien Vendetta and maps like Deus Vult! You should definitely try it!

This is a tough one, but a few off the top of my head.

Jimmy is at the top.  Maps look great with mostly stock textures, an excellent balancing of map size, fair challenge, and fun and was able to mitigate the flaws of stock ultimate doom by making clever use of the monsters and good weapon placement.  Honestly with Jimmy I find it hard to state any one thing as I feel he has a good sense of all around level design that makes most levels appealing and worth playing at least once.

In terms of Vanilla I have found that some of my favorites have often been done by American McGee.  I like the kill or be killed pacing, and the compact but often well layered design.  He really seemed to like having a map unfold in a certain way that would keep you fighting and you didn't have to spend too much time exploring everything to figure it out.  I will admit I even like E4M1 to an extent despite it's flaws as it seemed it wasn't a map that was necessarily dead on arrival.  That said I like that Sandy tried to do different things and tended to have a big focus on aesthetic, and if there is something I could criticize McGee's maps on is that they were a bit spartan in texture use.

Now while I have mixed feelings on Eviternity at times I would say that Dragonfly definitely showed that Doom can look beautiful...and be MBF compatible! That is awesome!  While I am not as much a fan of the length and all the encounters necessarily in Eviternity it is a great showcase of the OTEX textures and what Doom is capable of looking like. The custom monsters I think are a great touch as well and their sprites look wonderful.  The map layouts you can tell are also well crafted with purpose and there is plenty of use of moving map elements.  I think that even if Eviternity is not a personal favorite of mine the recognition of these achievements is well deserved. A great example of how you don't always need GZDoom to play a beautiful level.

I also want to give a mention to @EANB.  I am a fan of anyone who makes simple but nice looking maps that keeps the compact and action oriented Scythe 1 spirit alive.

-Adam Windsor also know as Capellan.

Demonfear, Doom 404 and Spectrum are some great wads by him.
But he left his mark on a lot of projects, notoriously Memento Mori II, Requiem, Strain, The Darkening Ep1 & Ep 2, Alien Vendetta, and some recent community projects.

-I really like is Gwyn Williams, author of Vile Flesh, his only known submittion to the community, and an amazing one.
 

-Scypeck2 is a great mapper, too. Author of Three Is a Crowd, probably one of the most story driven megawads out there.

He also make a really awesome demon known as Beyond the End that has some amazing things on it.

-Lainos is amazing. Most of his projects are just a few maps but feels like a total megawad.

-Wraith777 is another mapper i really like. Wonderful Doom is an amazing megawad, far more UDTWID than the community project. His sacrament map05: Lavatraz is an amazing remake of TNT: Evilution map07: Prison

Alpha Accident is the amazing first episode of something greater and better to come that i am anxiously waiting.
 

-Azamael is the brain of A.L.T. and his maps are something that must be seen and played by more people.

-Nathan Lineback, author of Mars War, he just made that, as far as i know, and his map15: The Fringe, is trully outstanding. But not only that, all Mars War is amazing, even when its is just a rant agains Microsoft.

-franckFRAG from the French Doom Community not only is an awesome mapper, author of Swift Death, he is also a great artist that create some outstanding and beautiful art for almost all the project he worked on. Just look at Tangerine Nightmare to see what i'm talking about.

-Revae, author of REKKR and most of the maps on it. Probably the best mapper right now, but i never seen any other work by him, so his mapping might come thanks to how great are REKKR assets.

-Dasi-I, author of Doom Zero, pretty high on map making too. Almost great maps as some seen on REKKR.

-Cyriak Harris or Mouldy, author of Going Down and an amazing artist that really mindrapes me from time to time with his videos and his music.

-Moustachio is a mapper i seen has a lot of potential. Hope he can develop it further.

-Gusta, Kama Sutra, one of the most innovative mappers from the past decade.

-ETERNAL and all his output. Not only his maps are awesome, just look at TNT: Revilution art, holly fuck, that is amazing!

-Thomas van der Velden author of Revolution! one of my favourite megawads. Simply amazing! And Harmony is way underrated right now, we need a megawad for it, i demand it ;)

-Riderr3 author of Urania and Adonis: Escape from Urania. Just an amazing mapper. Hope he can give us more maps in the future.

-SteveD is a great mapper that made some marvelous maps that i totally crave for.

-NaturalTvventy is one of the best mappers of this time. Awesome challenge!

-Kyka, but unfortunately probably nobody will ever know how much he loved TNT: Evilution.

4 minutes ago, Eric Claus said:

 I like the kill or be killed pacing, and the compact but often well layered design.  He really seemed to like having a map unfold in a certain way that would keep you fighting and you didn't have to spend too much time

One of my favourite reasons. Well said. No doubt his maps tend to be quite polarising within the general opinion, but one must admit that he created a latent influence that left a legacy impossible to ignore. I will always defend E4M1, because despite its negative points, I believe that it is incredibly important and undoubtedly has quality.

It's impossible to name everyone who made at least one thing I thought was amazing, but here are the people I could think of who affected me the most personally:

-Ribbiks: his style is so filled with his unique intelligence and personality that I feel in an uncanny way like I'm seeing inside a part of his mind when I play one his maps. There's almost no Ribbiks map that's "just a map" and fades from my memory. As far as innovation and pushing the limit of map scripting and gameplay design goes, I don't think anyone else is coming close. Although his more recent works like Magnolia and FCFF are so dense and inaccessible that my chronic medical condition known as Smooth Brain Syndrome prevents me from grinding too far into them, I still look at them as monuments pointing the way towards finding the outer limits of Doom mechanics. Also an amazing musician, 20X7 map09 is my favourite doom midi of all time, and as everyone knows good music doubles the quality of any map.

-B.P.R.D.: another mapper whose work overflows with personality, and again who made punishing and inaccessible maps rewarding patience, thinking and occasionally a bit of cheating in the map editor. CC2 map24 and Grove, as frustratingly unbalanced and cryptic as they are, have such a unique and personal yet alien atmosphere that it's hard to imagine that anyone except a visionary could have put them together, and Equinox also has a grandeur and epic feeling that's hard not to be affected by. A big shout out to his midis which are on regular repeat for me. It's just a shame he only made a small number of amazing maps and moved on, at one point I was so desperate for more that I went on a big google expedition to see if he ever published any other creative work outside of Doom, but I turned up nothing. :(

-Skillsaw: on the other end of the gameplay spectrum, someone I consider to be the master of accessible balance and natural progression, without sacrificing challenge or curiosity. Each map flows like water, guiding you smoothly to a satisfying finish, every time. His wads also always have consistently great settings and aesthetics, Ancient Aliens of course being the best demonstration that not every map has to be a slog through grey concrete sewers or worn out techbases. Bonus points for being one of the few titans of work ethic who brought not one but two classic megawads to completion, on top of many other projects.

-dannebubinga: has to be on here because he's probably the mapper that hooked me on Doom to begin with, and since he's half of Sunlust, the greatest megawad of All Time™ as voted by a panel of me. I can't fully explain why I love his work so much, except that he's excellent at every aspect of mapping, and can push it to huge scale without losing focus on the fundamentals.

Honourable mentions that could deserve their own paragraph but would turn this post into even more of a book: Benjogami, Zzul, Xaser, Erik Alm, Mechadon, Antares, plenty others.

5 minutes ago, BoxY said:

at one point I was so desperate for more that I went on a big google expedition to see if he ever published any other creative work outside of Doom, but I turned up nothing. :(

I know the struggle. You get to a point where you can't help but say "I want more". These mappers are a drug.

- Death-Destiny aka the master of deadly ambushes.

- Likka Keranen , one of the pioneers of cool 3D vanilla tricks.

- Yonatan Donner, Haggay , Jonas Feragen... all the people who bring to us Hell Revealed 1 and 2.

- TimeOfDeath , the Picasso of Slaughtermaps and russian girl wads.

- Nathan Lineback with his cool megawad "Mars War" and his very unknown compilation of Ultimate Doom maps (Megawad.wad but the maps were not made by him).

- Gusta for the cute vanilla furnitures and memorable maps.

- Stanley Stasiak , the author of CASTEVIL.wad , a massive complex UD map with more than 40 secrets.

- The czech authors of "Beyond the Hell". The wad is bad but I must applause of how dickish the traps are.

All the names given, like @Jimmy, @Dragonfly, are terrible mappers and should be ashamed of themselves of polluting our DoomWorld with their inane mapping works. Don't they know of DEU or editing by hand? Amateurs.

And yet we give these people Cacowards, let them get featured as residents of the Slayers Club, and praise their accomplishments like they mean anything. Clearly, quality is not what the Doom community seeks, but rather, mediocrity.

Same can be said for the Cacowards themselves. @Scuba Steve, @Not Jabba, Alf; kmex..... all followed the chapter in the Doom Bible that said ''if i just write long enough sentences of drivel, eventually it sounds important, because how else could i write such long sentences, no?'' to a teeth, providing us lemmings yearly with their booksize pamphlets of boredoom.

Then there is @Gez, aka Mr. ''Im a literal Wiki of knowledge, so my word is literal canon''. How can you even question a man that quite literally writes the history of Doom, day by day? And its not like its mildly entertaining what he writes, oh no. Its incompromisable rhetoric designed to trick you, the reader, into the idea that what he just wrote is relevant, important even.

And what about @Doomkid? ''I collect Vanilla wads folks for your entertainment, and i have a Shack where i can host them, Am i not just the nicest Frank Zappa lookalike on the planet that also happens to like Doom in his spare time? Yeah, i bet you didn't know that.''. Preposterous.

The only somewhat good folks around here are @Linguica for having a world of Doom in the first place,  @Nine Inch Heels for vanilla trickery and @esselfortium for introducing Mapping Magik in a Doom map, so that they become actually playable (versus what qualifies as a map in any Jimmy level).
 

Ptooey on the grunt of these folks. And yet we consider these people staples in the community. It says something about Doom, really.
 

3 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

I tried too hard didn't i.

Your humor will get you a lot of enemies, pal!
But don't worry, probably i will be there at your side, with our heads in the gallows, mocking you for your missfortune :P

5 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

Inane sarcasm worthy only of fools and drunkards

 

1 minute ago, P41R47 said:

Your humor will get you a lot of enemies, pal!
But don't worry, probably i will be there at your side, with our heads in the gallows, mocking you for your missfortune :P

The gallows are too good for the both of you! Drawn and quartered I say!  This type of humor is not to be tolerated!

6 minutes ago, Redneckerz said:

Preposterous.

^{Preposterous.}

SPICY!!!

nervously fans fresh air at her face while hyperventilating

Many talented mappers but my shoutout goes to Torniquet, the author of Miasma, Abernikula and three Nova II maps. He made a few more that I haven't played. Not a lot but really stands out both in terms of visuals and gameplay.

1 minute ago, <<Rewind said:

Not a lot but really stands out both in terms of visuals and gameplay.

Indeed. I recently finished Miasma. Truly awe inspiring with oustanding visuals and a well-executed map layout.

Esselfortium for her large adventure maps. Luppinx Kassiman for being the guy who manages to make that one super special map even in megawads where all the other maps are already excellent. Sverre Andre Kvernmo for those maps that made my jaw drop more than 20 years ago (and still do). Darch for all the fun and laughs his two wads brought me while I was bored during the covid lockdown. Xaser for his incredible layouts and sadistic gameplay (Enigma Helix, I'm looking at you). Skillsaw and Dragonfly for being the driving forces and main mappers behind the two best megawads of the last five years. NaturalTvventy for all the magic he brought to No End in Sight. Blueeagle for creating the only wad that ever really scared me. Jaska for literally creating an entire world within the doom engine. 

My absolute favorite (by now, at least) would be Espi. Suspended in Dusk just blew me away. The cohesion of textures to make them feel like actual materials, the elegance in sheer simplicity, the way it almost looks like "real" 3D, how rocks look organic, the feeling of solitude on a vast dead desolated complex, the perfect balance of ammunition to be always almost out of resources but not quite even though it isn't linear... There may be even better maps and maybe I have played some of them, but Suspended in Dusk is one wad I won't forget easily.

mouldy's Going Down would be a close second. Short and sweet, humorous in the right way, incredibly varied while keeping a coherent progression and if I'm not mistaken it was done using only Doom II stock textures. Which took me like seventeen maps or so to realize. Goes to show.

Erik Alm will always be my favorite mapper, and mouldy, while not being in the community for too long, has proved to be an incredible talent and a close second favorite of mine. His music is great too, but it may not be for everyone.

I would say:

- Gusta, the design in his Kama Sutra and Plutonia 2 maps has a special touch that I find super attractive in every sense, inspirational and even "iconic". 

- Skillsaw, well he did Ancient Aliens alongside guest mappers and it's one of my favourite megawads. I love how he does outdoors natural landscapes.

- Ryath, the mapper behind gems like Return to Daro, Absolutely Killed, and more, the puzzles in those wads are top notch imo.

- Mouldy, in love with his creativity in mapping ideas, motifs and clever use of monster types.

- Mechadon is also an artist of using stock textures, or anything, give him the ugliest textures ever and he'll make a masterpiece worth of a chef kiss. 

- NaturalTvventy, I personally consider he has made the best doom 1 mapsets. 

One of the newest faces in the scene that I absolutely loved their content is A2Rob, definitely waiting for more of them.

Honorable mention goes to soooo many names and I don't want to be here typing for hours...

valkiriforce is a wadsmith of the highest caliber.

Currently I'd say my favourite Doom landscape artists are Dragonfly, Major Arlene, Jimmy, Clippy, Soulless, Phobus, Chaingunner, AD_79 and Bauul. But there are still SO many of you talent bastards whose work I haven't experienced yet. No doubt my list will grow, shift, warp and change many times over the longer I'm in the community and exploring your works.  

7 minutes ago, Biodegradable said:

Currently I'd say my favourite Doom landscape artists are Dragonfly, Major Arlene, Jimmy, Clippy, Soulless, Phobus, Chaingunner, AD_79 and Bauul. But there are still SO many of you talent bastards whose work I haven't experienced yet. No doubt my list will grow, shift, warp and change many times over the longer I'm in the community and exploring your works.  

As a community we are truly spoiled in terms of content.

Not sure about the 90s, I guess the Casalis would rank near the top.

2000s my favourites would probably be Erik Alm who pushed for that slick and polished look that is heavily present today and Gusta for the sheer oddness of Kama Sutra along with creating some of the best maps for Plutonia 2.

As for now, probably Skillsaw for pushing the boundaries of slick gameplay and Ribbiks who took the works of Insane Gazebo and death destiny and made some of the finest monster puzzle maps in existence.

As a mapper, I suppose I'm not just looking at the works that I've enjoyed, but also the works that inspire me and make me want to improve to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them (in my best works, at least). With that in mind, it's an interesting list:

• @Tormentor667
  • When I first joined up on the ZDoom Forums in the far-back reaches of 2005, he was the man, as far as I was concerned. I played the Torment 'n' Torture series, and ZDCMP#1 and realised what I wanted out of myself was stuff like that. Ambitious ZDoom projects filled with challenge and laced with personality and humour. The City of the Damned only added to the wonder, but Sapphire, Austerity and his ZPack maps weren't quite as wondrous. He's still a great mapper, but no longer my undisputed favourite. I reckon part of that is that there's so many other greats in this community and the more work you play, the more authors you admire. I was honoured to be invited to help out on ZDCMP#2, which was a bit of a dream come true. Come to think of it, my involvement in Commnuity Chest 3 was down to him as well!
• @Enjay
  • Another one that was great at the time. The difference was he was great long before, and remains great to this day. Runaway Train on it's own would be a recommendation, but he got the first megaWAD out for Doom (or one of the first), did a conversion to Doom II and then a further conversion to ZDoom (Enjay ZDoom 2001), which is really cool. Then there's Operation Overlord, Marine Assault, Waterlab GZDoom... It just goes on and on. Also in ZDCMP#1, with a prominent warehouse section! A great guy and still an active presence on the ZDoom Forums.
• @Jimmy
  • Continuing with the theme of great guys, Jimmy is well-known (and often-cited) as a great for everything he turns his hand to. It helps that he makes lots of easily-digestible maps and very good speedmaps, with at least three megaWADs to his name that I've played through (Jenesis, Jiffy Bag and Deathless). That he's also a great maker of MIDIs and super-productive only add to the appeal, but when I set out to make a quick, limit-removing megaWAD, Jimmy was my inspiration.
• @Khorus
  • As was this guy! Khorus' Speedy Shit was a revelation for me, in that it proved you could make a high-quality megaWAD quickly and the results would be addictive. He's also worked on many other projects and went inactive during a scheduled-release Plutonia map set, which was a shame. I suspect the self-imposed pressure lead to burnout, although there may have been other reasons.
• @Doomkid
  • Doomkid, like Jimmy, represents fun, not-so-difficult maps, to me. I've go my eye on Ray Mohawk's Manic Monday to get a nod at the Cacowards later this year, but he's done many episode-length map sets with fun themes, creative enemy rosters and a readily digestible format. I'm hoping, in time, I might start to replicate the form, but in GZDoom.
• @Big Ol Billy
  • My pick for Creator of the Year (fingers crossed), as he adds a lot of energy, creativity and fun to what he makes and really elevates the DBPs. As is a bit of a running theme here, he's a great guy and a joy to work alongside. Whenever I come out with a big map for the DBPs, it's in friendly competition!
• @glenzinho
  • Somebody else who forms the backbone of the DBPs and puts a lot of energy, drive and creativity into what he makes, he's another one often vying with Billy for making the stand-out map for a given month (succeeding admirably in DBP27, as an example!) and putting a real focus on cohesion, getting things done and getting them done well.
• @Darch
  • Pirate Doom! Before that, also a raft of enjoyable maps and sets that coincided with mass-participation /newstuff reviews. I enjoyed and positively reviewed a fair few of his works in that era and hope he's still got something cool bubbling away for the future.
• Wim Vanrie
  • Purely for the Mini-Level megaWAD, which was the first megaWAD to really make me go "I wanna make something like this!" - a sensation reinforced by some of the authors listed above. I'm not sure if they ever did anything else, and I don't think I ever searched, but from my memories of the one time I did play it, it might be a favourite to this day!
• John Romero
  • Simply put, that demo of Doom II MAP11, where the player rushes round the circle, gunning down zombies and cycling up through the weapons that they drop as he goes, is a masterpiece, and something I like to both play and make. Obviously he's done a lot of other great and good maps, but that brief sequence defines the joy of Doom and the low-tiers for me like very little else does.

I could go on, to be honest. I've not mentioned Erik Alm and his Scythe series, the influence esselfortium, and by extension, Espi, have had on my treatment of textures as materials, eternal's many amazing works, memfis and his joyous bitesize maps, the way people like bridgeburner, insane_gazebo and Major Arlene have really pushed the envelope with GZDoom visuals, the revelation of Xaser - particularly circa the mid-2000s on the ZDoom forums with Zen Dynamics - or many others that don't come to mind right now, but would surely be worthy. Those favourites up there are in no particular order, and there's no real hierarchy to it. If you're making fun Doom maps that I don't have to struggle too much to get through, you're already a great in my eyes!

Just like Phobus, my top 10 is a mixture of modern and classic mappers :

10) Paul "skillsaw" DeBruyne
skillsaw is the embodiment of modern mapping with his clean and sleek aesthetics. Along with esselfortium, Mechadon, Vader and many others, he belongs to a group I'd call "The Heirs of Espi", since all of these authors embrace Espi's theories as regards to texture alignment and considering textures as materials instead of mere wallpaper.
skillsaw has had a huge influence on the mapping scene (most notably on modern top-tier authors such as an_mutt, Tarnsman, AD_79 or Breezeep), and obviously on my own style as well.
For this spot on the list, skillsaw is closely tied with other powerhouses like esselfortium or Vader, but he's made more maps (Ancient Aliens, Valiant etc.).

09) Insane_Gazebo
Insane_Gazebo is the father of Sunder, and this wad is the pioneer as regards to modern, high quality slaughtermaps, with imposing architecture and massive fights.
This author has inspired countless others, such as dannebubinga (Combat Shock, Sunlust), ArmoredBlood (NewGothic Movement), Phml, Nirvana, bemused, NoReason, Scotty, Benjogami and Killer5.
While we all thought he was gone, Insane_Gazebo returned in 2019 with new Sunder maps and blew us away with awe-inspiring, epic adventures. Thus, he's reclaimed his throne as the rightful king of "high quality slaughter".

08) Esa "Espi" Repo (R.I.P)
Espi has been a blessing to this community. He deserves a spot in this list not only for making excellent wads (Suspended in Dusk and Back to Basics), but also for his design theories that I've mentioned earlier (in the paragraph concerning skillsaw). Modern mappers owe him a lot.

Espi is also known for being the creator of Eternal Doom IV map 27. This is admittedly a magnificient piece of work, but since this map bored me stiff I won't talk much about it. 

07) Anders Johnsen
Anders Johnsen spearheaded Alien Vendetta, arguably the best and most influential megawad of all time, and he made excellent maps for it.
"Fire Walk With Me" (AV map 29) has been a huge source of inspiration for teenage me, with its classic red/green Hellish style, and obviously its dreadful Revenant battle.

06) Erik Alm
Erik Alm is another legendary mapper from the good ol' days. He's mostly known for Scythe and Scythe II, but I also remember him as the author of One Bloody Night, a great wad from 2002 with nasty, slaughterish battles near the end. Maybe his most underrated work.
Erik's maps feature lots of interconnected areas and clever layouts, as well as intense fights. Josh Sealy could be seen as a modern Erik Alm, in some ways.
If you read this Erik, we're still waiting for the full Scythe X package !

05) Huy "Doom Marine" Pham
Before Sunder, there was Deus Vult. The first massive, beautiful slaughter set I've ever played. It went beyond Alien Vendetta, One Bloody Night and all the others, and left a strong impact on me.
Deus Vult II was more of a mixed bag though, as I didn't really like the Chord-inspired maps, but it's only natural for an author to keep developing their style and exploring new directions.
Which leads us to...

04) Zachary "Ribbiks" Stephens
I recall playing some maps in Slaughterfest 2012 back then, and when faced with "Electric Wizard" (one of Ribbiks' maps), I immediately knew this author was talented and I wanted to play more maps from him. He was already standing out of the crowd. Fortunately, the man never stopped delivering the goods !
With Stardate 20X6 and its focus on evil monster puzzle traps (along with a strong purple theme that was revolutionary at the time), Ribbiks has had a lasting impact on the scene. He's managed to create insanely hard maps without using tons of monsters, instead relying on clever mosnter positioning so that each of them could  deliver the maximum amount of pain.
Sunlust is also an amazing wad, one of the greatest from the 2010s.
Now, admittedly I'm a bit less enthralled by the more "gamey" / gimmicky ideas Ribbiks has developed in his recent output, but he's a top-tier mapper nonetheless, he keeps on pushing boundaries and I'm always looking forward to seeing new content from him !

03) Brett "Mechadon" Harrell
Among the modern mappers I've mentioned earlier, and most notably those who excel in detailing and visual polishing, Mechadon has his own style. For years, he's constantly been delivering high quality content, either in solo releases (Counterattack), in community projects (the 32in24 series, Claustrophobia 1024, Plutonia Revisited, Community Chest 4, early Skulltag DM megawads), and team efforts (Eviternity, Back to Saturn X). His layouts are intricate but clever, and his maps are pure eye candy and offer hours of playtime (each map in the old Vela Pax beta takes more than an hour to complete, but it's well worth the time spent !).
Now, the community eagerly awaits Supplice, the ZDoom-based TC new game Mechadon is developing along with Cage, and it will surely be a masterpiece.
Arguably the best mapper of all time.

02) Darkwave0000
Darkwave0000 is the co-author of Speed of Doom, a legendary megawad that could be dubbed "Alien Vendetta 2" (yeah, it's THAT good). He's also participated in community projects (Plutonia Revisited) and we've been very lucky to have him contribute to projects over at the French Doom Community (most notably the 3ha series and 180 Minutes Pour Vivre). His body of work shows a lot of versatility and efficiency in the gameplay department. Just like Death-Destiny, his maps are not the prettiest, but he more than makes up for it through great encounter design. I wish he'd make more maps !

01) Death-Destiny
It's been really hard to chose a favorite mapper, but I'd say Death-Destiny wins the crown.
I've immensely enjoyed all his maps, from Grime to No Chance, even the more controversed Beesong. He's known for his hardcore stuff, and is some kind of a spiritual father to the likes of Ribbiks, rd, Paul997, and many more.
One of my main sources of inspiration in terms of gameplay.

This is my top 10, but there are many, many more praiseworthy mappers - I've mentioned esselfortium, Vader and Tango, but there's also the likes of Xaser, dobu gabu maru, Chris Lutz, Jimmy Paddock, Kim Malde, tourniquet, Dutch Devil, Jonas Feragen, Iikka Keranen, Eternal, franckFRAG, Dragonfly, Joshy, Gusta, Big Ol' Billy, Orin Flaharty, Vincent Catalaá, Nirvana, Scotty, Nicolas Monti etc.). I could go on for ages.
We're lucky to have all these talented individuals creating good stuff for us to play and keeping this old game alive. :)

Christian Hansen

Kristian Nebula

Jaska

Chris Lutz

Death-Destiny

Brett "Mechadon" Harrell

AD79

Espi

Dutch Devil

Jimmy

Huy Pham

Ribbicks

Valkiriforce

Erik Alm

Nicolas Monti

Jan Van der Veken

Jim Flynn

Esselfortium

Kaiser

Dr Sleep

Romero

This is just a small list and there are so many others to choose from!

13 hours ago, Polri said:

Esselfortium for his large adventure maps.

Esselfortium is a she (her). A female mapper indeed! Great mapper for sure.

The only mapper I have ever regularly cracked open their maps and just studied them is @Insane_Gazebo.  I've spent a not insignificant amount of time trying to understand and codify what it is specifically about Sunder that makes it such a unique visual experience, any why no other mapper has ever really come close to capturing that certain je ne sais quoi.

Sunder maps have a certain undeniable "wholeness" to them.  They exist in broad strokes that feel like they have organically expanded rather than been deliberately constructed.  There's not a single part of any Sunder map that feels out-of-place, or at odds thematically with the rest of the map, despite their absolute vast scale.

Somehow, IG is able to take a relatively simple seed of a theme (often just a handful of textures and an abstract geometric concept) and let it just flow out organically, filling the map space with every conceivable manifestation of the theme, but without ever deviating from its relatively simplistic core.  

The biggest learning I had from examining his maps came from the realization of actually how simple many of them are, at least within a given scene (notwithstanding the sheer size of the more recent Sunder efforts).  There is basically next to no 'unique detailing' in a typical Sunder map.  Any detailing that does exist is in aid of a manifestation of the theme that can then be reused and repurposed multiple times throughout the maps.  

Another important aspect of IG's mapping that I found an important lesson is to remember to let the textures shine.  Doom, with its relatively plain geometry, features particularly striking and bold textures, that often don't actually need detailing to contribute fully to a scene.  When paired with complementary other textures and given the room and geometry to breath, Doom's textures can completely mitigate the need for excessive detail, especially when placed in a macro-scaled environment.  

As someone who has spent far too much time attempting to micro-detail personality into my early maps, exploring Sunder's vast terrains was a huge eye-opener, and gave me a strong new perspective on the importance of consistency, intent of purpose, and allowing textures the room to shine.