Most inspirational pwads?

[Szymanski]

Alfonzo said:

How today's creations come into being can never be so neatly sourced back in time to a progenitor PWAD, like some trail of breadcrumbs through a conveniently-mapped labyrinth. The idea is dumb and betrays the complex and layered history behind the community as it is today.

Agreed. Id find it difficult to pin down a single inspiration for my own maps, you don't see all the design elements that were trialled, dumped or avoided. If there was a recipe it would be long and contain unusual ingredients.
All my maps have input from other people, without being an overt tribute It's not possible to pin the design elements down. Finally you can't exclude someone's play style from the maps they create. I can't Doom as hard as Andy or Anthony and my maps reflect that.

10 sectors 28 - Three very similar large rooms plus corridors plus filler. Can't think of a direct inspiration beyond the time limit.

Endgame 07 - Doom2 map 03 Gantlet, Doom3 high contrast lighting, Stamford train station platform 2.

AV 06 - Initially a green tech map for an adam windsor project, retextured, edited (lift removed, gallows added, cyb) and monster filled by Anthony. I don't have the emails or early work (backup cd fail) or I could give more details. My main inspiration was initially Doom2 map01 but bigger, but it doesn't really show in the final map. Does it play similarly to a prior map? nothing comes to mind

AV 24 - Darkening 2/Quake 2 inspired design. Again Anthony re-textured and gameplay tweaked the map. Kinda messy design process with a lack of inspiration on my part.

Ilya tune up - Joe Ilya, heh

edit....

Kdizd Z1M7 (uncredited) - The right half of this map was inspired by Ola's maps in the Darkening 2.

[joe-ilya]

Isn't AV inspired by momento mori 1?

Is momento mori 1 the first community project done in a Pwad?

I could cuddle my inspiration tree into an inspiration maze, but that would be hard to read.

[Not Jabba]

The AV era and earlier is the main reason I realized my own attempt at a style tree wasn't going to work out. I could tell Gusta had probably drawn a ton of inspiration from the scope and beauty of AV, but I couldn't tell who was responsible for that aesthetic, and I got the feeling that even the AV mappers might not be able to pinpoint it. Most of the early megawads feel like the mappers were still experimenting with styles and, I dunno, "finding themselves" or whatever -- not to mention that they were all community projects and you can sort of see how the mapping teams took inspiration from each other as they went. That's still often true (BTSX comes to mind), and the mappers who have been around the longest often seem to have the most diverse styles as they draw more and more inspiration from more sources.

That said, I think that in recent years, it has become easier to trace the inspirations of new mappers. Doom level design has become more and more of a perfected art form (I think it hit a plateau around 2011-2012, which is why you get people griping that things like BTSX or Sunlust are "soulless" or something -- not that I agree with that assessment). In addition, more and more of the biggest projects are megawads with one to two authors. As a result, a few of the biggest mappers have essentially created "schools" of mapping that many other people follow. These days, you see Erik Alm, Darkwave, and Insane_gazebo (maybe a few others) just about everywhere. I think that's what got some of us interested in trying to trace inspirations back to their sources.

[Andy Johnsen]

joe-ilya said:

Isn't AV inspired by momento mori 1?

Is momento mori 1 the first community project done in a Pwad?

I could cuddle my inspiration tree into an inspiration maze, but that would be hard to read.

A joe-ilya inspiration maze sounds fascinating. If it's hard to read, you could explain it in detail with words next to the graphic. I will be anticipating it greatly.

"momento" mori - AV <- that be some serious research right there.


(hi Lee, nice to see you up and about :)

[Szymanski]

Andy Johnsen said:

(hi Lee, nice to see you up and about :)

Thanks man, cant put this game away