[LAW]

I took inspiration from various sources: custom levels, console games, movies, comics, nature and real life locations. To be honest I think of myself as a "ripper", because there are not many things in my maps, which I have actually invented personally

Here are some examples:

1) My Redneck Deer Huntin' maps. They were just area types from standard RR games which were not used in RDH (Hickston outskirt, swamp and desert)
2) At_at walker. Lame rip-off from GJHoyer and Bobsp (just as Mikko mentioned in the review)
3) Club Doom. Direct remake of PSX Doom level.
4) Arctic Wolf. 90% of inspiration came from Arctic Wolf mod for Doom. Even the locations are the same, with a few pieces from Medal Of Honor.
5) Karnak Temple for Doom & El-Gizah for Powerslave. Obviously PSX and PC versions of Powerslave plus real life locations.
6) AvP 1 mod. Alien Trilogy, AvP Gold, Alien Quake and Alien Doom.

When I saw a cool location in real life I was thinking to myself: "It could look great in editor". I liked to create pretty locations with style. Oddly, I had a personal requirement, that every corridor must have a different design (sic). Ambient sounds were essential, because they make the world living and I like the ambient stuff and instrumental music. I also remember reading almost all Alien and Predator comics in search for inspiration for AvP 2 mod.

Now I am pasting my ideas for AvP 2 mod levels, taken directly from the hidden *.txt from Avp2.grp (a bit modified to be fully true):

Quote

Race War: autumn forest - Resident Evil 4, sewer - Resident Evil 2 / Avp 1 PC, dog cages - Resident Evil 2, laundry - Prison Break TV serie, kitchen - Resident Evil Outbreak 1, cell block with car - Tekken 5, courtyard - Half Life 2, gym - real life, central guard room - Resident Evil 2, green room - Predator Race War comic, toilet - don't remember, phone room - Half Past Dead movie with Seagal , chief's room - Resident Evil Survivor.

Cold War: helipad - Goldeneye 007, cottage - typical village house with "slopped" roof made of sprites, oil rig - Agent Under Fire, archives - Goldeneye 007, chemic - Goldeneye 007 / Resident Evil 4, landing zone - Goldeneye, launch facility - Goldeneye, bunker - Goldeneye / Soldier Of Fortune, radar - Goldeneye, lab - Avp Atari Jaguar.

Temple: terraformer - Disruptor, big pyramid - Aliens Labirynth comic, labs - Avp 1 PC level escape, temple corridors - Avp 1 PC, alien ship - Alien Trilogy E3L1, jockey room - typical, hive war - my idea of two hives fused together (predalien & standard alien), mining stuff - Disruptor, hall of statues - Aliens Apocalypse comic / Mortal Kombat Trilogy Pit 3 stage, atm clone with wooden fence - Alien Trilogy.

Colony: colony - Alien Trilogy level 1, colony - Alien Trilogy level 2 / Avp 1 PC hadley's hope level, at level 3 - general layout of Alien Trilogy E1L3, underground colony - Aliens movie, colony red medic - Alien Trilogy medic level from episode 1, ducts - generic, hypersleep chambers - Alien Trilogy, dark messhall - Alien Trilogy, new operations - Alien Trilogy level 1 / Avp 1 PC hadley's hope level, colonist quarters - Alien Trilogy E1L3 / Aliens Colonial Marines

[Merlijn]

ck3D, on 27 October 2014 - 03:47 AM, said:

i did meet up with merlijn in person in amsterdam though, about two years ago. although it started off casual, as more and more beers were getting downed by the both of us, the conversation hopelessly became more and more centered around duke until we basically transformed into our 15-year-old-nerd respective selves again. that was a trip.

Haha, yeah that was fun. I remember you talking about some experimental ideas which you ended up implementing in Wide awake.

I personally draw inspiration from various sources, but I just realized a lot of my older maps were mostly inspired by other games. The old red1/redduke was an attempt to create a Redneck rampage-styled map in Duke. Hence the name 'Redduke', and this is actually why the map series is called 'red'.
Red2 combined that with elements from Unreal: a sense of conceptual grandness and viewscreen messages revealing specific side-stories and clues.
Red3 also was mostly inspired by Unreal. That game took it's time to introduce the Skaarj and featured one of the most memorable first encounters ever (the hallway with the lights going out one by one). I really wanted to try to create such a scary scene in duke. Having a build-up and a pay-off instead of having a monster on every corner.
Red4 was very much inspired by Halflife, I wanted a map with that type of gameplay: a progressive storyline and a dynamic environment with several scripted sequences.

etc. etc.

That's mostly the bigger picture though. Individual sections are sometimes inspired by real life locations, horror stories, movies and even drawings I made. For example the red1 remake features a section heavily inspired by a H.P. Lovecraft story. And the 'Last change' levels in the Imperium episode feature a lot of nods to the first 2 alien films.