Chex Quest: Doomsday (Rerelease!)

[darkstone]

After you hit the light-blue switch and go into the dark tunnel with the panel detached from the wall, and walk all the way to the end, it should wait a second then open up to the main waterfall room. If you get there and nothing happens, that's the bug. Man I was sure it was gone...

Spoiler for the level if you haven't played it.

Sorry but you are not allowed to view spoiler contents.

[mob720]

Ah I see, the light blue switch you hit lowers the barrier to the room across from the big jump, so you have to jump down into the main waterfall room, go up the lift to the main hallway then go full speed off the edge to make the jump across the waterfall room. There are some light-blue colored lights at the base of the room you need to jump into. Kinda confusing but I hope this helps!

[75]

- Unfortunately combat in my opinion has to take a slow approach starting out. If I handed the player a large zorcher/rapid zorcher too early, they'll make mincemeat of the low and mid-tier enemies. I tried to provide combat in areas that would make the player vulnerable to ranged attacks (bwas) while dealing with immediate threats (melee enemies). Or areas where if you're not quick with your decisions you can get swarmed. It just kinda stinks that the commonus and bepidicus are just bullet sponges, but I didn't want to give up using them.

- On E1M2, I think I know what's happening for you, you're trying to coax all the enemies from the big room into the hallway while you only have your mini zorcher. If you take the door adjacent to the big room and go down that path, you'll find a large zorcher and a better route to take out the enemies in that room. Strong arming your way through the big room with your dinky zorcher isn't the way I planned for players to go about the map.

- If E1M2 is still too slow for you, definitely just warp to the other ones and check them out, they start off much faster since I give the large zorcher at spawn.

Hi Mob, I tried E1M2 and recorded a demo this time (attached), I recorded it using Zdoom 2.8.1. Let me know if you need help playing the demo.

I'll try warping to the later maps next time I play this.

My notes:

- I think the main reason why this is too slow for me is it seems like I'm spending most of my time fighting "sniper" BWAs, this is a thing that quite a few wads do but it always felt like filler combat to me, I'd rather have the BWAs walking around on the ground because there's a chance they might swarm me or catch me off guard. (Again, I'd understand if you didn't want to mess with the combat)

- I kept on running out of ammo.

I'm not sure if you were deliberately going for a low ammo map. I generally really like maps that force me to conserve ammo but this map was large and complicated, it got kind of tedious backtracking through the whole map looking for things I might have missed.

- I liked the super cyclopti fights in the cubicle areas, the super cyclopti can fly, and they are far better at maneuvering the layout because of it; I'd like to see more fights like this.

- A lot of your traps seem to consist mostly of spawning monsters in front of the player, or spawning monsters so that they walk into the room the player is in (where there's only one entrance).

This is pretty common in other wads, but I don't like it personally -- it's very easy to exploit these traps using the old wolf3d trick of just standing behind the door and knocking them down one by one as they walk in.

Doom's AI is not particularly good when monsters are bunched together or when they're trying to get through a small doorway, it sort of gets goofy when they're all trying to shove their way through the door at the same time, and it makes the monsters really easy targets.

If you watch the demo, most of the fights I was able to hang back and camp and pick off monsters pretty much at my leisure; maybe consider adding some surprise monsters  spawning from other directions.

- I like the music on this map

- I think you have far too many cyclopti (demons) on this map, I notice that you tend to put two or three of them together, they bunch up and block the hallway (meaning that I have to shoot them), but they aren't anything other than a roadblock for me.

- Alternatively I might have liked the map more if it had less monsters, a lot of these fights felt like filler to me, and the map was pretty enough to stand on its own, I didn't need busy work.

[mob720]

It's definitely neat to see your approach to the map, if you read my intro post I said that I didn't have any playtesters other than myself so thanks for recording a demo for me, it lets me see how others might try to tackle it.

I can see why you find the perched armored bipedus fights annoying, but since they're the primary ranged attackers it wouldn't be right to have them solely on the ground because their attacks end up getting lost behind other enemies. But I do agree about the cyclopti, sometimes I used them just to have varied enemy types in a room but sometimes they would be there just to shoot. Perhaps changing out some of them with armored bipedi would be a welcome change.

The traps on E1M2 are vanilla since it's still the beginning of the map pack and the player doesn't have a full arsenal yet. I think some of the traps in the later levels can really mess you up Also you mentioned how the AI gets caught on doors, I think some of the doors are flagged to block enemies. Some enemies are just going to have to be easier to dispatch than others. Plus given the layout I had for the map it's tough to determine exactly where the player is and where spawning in enemies as a trap would be able to catch him off guard. I tried to do this in the large room by baiting the player with a commonus, but you decided to shoot at some enemies you hadn't taken out yet and triggered the trap while you basically weren't even in the room.

In the demo, I definitely saw the ammo struggle you had. Usually the ammo pick ups are laid in plain sight and you did a good job finding some of the obscure pickups but you missed one large zorch recharge that I think would've saved your bacon at the end of the level. What surprised me was that you ran out of mini zorch ammo fast towards the end; usually when I play I end up with 50-100 mini zorch ammo and enough large zorch ammo to get through the final fight. I front-load E1M3 with large zorch ammo so I didn't want to give the player too much to carry over into the next map, but if a couple more large zorch pickups will make a difference then I'll consider it. I think a better change would just be making some of the pickups more accessible (not as hidden). In the main room I put ammo right in the middle to encourage the player to slice their way through the enemies and get the ammo, since they won't have enough to make it through the whole fight without it.

You also got a bit twisted around after getting the yellow key.. the yellow door is on your map at this point, hahah!

Also, for parity I'm attaching a demo I made playing through E1M2 on zdoom 2.8.1. Obviously I know the layout better and where the pickups are, but I did complete the map with no secrets without running out of ammo. Maybe you can analyze it and see what exactly we did differently. Thanks for the input!

[75]

I can see why you find the perched armored bipedus fights annoying, but since they're the primary ranged attackers it wouldn't be right to have them solely on the ground because their attacks end up getting lost behind other enemies. But I do agree about the cyclopti, sometimes I used them just to have varied enemy types in a room but sometimes they would be there just to shoot. Perhaps changing out some of them with armored bipedi would be a welcome change.

It's possible to use the BWAs as both ranged attackers without putting them on ledges, if you want, I can link one of my maps that I sent to Boingo (it's not detailed)

Part of the reason why I might have for fun with this is that it's a shorter, easier map; some of the traps can still be exploited if you're fast enough, but the monster count is lower so it doesn't feel like there's as much filler; let me know what you think, I have more maps I can send (I can also highlight maps in other wads that did imps/bwas particularly well in non-sniper positions) if it will help.

Also I think changing the cyclopti for BWAs or even bipedici or commoni is a good idea, cyclopti are rather time consuming to fight (unless you have a propulsor, then they can actually be really fun to fight sometimes).

The traps on E1M2 are vanilla since it's still the beginning of the map pack and the player doesn't have a full arsenal yet. I think some of the traps in the later levels can really mess you up

Yeah, I can understand why you wouldn't want to put extreme traps in the earlier maps; I personally would prefer a map with less monsters over a map with a lot of "vanilla" traps. If it helps, for me Scientist 2's MAP01 and MAP02 were the most fun 2 opening maps I've played. Scientist 2's MAP02 was around the same length as E1M2 of your wad so maybe that will be a better example than my map I linked earlier.

I thought the opening levels of Valiant and Scythe 2 were pretty fun too.

Also you mentioned how the AI gets caught on doors, I think some of the doors are flagged to block enemies. Some enemies are just going to have to be easier to dispatch than others.

Yeah, I understand; this trap setup is a common thing in wads, it's probably not that big of a deal.

Plus given the layout I had for the map it's tough to determine exactly where the player is and where spawning in enemies as a trap would be able to catch him off guard. I tried to do this in the large room by baiting the player with a commonus, but you decided to shoot at some enemies you hadn't taken out yet and triggered the trap while you basically weren't even in the room.

Yeah, this is the really difficult part of making traps. I know how time consuming it is to design traps and I'd understand if you don't want to edit a bunch of stuff.

I figured I'd mention this stuff in case it would help, though there's nothing really severely wrong with the combat is it is; it's by no means the worst I've seen. This sort of combat is just not what I'm into.

If you're interested to see more ways of doing traps, I made a wad that took avoiding this sort of combat to the extreme a while ago (Doom 2), it wasn't a megahit but the guys who liked super hard maps seemed to enjoy MAP01.

In the demo, I definitely saw the ammo struggle you had. Usually the ammo pick ups are laid in plain sight and you did a good job finding some of the obscure pickups but you missed one large zorch recharge that I think would've saved your bacon at the end of the level. What surprised me was that you ran out of mini zorch ammo fast towards the end; usually when I play I end up with 50-100 mini zorch ammo and enough large zorch ammo to get through the final fight. I front-load E1M3 with large zorch ammo so I didn't want to give the player too much to carry over into the next map, but if a couple more large zorch pickups will make a difference then I'll consider it.

To be honest if you wanted to make this like Doom E1 where you're constantly stuffed with ammo that might be an improvement, as I mentioned the map is big and complicated, I'm not sure you're really improving the map by having limited ammo.

As much as I like low ammo maps I guess I'd prefer it if I were tripping over large zorch and mini zorch, you could probably almost double the amount of ammo in this map and not lose anything as far as the gameplay goes.

I think a better change would just be making some of the pickups more accessible (not as hidden). In the main room I put ammo right in the middle to encourage the player to slice their way through the enemies and get the ammo, since they won't have enough to make it through the whole fight without it.

I like this idea, (one of my maps, Hardweps MAP01 does this a lot), one more thing you might want to consider is making some passages one way, i.e., where you drop down and can't go back; if you segment up the level a little more I wouldn't have as much of a desire to backtrack.

On the other hand players seem to dislike overly linear maps, this is something I've struggled with for a while.

Also, for parity I'm attaching a demo I made playing through E1M2 on zdoom 2.8.1. Obviously I know the layout better and where the pickups are, but I did complete the map with no secrets without running out of ammo. Maybe you can analyze it and see what exactly we did differently. Thanks for the input!

I'll take a look at this and get back to you. Also just wanted to mention, my demo wasn't really meant to be a perfect run, it was kind of meant to show what I did the first time I ran through it.

[darkstone]

All right. I notice all the input and output is between you and 75, and I'd like to add in my own two cents.
Note that it's 2:30 AM and I don't function well, but I wanna say this before you two say anything else.

I LOVE these maps.
I find the ammo style and enemy placement great. Maybe Cycloptis are a bit overused, if only that. But I started to find it a bit predictable in a good way, like 'oh it's gonna hit me with a trap here' and then it did and I got this good feeling that comes from knowing it was there but having a hard time with it and getting out anyway mostly unscathed.
This map set is actually challenging me, when most don't. I've gotten so good at Chex Quest over the times that the only real challenges these days are making way OP monsters or playing PVP, those aren't always fun/or aren't always available. But this map set, maybe it's the layout, maybe it's the monsters, maybe it's the ammo. But I'm actually challenged and finding myself doing cool things like wheeling around a Cycloptis to get behind him so he doesn't slime me while I'm picking away at him with my mini zorcher, or dodging a BWA slimeball by mere map units before firing on his cousin who is sliming me from the other side.

These are things I haven't seen in awhile in a wad, or in a game period. It's nice. It's a refreshing change from the dull and ordinary 'shoot thing, shoot other thing, avoid trap, get out door' thing that a lot of games seem to have. And I'll get into the map geometry later, but it's amazing and still retains gameplay while being realistic. I love it.

[75]

Hi again,

See attached demo for E1M3

Well, you were right that the traps get more intense; unfortunately these instant raise lift traps are another thing I really don't like... again it's a pretty common thing in wads but I always thought they were really cheap. I didn't finish this one.

I think some of the traps were okay but some of them were kind of annoying for me, and not really in a good way. It's not as bad as it is in some map packs where it feels like literally everything is booby trapped.

I'm starting to think this map pack might've been inspired by Speed of Doom; like this, SoD is a well designed map pack but I don't like it at all. I'm glad darkstone replied because I'm pretty sure this map pack isn't really for me... I'll press on if you want me to, though.

[mob720]

Hey Darkstone, glad to see you're enjoying it! Can't wait to hear your thoughts on the specifics.

75, you're right about it being inspired by Speed of Doom, E1M3 in particular was based off of one of the earlier maps in SoD. When you stopped in the yellow switch room and said it looked familiar, there is a very similar room in said map that I modeled it after. E1M4 was inspired by UAC Ultra, and E1M5 was actually not inspired by any single megawad.

At first it seemed you enjoyed the gameplay and traps, then you started to see some patterns and could tell when a switch would trigger a door and enemies would come out. I'm not necessary trying to hide the tricks from you, but it seems like you're looking for a surprise or trying to undermine the map when it comes to some of the traps. Which is fine, of course, everyone plays a bit differently, but that might be why you're not really into it. That said, I'd hate to ask you to keep doing something you don't like doing, but I think there are significantly less traps in E1M4 and E1M5. Honestly I think you'll like E1M5, although it may be too long for you. It's up to you if you want to give them a shot, I'd say if you do just play some of the beginning of each to see if it interests you. Since you've already given me good feedback so don't feel obligated.

Even still, I've already thought of ways to rework some of the traps in E1M3 to keep you guessing When you died you were so close to the end, too! It was literally down the lift and then around the corner, so don't feel like you need to replay it (unless you want to figure out the red key secret). And since when does a trap have to make sense? You're a piece of anthropomorphic cereal fighting slime creatures with TV remotes! Plus I think that one almost got you, too At that point you had good health and ammo, it was just unfortunate that you got whittled down in the end. I think you could've been able to finish the map in good standing if you took a couple less hits before fighting the larvae.

A couple more things, I was able to make some edits to E1M1 today based on your feedback. Some minor texture changes, but I also edited the outdoor section leading to the red key. I agreed that it seemed kinda weird, so I decided to turn it into a loading dock type of room. Indoors with a peek outside, I think it fits a bit better.

Sorry but you are not allowed to view spoiler contents.

Let me know what you think!

I also checked out those wads you suggested, some of them I liked and some I didn't like as much. I didn't realize it at the time but I played a little bit of Valiant at one point, and the first map is pretty remarkable with the locale and details but the difficulty is set pretty high from the get-go, which I think is possible because of the larger monster pool. I'll definitely keep this in mind though whenever I start mapping episode 2. The other wads I thought were okay but not my preferred style of play. I'm not exactly sure why, probably different reasons. Just shows our differences in taste, I guess. Yours I liked, it felt a bit cramped though. Definitely a vertical map, which is cool, and if it was made to release I think people would like it. It seemed like almost every enemy ended up being an armored biped, though, and if that map is supposed to be a pwad for TUCQ I think you could afford to turn them into gunners since Boingo gave them a ranged attack. On a sidenote, your choices reminded me a bit of the Hell Revealed wads, which I appreciate but am not too big a fan of.

Also if anyone else wants to post demos of their playthroughs, I would love seeing them!

[75]

75, you're right about it being inspired by Speed of Doom, E1M3 in particular was based off of one of the earlier maps in SoD. When you stopped in the yellow switch room and said it looked familiar, there is a very similar room in said map that I modeled it after. E1M4 was inspired by UAC Ultra, and E1M5 was actually not inspired by any single megawad.

Sounds cool, I enjoyed UAC Ultra a lot more than Speed of Doom, so I'll give those a try

At first it seemed you enjoyed the gameplay and traps, then you started to see some patterns and could tell when a switch would trigger a door and enemies would come out. I'm not necessary trying to hide the tricks from you, but it seems like you're looking for a surprise or trying to undermine the map when it comes to some of the traps. Which is fine, of course, everyone plays a bit differently, but that might be why you're not really into it.

Good point, I'm not sure why I got out of my way to try to trick maps, I've been doing that all the way since I played through TNT and Plutonia on DOS in the early 2000s. I think when I was younger (i.e., 10) I died a lot in the maps because I was playing keyboard only and I didn't know how to strafe, so I had to do these weird tricks to get through the maps and break the traps, and now it's kind of my first instinct when I see a trap.

I think about it sometimes, isn't it strange that we were brought up playing the same wads but our tastes kind of diverged? To be honest I'm a little disappointed that my tastes are as specific as "Chex and Doom wads that are not like SoD" but there's probably not much I can do about it now.

That said, I'd hate to ask you to keep doing something you don't like doing, but I think there are significantly less traps in E1M4 and E1M5. Honestly I think you'll like E1M5, although it may be too long for you. It's up to you if you want to give them a shot, I'd say if you do just play some of the beginning of each to see if it interests you. Since you've already given me good feedback so don't feel obligated.

Sure, I'll try it later

Even still, I've already thought of ways to rework some of the traps in E1M3 to keep you guessing

This is good to hear, I'm looking forward to seeing the result. Even something as simple as a switch that opens up a different wall every once in a while instead of the door would have been really cool.

And since when does a trap have to make sense? You're a piece of anthropomorphic cereal fighting slime creatures with TV remotes! Plus I think that one almost got you, too

I guess; for me personally if I would have gotten killed by that I probably would have quit. It was a long map and monsters suddenly out of nowhere really only works for short maps, or longer maps with a lot of health, otherwise I get kind of tired of stalking about the map with 5 health towards the next jumpscare.

Then again SoD has this sort of thing a lot so it might just be a matter of taste again.

At that point you had good health and ammo, it was just unfortunate that you got whittled down in the end.

Yeah, to be honest that's sort of what the difficulty felt like after a while, there wasn't a lot of health to recover from mistakes / insta lift monster traps so eventually I got worn down. For me it's kind of a frustrating sort of difficulty, but then again people say that my maps take too many replays to get through, so I dunno.

A couple more things, I was able to make some edits to E1M1 today based on your feedback. Some minor texture changes, but I also edited the outdoor section leading to the red key. I agreed that it seemed kinda weird, so I decided to turn it into a loading dock type of room. Indoors with a peek outside, I think it fits a bit better.

Cool, I think that looks really nice!

I also checked out those wads you suggested, some of them I liked and some I didn't like as much. I didn't realize it at the time but I played a little bit of Valiant at one point, and the first map is pretty remarkable with the locale and details but the difficulty is set pretty high from the get-go, which I think is possible because of the larger monster pool. I'll definitely keep this in mind though whenever I start mapping episode 2. The other wads I thought were okay but not my preferred style of play. I'm not exactly sure why, probably different reasons. Just shows our differences in taste, I guess. Yours I liked, it felt a bit cramped though. Definitely a vertical map, which is cool, and if it was made to release I think people would like it. It seemed like almost every enemy ended up being an armored biped, though, and if that map is supposed to be a pwad for TUCQ I think you could afford to turn them into gunners since Boingo gave them a ranged attack.

You're right that they could be gunners, I forgot those were in TUCQ -- I'll remember that for later.

It sounds kind of silly but I made a mostly BWA map just to see if I could; in Doom I used a lot of Revenants and Arch Viles and I wanted to see if I could get as far away from that as possible to try something different.

But anyway I'm glad to hear you liked the map!

On a sidenote, your choices reminded me a bit of the Hell Revealed wads, which I appreciate but am not too big a fan of.

Oh, that makes a lot of sense, I'm a big fan of HR. It's interesting that you'd mention that, maybe there's two distinct styles of coop mapping here?

[mob720]

I think about it sometimes, isn't it strange that we were brought up playing the same wads but our tastes kind of diverged? To be honest I'm a little disappointed that my tastes are as specific as "Chex and Doom wads that are not like SoD" but there's probably not much I can do about it now. ... I'm a big fan of HR. It's interesting that you'd mention that, maybe there's two distinct styles of coop mapping here?

Yeah, I think that has to do with how mapping styles sort of evolved over time since Doom's release. For a while it was only the Final Doom collection, and you couldn't not like it since it had basically the only major wads from the community. For me though I didn't play much Doom back then and the only real community maps I saw were projects from these guys here in the forums, and they put out some very good stuff, but I didn't realize how different it was from the Doom community's. I only really found a lot of the Doom stuff I like through coop skulltag maybe ~5 years ago. TNT, AV, SoD, Whispers of Satan. I think what I liked was the scale, everything seemed like part of a massive universe, whereas things like HR seemed really cramped by comparison. I mean it probably inspired all the later map packs but maybe it didn't age well since I tried it out at the same time I did all the "new-age" megawads. I mean I could be wrong, but it's interesting to think about.

[75]

I hope I'm not getting too far off track but there's something I'd like to add (I'm finding this pretty interesting, hope you don't mind):

I actually tried HR2 after SoD,

Most of the wads I played were pretty recent due to me having a bad internet connection until around 2003, and between 03 and 08 I don't really have an excuse, every once in a while I'd start up Doom 1 again and think more or less "wow, Doom 1 is really fun, but nobody's probably still playing Doom/Chex nowadays".

- Between 1993 and around 2003 I played mostly Doom 1 shareware, at some point I bought ultimate doom at a second hand store, and I got Doom 2 as a gift, but I don't remember when. I only played Final Doom (Doom95) at a friend's house on a really wonky computer, but I thought TNT and Plutonia were both amazing anyway.

- Around '03 I played some sort of WolfenDoom TC but I couldn't really figure out how to get it working (I didn't know source ports existed)

After a while my Doom 2 floppies died, and I just had ultimate doom for a few years.


- Around '08 Chex 3 came out, I joined the CQFF and started playing Slime's and Arch's wads and had a pretty great time. CQU was going on too and that was a lot of fun.

Slime's Chex Quest Generation 2 (CQGen2r8.wad) really stuck with me at the time, especially E3M2 for some reason. I was still playing keyboard only and had to do a bunch of weird tricks to get through it. IMO CQ Gen 2 has some really interesting fights and I still think that cyberdemon fight in the flickering light room was awesome. I kind of associate Museum Rave with that map nowadays, and I was glad I was able to make a map that I could use that song for in Chex Pack, it brings back neat memories.

Also on a side note there was that one area in E3M3 where you have to swim straight down in slime, due to my ignorance with gzdoom I ended up doing that without freelook,  jump/crouch, or a mouse -- I used the automap to position myself over it and then sloooowwwly sunk down, it felt like I was trying to park a space shuttle. At the time I thought it was an amazingly innovative and bold gimmick to have to use the automap like that but it turns out I just didn't realize that gzdoom had freelook, oops... (for those who decide to look up that topic from back then I apologize in advance for the incredibly stupid things I said back then, I'm tempted to go back and edit some of that crap but it seems more honest to leave it as it is)

I tried a few of Slime's other map packs, I liked A New Mission a lot but the other ones didn't really have the same effect on me for some reason.

I think I also played Chex 3 keyboard only, E3M3 is pretty challenging on Super Slimy with keyboard only! I'd recommend it, it's fun.

Some time later I tried SoD, AV, WoS, I think they're well made but they're just not what I'm into.

A couple years back I tried HR2, Scientist 2, etc. and I almost immediately knew they were what I was looking for.

[mob720]

I hope I'm not getting too far off track

My thread my rules! (JK love you mods)

I guess you weren't around for the Doom Legacy days then.. man we had so many projects going there was no shortage of things to play, it seemed like everyone who had an account here had a project and something to show for it. I think a lot of us had either never played Doom or just played CQ. If you never looked at it you should check out xbolt's newmaps, if you can stand setting up Legacy, which was always a pain, but it had some great moments in it. Strife's maps too were considered some of the best.

For a while though I was against using a mouse for freelook because I thought it would only slow me down, having to keep adjusting the mouse just to turn... I stuck to using pgup and pgdn in order to look up and down when needed and end to recenter! Fortunately I figured out correctly how to use m+kb and even figured out a good setup in case I have to use kb only (like on a laptop or something). Funnily enough, in the call of duty 2/call of duty 4 era I was using a touchpad trying to play multiplayer.. I figured it was just my framerate pulling me down hahahah

Too bad you weren't here between 03 and 08, I think that's when the community was most active. It definitely was still active past the release of cq3 but I wasn't around as much around that time just due to other things taking up my interests. Also out of the Doom megawads that have come out in the past, say, 5 years, what would be your favorites?

[Awesomedude249]

Too bad you weren't here between 03 and 08, I think that's when the community was most active.

75 registered in 2008, and I've seen him in some old forum threads, I'd say he was here for a good 3 years before the forum activity slowed down

[mob720]

75 registered in 2008, and I've seen him in some old forum threads, I'd say he was here for a good 3 years before the forum activity slowed down

Fair enough I guess to me the release of CQ3 doesn't feel that long ago!

[75]

Also out of the Doom megawads that have come out in the past, say, 5 years, what would be your favorites?

Boom compatible or lower within the last 5 years:

- Valiant was pretty good
- Swift Death was pretty good


ZDoom:

- I liked CQ 20th Anniversary
- Doom: The Golden Souls was fun
- I think empyrion (Empyre's wad) is pretty fun

...there's probably more but I can't really remember when wads came out, sorry. The wads I like the most are probably older than 5 years old.

Also the forum was semi-active when I was here, not as good as the InvisionFree forums maybe (I saw some old posts on there) but there was still quite a lot going on.

I played Strife's levels and newmaps, but it was a long time ago -- I don't remember much about it.