... is your friend... However I would recommend you to ask Spirit before using his website content...

http://www.quaddicted.com/quake/episodes_maps.html 

Google for qtest.zip. 

Thanks for the swift responses, but this is not QTest. It's the beta described here:

http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=1&start=6792&end=6816

and should contain all the levels in the game, albeit in earlier versions.

I've already been in conversation with Spirit about earlier work on this site, but not about this issue in particular. 

It's not playable now AFAIK. 

Is a way to play it, but its apparently a ballache to set up. 

That'd be DosBox then. 

Didn't know about that version. 

I can only say that if this version was found I would replay it for sure.
The pre-end level can be found here:
http://speeddemosarchive.com/quake/maps/end_pre.zip

There was a SDA contest on this map:
http://speeddemosarchive.com/quake/contests/endpre.html 

Dave is more than welcome to use anything from Quaddicted.

I totally forgot to play these, my old PC was too slow for them in Dosbox. Can't wait for some proper free time. 

Thanks to everyone for their invaluable help on this, suffice to say the thread can now be closed :)

When the site is finished and has been placed online (hopefully before the end of this year) I'll add a post here with the details.


Best Regards,
David McKay. 

It's only down to the historians and hobbyists that stuff like this stays relevant. No matter how small-ly.

Losing my English :) 

A few more differences that could be added to the list in Ankh's post:
16) the biosuit texture is unfinished
17) the teleporter "splash" effect is done via a sprite instead of particles
18) the demos are different (same 3 maps, but shorter runs and without the spoilers)

There was also a leaked v0.8 (aka BETA3) that was from a couple of weeks earlier than this pre-release. The 2 versions are nearly identical, except for conback.lmp and minor cosmetic changes to quake.exe, help.lmp, and some text files. 

Thanks jdhack, I'd noticed the first two but hadn't waited through the demos to notice their differences. 

I am playing through it, almost done (just finished the damn Nameless city). I uploaded the first 3 to archive.org before realising I should rather upload it all as one single item.

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Quaddicted%22

Will be days before the full thing is up. The current items will be deleted then. The later maps are more interesting. 

I would rather play it myself than watching someone play. 

is there any way to launch that shitty prerelease version , with out dosbox and all that jazz? i hexedited version of the bsp from 28 to 29 and now can launch the maps. but didn't succeed with the progs.dat
it would be cool to play prerel with some modern engine 

Heh, I highly suggest playing it with bad framerate and pixel madness. I haven't had this much genuine Quake experience for ages. Makes me feel like the time I first played Quake again. Really really nice. 

... but, is there a way to pick only the maps and play it with a "decent" engine ?