It's certainly rough, but what's good here is good. It's so different to the resulting product that it's an extremely insightful take on what could have been. It's interesting to think that Sepulcher is more of a remake of this level than E1M3, it's great community lore to have this around.

Not as good as the finished map by any means, but certainly interesting to look at and significant to the history of the game and community. This version is very much an unfinished map even when you don't compare it to the legendary ad_sepulcher. There are bugs, the visuals look unfinished, the gameplay is pretty unbalanced with not much ammo. Ironically given the map we've all come to love, it has far too few secrets for the size in my opinion. This is the version that was put up for initial testing and it shows.

That said, I'd still consider this well worth playing because so much was changed since then. The whole map was majorly reworked, meaning that not only are things very different, but there are entire areas that were completely replaced. It's such a shame in a way that it was changed so drastically before its final release, leaving us with only this unfinished map, and what is arguably a completely different one. It's much easier to see how this was based on E1M3 than Sepulcher; if you squint you can almost map most areas of that map onto this one, while Sepulcher only has a couple of clear references and everything else is just vaguely inspired by it.

In a dream Sock or Giftmacher would have a later version on a harddrive somewhere from after fixes but before the major changes and reworks, which we could then all play as a true precursor to ad_sepulcher. Either way, I'm glad that this one is now archived.

Is it compatible with AD 1.80?

Yes

Yes, it's very very different from the completed Forgotten Sepulcher, and it's no criticism to say it's not nearly as good as the real thing. But it's still a fun map in its own right, and I'm really glad its been resurrected.

Hey, I didn't know this one had its own Quaddicted entry. I just played it recently after seeing a link to it posted in the reviews for the AD 1.80 release.

(And yeah I'll agree with h4724 that it appears to work fine with AD 1.80.)

I liked it a heck of a lot. A surprisingly beefy-feeling adventure for such a reasonable number of monsters, I think it was 100-ish. It's not as detailed and rich as Sepulcher, of course, but its more focused scope (IMO) is a strength in itself.

I'm not surprised that some folks encountered spots that they thought were visibly unfinished, but in my case nothing really jumped out in that way. Happy I got to play this version... one of my favorite recent map plays.

In general it's completely different map, and I loved 1st half of the map quite a lot - everything before golden door. In general it gave me Thief vibes - specifically Old Quarter and maybe some Bonehoard bits. Quite similar brushwork - intentionally or not intentionally. The most I loved that flooded area before golden door, vast and open and nicely looped. Some nice map could be made out of that area alone... Anyway I am glad I played it. I thought this is just undetailed version of final Sepulcher. But nope. Completely different map and much more in vein with usual id1 stuff