Here’s a mod based off the Call of Cthulhu mythos. Work you way through the gardens and into the house. Can you follow the clues and reach the attic?
Basic Details
- Title: Dark Edges: The House
- File Name: hl2-ep1-sp-dark-edges-the-house.rar
- Size : 157.18Mb
- Author: Merlin THP
- Date Released: 01 June 2008
PlanetPhillip Download Servers
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Installation Instructions
- Copy the DarkEdges_TheHouse folder into your SourceMods folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- Dark Edges: The House should now be listed in your Games tab.
- Launch as you would any other game or mod.
Panoramic View
With your cursor on the image, press and hold your left mouse button and move around the image. Use your mouse wheel to scroll in and out of the panoramic.
Sorry about the tree, I had a gap and had to fill it in!
Screenshots
Click on the thumbnails below to open a 1024 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots may contain spoilers.
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Reader Recommendations
18 recommendations, average score: 2.78 (out of 5), standard deviation: 1.73
Published
1st June 2008
Categories
Half-Life 2: Ep1, Single Player Mods and Maps
Tags
Crossbow | Dark | Panoramic Images | ZombiesGet the most from the comments
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78 Comments
30th July 2008
Thanks
16th August 2008
Good job with this mod, i really enjoy it… waiting for the espisode 2 xD
if you want translate to other language, i can translate to spanish.
My congratulation!!
BB
13th September 2008
Thanks Endi.
Not started on Episode 2 yet however it is certainly taking shape in my head.
May do a normal HL2 mod first for the traditionalists.
3rd October 2008
I’ve marked all the links as old except for the one you had for the new file.Phillip probably missed this once he returned from holidays so he will probably see this in the morning and can do his thing.I’d do it except I cant upload to his account.
3rd October 2008
The link doesn’t work for me. Strange because this is the second time this has happened recently, other FileFront links still work.
28th October 2008
Hey, I downloaded this from ModDB and all I can do is stare at the letter the game begins with. Is there some way to fix this?
29th October 2008
I don’t know which version of the file they have listed. This:
http://files.filefront.com/DarkEdges+TheHousezip/;11189077;/fileinfo.html
Is the latest one I know about. You could try that.
29th October 2008
Hi Jason,
Not had that mentioned as yet as a bug. Sounds like the camera control is refusing to deactivate. Did you have more luck with the one from Phillip’s link?
29th October 2008
The link to the newest version doesn’t work. Can anyone provide a working link?
29th October 2008
Try this
30th October 2008
Just downloaded it. I’ll play as soon as I can. Thanks.
The link in the secondary downloads should be updated.
9th January 2009
Sorry but this did not hold my attention for more than 15 mins.
The maps aren’t good looking, they are clearly rushed through.
You need the flashlight all the time, but it needs to recharge all the time. So you need to take a break every few mins. looking at a black screen. Its simply annoying.
I got to the first area with zombies… and even those are not fun… a few might be ok.. but killing 20 or so with a crowbar… come on.
I know this is supposed to be a puzzle mod of some sort… but its more frustrating than its fun.
17th January 2009
Yeah… not impressed. Im not a modder, so im not saying i can do better… But a few pointers…
1. Total, constant darkness and a diminishing flashlight battery is NOT an entertaining way to flesh out gameplay! Sure it forces for me to play longer, but with 25% of my time spent waiting for auxillary power to recharge in total blackness (which is also silent and completely uninteresting), it’s not my idea of pulse-pounding, pant’s wetting-horror.
2. Making fights hard by blinding the player with unnecessary visual effects is called being cheap, NOT being atmospheric. I feel like my character is having a stroke, or his glaucoma is playing up, everytime the pinched visual effect comes in. The part where it occurs as a fast zombie runs towards me was annoying, especially coupled with afformentioned lack of auxillary power to allow sprinting. Its like i have to take a timeout from gameplay to let it go… which sort of runs along familiar lines with the afforementioned torch-recharge-periods.
3. Spamming enemies is never a good idea. Stop doing it. A dozen zombies in the loft was a needlessly long trial in ammunition conservation. Crowbar fencing with 3 zombies is not fun… but when there is 12 of them… in a confined space, with no light, and no torch or sprint (refer to point 1) it’s neither fun nor scary, and definitely not scarily-fun. And as for the chapel (which i will return to on another point) i counted at least ANOTHER 12 fast zombies in one confined, dark room (seeing a pattern here?) Take note… Half Life 2 never uses more than 2 or 3 of those guys at a time… thats for a reason. AND when they do use them, they give the player a chance at manuveuring, sidestepping and dodging, it made it feel like i was fighting them, being smart and anticipating their leaps and pounces. Not being hemmed in a crypt with them lining up to chew on my nipples. Or continually getting stuck in the pews which where so close together i began to think the entire parish were obviously double-leg amputees and had no need for foot-room.
4. Having enemies appear almost out of nowhere to score a cheap-kinghit on you as you open a door is not horror. Its startling. And thats only when it happens the first time. After that its obnoxious. If you want to make the player scared, use ambient sounds, some of the original half life 2 music score, especially that from Ravenholm was good for setting mood. Ensure there is always something that is moving out of our vision or just out of our reach, like behind a vent, or behind a closed window in a darkened room, or on the skyline in the distance. Something we cant quite see, but know is there, as if its watching us, hunting us. Mystery is good horror, as soon as you show us the enemy, we know what we are fighting, and the known is not as scary as the unknown.
5. Running around a level with a crowbar tapping on every wall, door, floor, item, corpse and what-ever else, in the hope of finding your cunningly camoflaged destructable panel is boring. It takes me back to the days of the Story-Telling point and click RPG games, where all i used to do was click on every item on the screen in turn hoping for stumble on the logic train of the level designer. We have moved past that phase, we dont revisit it, take note of that. Look at Half Life 2… they highlight ‘hidden secrets’ with lights, sounds, interesting items, or health and ammo. Why? So the player doesnt stumble into a box-room with 4 box walls that look exactly the same as the box-ceiling, with no doors or windows (why would anybody build a room like that?) and have to systematically start digging themsevles out with a crowbar while the flashlight power drains down (see point 1)
6. Ok specifics… I need a ‘Connector’ to fix the gate… What the hell is a connector?! I had connectors as a 5 year old, they were little blocks like lego that i made houses out of, they didnt fix electric gates. My back garden hose has a connector too for that matter, and its not very useful for anything except making water flow from the tap onto my plants (and onto my shorts when it break or busts off without warning). When u give us a task, be specific, descriptive… and for the love of god when you put it (the ‘Connector’) in a room highlight it with something so we know what to look for (see point 4)! I didnt know connectors looked like white jars with old paper labels.
7. What was in that mod to point to Cthulhu? I saw some bland textures, illogical layout of someone’s very LARGE backyard, numerous Halflife 2 zombies and a whole lot of black-screen and a slowly recharging Aux’Power meter. There was nothing there to make me think of any Lovecraftian mythos. The chapel would have been the perfect place to insert SOMETHING cthuhluh, surely.
The game kept crashing after i got into the house, past the chapel, and opened the door with the sparking cable in front of it. I got one glance at half a zombie and bam. End game. I never got a chance to finish it, and have since deleted its root files and written this angry post. Which i grant will likely not be read by anyone. And if they do they will give the text-book answers of ‘Well you make a better one then lol’ or ‘Its for free what did you expect?’ and possibly a ‘shut up fool’ Thats if it doesnt get moderated and binned due to some other reason, maybe because its too long, or possibly because im actually saying something useful. READ THAT ADMIN?! GO ON SCRATCH THIS I DARE YOU! OPPRESS THE FREEDOM OF SPEECH BABY!!!!
Lots of love. Bobby.
22nd February 2010
My my…you’ve seemed to cover all the problems I’ve face in this mod.
Thanks for the lovely rant there, it’s a bit eye opening to me. I’m guessing you review most mods you play? Because that would certainly provide A LOT of good feedback for them.
17th January 2009
It looks like it’s your first comment here. Whilst I have an iron grip regarding moderating comments, as long as you are not too rude or offensive I won’t edit your comments. You made your points in a forthright manner but that’s clearly your “style”.
Whether the author of the mod reads, replies and acts upon them is another matter.
BTW, please call me Phillip.
17th January 2009
Heh heh, cheers Phillip, both for the heads up and prompt reply.
Bob.
18th February 2009
[Most of the comment removed for breaking the house rules - Phillip]
Don’t quit your day job. Give up now!
11th March 2009
well i wouldve liked to believe that the people who were talking about the negitive aspects of this game were just too picky. but they are not. there are many things just in the frist few minutes that could have been changed to make this mod so much better. if the creater of the mod wants my opinion on how to change it to make it better, ill be more than happy to help. but until things get fixed, i would definately reconsider the download.
21st March 2009
Well, I’m stuck where you first see and kill the headcrabs, I can’t seam to open that door! I think I killed all the head crabs, even the one in the center of the high box. Any help?
5th April 2009
here i can help you, jump into the room which the door wont open.
i am a bit further then you i am in the garden shed and not shure if i will keep playing. i like call of cathulu and the half life 1 mod was great. this just seems to be a zombie fest lost in darkness. but for now i shall keep playing.
5th April 2009
I’ll try again. I’ve done so much jumping I feel like a freaking cricket! lol I am in the barn just kill all them zombies and just acquired the shotgun.
6th April 2009
I quit! If I wanted to go around in circles,I would have gotten on a merry-go-round.
Then you have the hallucinations while you are being attack. You run out of ammo, then you got to fight poison zombies and regular zombies with only your crowbar. Hordes of zombies!
18th April 2009
i normally dont give up on mod’s. but here i had to. the garden was the end for me. to get past the barn and fire barrels. i spent a long time moving medkits and ammo to the next part, the plastic crate seemed like a great idea, but nothing would stay in it. if i could have carried supply’s around in this zombie fest with no ammo mod it might have made it more fun. sorry.
the call of cathulu name really made me think it was from the half life 1 call of cathullu mod that was great.
oh well you win some loose some. maybe the next one will be improved.
15th May 2009
Thanks for constructive feedback all.
The lack of ammo was a bit of a surprise. I thought there might have been a bit too much.
Thoughts and opinions taken on board.
JOHN: There is HL2 version of the Call of Cthulhu HL1 mod in production ny the same chap (Doing some modelling for it now). Moddb has a page on Cthulhu2.
15th June 2009
Playing DARK EDGES / THE HOUSE Part1 and so i got as far as the ballroom, as i entered the game froze with a voice that was stuck forever repeting itself, i tried starting the game over and over but the same -loody thing keeps happening, i WAS enjoying this but this crashing of games is so crap, all i ever seem to do is end up with games that dont work, it is putting me right off.
Can anybody help?
so looking forward to a constructive, nay, helpful reply…..!
29th September 2009
Apologies Tim. This happened before with a dodgy AIN file for that level. Works fine when it rebuilds but crashes when it had it already. :/
I thought this version was OK for that level but it seems not. Just delete the AIN file for that level (sdk_thehouse_house2.ain I believe)
5th November 2009
Man,I was so annoyed within 12 minutes that I dumped this mod and went looking again.
6th March 2010
Running Vista 64 bit on an Acer Aspire 6920G dual core and running the game through Steam. The game kept crashing after I got past the chapel, into the room with the two large tanks and opened the door with the sparking cable in front of it (behind it? hard to tell). I got one glance at half a zombie and bam. End game. I tried several times and even tried no-clipping my way into the room from several different angles. No luck. I never got a chance to finish it.