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.

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)

Can anybody help?

so looking forward to a constructive, nay, helpful reply…..!

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.

Don’t quit your day job. Give up now!

Bob.

Thats if it doesnt get moderated and binned due to some other reason

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.

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.

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.

The link in the secondary downloads should be updated.

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?

Hey, I downloaded this from ModDB

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.

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.

if you want translate to other language, i can translate to spanish.

My congratulation!!

BB

Hopefully everyone else will have a bug free game from now on.