Starting in an alleyway, you need to get to the lift shaft.
Things take a downward turn after that and you need to retrace your steps quite a few times.
The objective seems to be to reach the highest point in the central shaft and go through the portal.
Creatures and strange effects stand in your way.
- Title: Ashfield
- File Name: hl1-sp-ashfield.7z
- Size : 17.7MB
- Author: azabetfen
- Date Released: 01 June 2011
This mod has a bug that causes some models to disappear on loading a save.
There is a very tricky jump required near the beginning. I knew what I thought I needed to do, but couldn’t. A thread on cs-mapping.com.ua has an image of the solution and no matter how I tried I just couldn’t do it.
Big thanks to 23Down for sending it to me.
- Copy the Ashfield folder into your Half-Life folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- ASHVILD should now be listed in your Library tab.
If you require more help, please visit the Technical Help page.
Click on the thumbnails below to open a 1024 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
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2,318Overall
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1Today
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3Last 7 days
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81365 days
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 7 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 0 Hours, 36 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 15 Mins by Brad_Eli29
Longest: 1 Hours by DeadCamper
Total Time Played: 4 Hours, 10 Mins
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23Down had already told me that this mod contained a bug about saving and that it was mostly puzzles. I therefore approached it much slower than I normally do. The initial start is slightly bugged in that you can move your character (Freeman in an HEV) forward before the mod actually starts. It can be a little confusing.
The atmosphere is set very well and the new textures look good and fit well. There is a clue at the beginning for how to proceed once you touch a door, obviously I won’t say which one. This seems to be a theme throughout the mod, touch the special doors and blood appears on them. I have the feeling that you need to do this in the right order to the right doors to progress.
As I mentioned in the main post, this mod requires what I consider to be a REALLY difficult jump and I cheated. If somebody can create a video playthough of this I will definitely post it.
There were two weapons I found; a machine gun and a bottle. The bottle replaces the crowbar and I found it completely useless. There only seems to be one type of enemy and its movements are quite well done, although it doesn’t look particularly good.
I found some drain covers that led to various places but didn’t find a way to open them.
It was quite fun and a little scary at times exploring the areas, corridors and rooms but I have to admit getting a little bored and frustrated at the end. I didn’t feel there was a clear objective or a clear process to reach that objective.
I suggest that you play this if you have some time to spare and don’t mind a trail and error approach.
OH, I nearly forgot. The menu only offered me Medium and Hard, but beside the unclear objectives, I didn’t find it difficult at all.
All in all it looked better than it played.
Manually
Medium
40 Minutes
I remember playing this, but got totally stumped somewhere down the line. Maybe a walkthru would be helpful.
I did the jump thing on the first try.Have been trying to do it again to record it and can barely do the first jump.I’ll get it done and put it up soon
I’m going to be blunt. This mod left a bad taste in my mouth. This tends to happen when I get confused about where to go, and the general confusion goes unresolved all the way from the beginning to the end.
This confusion comes mostly in the form of figuring out where I need to go. It starts off as deceivingly simple and straightforward, but almost immediately spirals into a surprisingly labyrinthine world where doors open almost randomly and on a whim and puzzles get ‘solved” without the player really solving anything. The best parallel I can give is probably playing a really bad point-and-click adventure game where the player has no choice but to resort to blindly using every item in their inventory until something works.
I imagine if I was able to read the few notes left to me via the pieces of paper in the mod, it might have been much more clear what I was doing (or why). This is the part that always makes me feel bad about these mods, because the mod was not made in English. I can’t tell if that was the real reason why I struggled.
Regardless, the mod was confusing, and in that mind-numbing blind running, I found more bugs and seemingly unintended “features” than I think will make me happy with this mod.
I wonder if [spoiler]the stairs in this mod were supposed to be invisible or if there were many unspecified missing textures or models that may have never shown up[/spoiler] Either way, there are bugs that will frustrate even the calmest of players, and the few jumping puzzles will leave most players stuck in the very first area.
I have no idea how I got past the first jump, as it’s apparently very hard to do.
Manually
Hard
1 Hour
Hey guys, I got stuck on the stairs. After spending a hour in the same area, I decompiled the map and found the way to reach the top floor. Here’s a walkthrough I made:
I can not play this mod, because when the game starts I move to Gordon in the third person, but then the screen goes black with some red. Someone know how to fix this?
You’re probably playing the game in the software mode.
No, I playing the game in Direct3D mode, but if I playing the game in software mode, also see the same error, and if I playing the game in OpenGL, the message “ERROR CG: The file Could not be read” but I give him to accept and the game continues, but continues to be the black screen with red tones.
Does anyone know how to fix this error?
Sorry, but I haven’t seen this issue before. It sounds like it might be something to do with your installation.
Now the mod works for me, because I’ve tried in the Steam version.
If you need help in the future, please include all relevant information. That includes if you are using the Steam or WON version.
If you had said that at the beginning, I would have told you to use the Steam version, which is the only version I test and use.
tried it in non-stem hl, same on open gl, ie, cut scenes work, intense magnification appearing as red screen with occasional darkness & concentric squares as only play screen, any way to play in non-steam?
I don’t have a WON installation set up at the moment, so I can’t help.
I played this twice, the first which I did everything wrong including nocliping, and then the things right, I mean following the right path.
This is a entire puzzle map, and is very disorientating and annoying, the atmosphere is the one of the russian mod, darky and wierd repetitive textures.
The monsters are really stupid they feel stupid and they walk stupid, they are funy rather than scary. I’d rename this mod as “Billy against the monsters”, instead of “Ashfield”
Then the bottle must be a super bottle because it never brakes and is really powerful being a melee weapon.
There are at least 2 russian signs on the walls which I didn’t understand because as usual in russian mods they don’t care at all for the translations…
Overall is a really confusive and lame experience rather than enjoyable and entretaining.
P.D, if you want to done this map the right way, I highly recommend to see the video here in this posts.
Manually
Medium
20 Minutes
Ashfield is your standard badly designed mod. It just masks itself well so you are deluded into thinking that this mod is actually good at first look.
IT ISN’t
It took me 15 minutes just so I can know where to go next after taking control of Gorden. And I’m not talking about the hard jump itself. The allay you start in was just some awkward mess, not to mention the whole map. It took me about 40 minutes to get to really know the map and I still had to use nocliping to get around. AND I NEVER USE NOCLIPING IN HALF-LIFE.
When designing a game map, a good mapper knows that special lighting or special textures can help guide the player to his next destination easily. Sadly the mapper wasn’t one. The whole map was chaotically lighted and each texture was drastically different from the rest, some textures were very ugly and the whole set of textures created a very messy environment with no type of rhythm to it.
Ashfield is defiantly one of the lamest mods I’ve ever played. Avoid it, Avoid it like the plague. Put a hazard sign on it AND DON’t PLAY.
Manually
Medium
1 Hour
I got it. Silent Hill 4 xD
Ravy has it right: this is a bad map masking as an attractive one. It has a couple good things going for it, but the whole experience is just about as frustrating as any map I can recall – its only saving grace is that it’s only one map of agony.
Yes, the textures are nifty and provide a nice change of scenery in the Half-Life world. And the atmosphere is pretty decent too, with a mix of nice sounds and lighting and a few cool touches like small fires. I did have some graphical weirdness with the outside lamps, where the red glow would fill my screen and make everything look rosy. If only.
The gameplay in this map is abysmal and ultimately that’s what sinks it. Exiting the first area which is done with a couple tricky jumps was literally the highlight of the map until it ends abruptly and dumps you back at the glorious main menu. In between it’s wandering randomly between closed doors searching for the next place the mapper wanted you to go – but there are no clues, no lights, no sounds to help guide you. It’s quite honestly like finding the red or blue key except the doors have animal pictures on them instead of colors. It’s annoying and frustrating and I can’t imagine why the map was designed this way.
As a kicker, if you happen to save the game and load, many of the models disappear from view. I did this early on and never saw the steps in the staircases, things blocking my movement which I guessed were crates, or the light fixtures. This is a bug, yes, but I’m fairly sure this is a mapping error that is certainly correctable and should have been identified in testing.
35 minutes with a lot of wandering, and that was even with some help from Barnz’s walkthrough, that video saved my sanity. Avoid this one no matter how good you think it looks.
Manually
Medium
35 Minutes
I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, but I didn’t enjoy this mod at all.
The reason why this mod never turned out great is because of its issues. First of all, you can move even in the beginning when you’re NOT supposed to. Second, well, everything else really.
The only part of it that I really enjoyed were the textures, but they’re probably from some other GoldSrc mod.
Overall, I’m just sorry azabetfen.
This mod is a good one, too short, simple to complete. I had some troubles beating it, then escaped.
A good mod, could be longer, but hey, It’s good.
A nice “Silent Hill 4 – The Room” atmosphere BTW!
This is not bad of a mod, but lacks storyline. By the atmosphere/sound effect(s) of the map(s) It’s an alternate of Silent Hill 4 The Room-based mod. The enemies really aren’t done very well, they suck actually, and the jump at the beginning is almost impossible to make. I tried quick-saving from jump after jump, vbut gave up as some models would become invisible, such as the stairs on the staircase, it just ruins everything. I hate no clipping. However I had to for the models’ sake.
P.S. Don’t forget to pick up the journal near the end, It’s hidden at first located at the beginning of the game.
Manually
Hard
15 Minutes
I feel like i got a bit lucky on this one, there’s clearly minimal direction and I was lost on where to go next a few times, but I managed to beat it without wasting too much time. I feel like it should have been more obvious that the fleshy thing on the sign wasn’t there to begin with, I thought it was always there and I just didn’t notice it the first time around.
Ashfield is a horror-themed mod, but there isn’t much horror here, there’s a couple of aural jumpscares but no real sense of horror atmosphere and the enemies are reskinned HL zombies that don’t come across as intimidating. I do like the use of textures and sound to create an immersive horror atmosphere, but that alone doesn’t make the mod scary. Also the abuse of the flashes of red whenever you move really ruins the immersion, what was the deal with that anyway?
The player starts off looking through a camera, but you can move gordon around and see yourself. I don’t know if this was intentional or a bug, but it’s very weird and I don’t know why it was included. Even if it was a bug, why would there need to be a camera looking down a bland short alleyway, what’s the purpose?
Expanding on what I said in the first paragraph, this mod has no real direction you’ll run over random triggers and that will open a door on the other side of the map. One case of this has a previous locked door still look un-openable until you try opening it again, it makes no sense. There’s a couple of small signs that blend into the textures that are written in Russian, I don’t understand Russian so I don’t know if this helps to guide the player along, but considering how camouflaged they are into the environment I’m still chalking this up to poor design.
There are a few things that save the mod from failure for me, as I said before I did like the texturing work and use of sound, there’s a few flaws with even that but it’s mostly done well. I liked the jump section at the start of the map (I assume that’s the “tricky jump” people are talking about? I didn’t find it hard but I’ve played jump maps recreationally for years.), it’s nothing revolutionary but I don’t think I’ve seen something like this done in a regular Half-Life mod, and I like it when they’re blended into the environment. Unfortunately, as far as gameplay goes this is as fun as it gets.
This is probably not something that most people will notice, but the map is actually interconnected, it’s just that you can’t actually make use of this because they’re always blocked off. For example: the sewer gate right when you spawn actually leads to the showers that you visit later on; the door that makes the sign collapse near the beginning leads to the apartments; the bar door leads to the tall stair area that ends the map. It’s a minor thing but I find this attention to detail to be really cool, and it’s definitely the highlight of the map for me.
I can understand the reviewers giving this an AI, I can see this being incredibly frustrating, however I didn’t encounter these problems as much and I found enough here to redeem it a bit. I don’t think it has tricked me into thinking it’s good, I do believe it has some legitimate value that other reviewers are missing. If you like the look or you want a short puzzle themed map I’d say give it a try.
Manually
Medium
20 Minutes
Here’s a video of the jump section at the beginning for anyone that’s having trouble with it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-G3bmbOMGHk