A year ago, a wealthy businessman by the name of Edward Marsden bought the ancestral home of the Von Creep family seemingly with the intention of renovating it for residential use. It has now come to light that this man has been using the castle for illegal operations and as a base for a crime syndicate from which he has made most of his wealth illegally…
- Title: Castle Creep
- File Name: hl1-sp-castle-creep.7z
- Original File Name: creep.exe
- Size : 3.83MB
- Author: David Lloyd
- Date Released: 29 October 1999
To: CLASSIFIED
Code Name: Gordon Freeman
File number : X327
Subject: Police raid on Castle Creep
Time of commencement of operation : 0100
Operation objective: Seizure of Castle Creep and arrest of all persons involved in illegal genetic manipulation and/or illegal use of arms
Agents mission objective: Neutralisation of Edward Marsden
Location : Castle Creep
Briefing
A year ago, a wealthy businessman by the name of Edward Marsden bought the ancestral home of the Von Creep family seemingly with the intention of renovating it for residential use. It has now come to light that this man has been using the castle for illegal operations and as a base for a crime syndicate from which he has made most of his wealth illegally. The castle has now become the base of Marsden’s small private army of mercenary soldiers who are there to guard Marsden and to hide the true nature of the their operations. The castle has been under surveillance for the past six months but it was only a day ago that the police detectives in charge of the operation secured enough evidence to prompt a police raid on the castle.
Reports suggest that Marsden has been using the castle mainly for arms trafficking but it has been discovered that he has also been researching new forms of weapons mainly in the form of genetically engineered viruses and genetically altered animals. It is unknown to what extent these experiments have reached however, there have been some alarming rumours in the criminal underworld of human testing and creatures designed specifically for war.
At 0900 hours tomorrow morning a large squad of armed police will raid the castle to capture all persons involved in illegal operations. It is predicted that there will be some strong resistance from Marsden’s soldiers and it is feared that Marsden himself may have an escape plan prepared and will slip away while his men keep the police away. You have been assigned to prevent Marsden from getting away by whatever means possible. A picture of Edward Marsden is provided below.
You
will be dropped just outside the castle at 0100 hours , 8 hours before the raid begins. We believe you will be able to get into the castle through an unguarded door. From then on you’re by yourself. It is your mission to covertly make your way through the castle, to find Marsden and to capture or eliminate him.
The castle will be well guarded and possibly booby-trapped. You are recommended not to engage the enemy unless you are attacked and it is advised that you remain undetected for as long as possible. Due to the tight security network surrounding the castle you will be carrying no weapons to avoid detection.
Once inside you may have to find some weapons and perhaps a hazard suit.
Upon completion of the mission you will be collected by a silent helicopter and flown out of the area after which the raid will begin. We are relying on you to prevent Marsden from escaping; he is a dangerous man who may set up a similar operation if he gets away.
Description and background of location
Castle Creep is a large medieval castle situated in an arid valley 8 miles west of CLASSIFIED. It is a large stone building roughly 2 acres in size. Most of it is currently in a state of disrepair as it has been uninhabited for some two centuries however some parts have been recently renovated by it’s new owners.
It was built in the 13th Century by the De Creep family and was their ancestral home for some 300 years before they died out in the 1700s. The old parts will consist of thin stone corridors and wooden stairs containing mainly rubble and other debris left over from two centuries ago. These areas are likely to be dark and possibly structurally unsound. Corridors and doorways may be blocked so it may be necessary to find other routes.
The layout of the newer areas is unknown. It is predicted that these will contain various laboratories, sleeping quarters and the private rooms of Edward Marsden. Be on the alert in these areas as Marsden’s men will be guarding them.
This is a classified document, the contents of which should not be discussed with anyone nor should it be reproduced in any form. It is recommended that you destroy it after reading its contents or conceal it in a suitable location.
By order of Sargent Bloggs – Chief of police
I have made this into a mod and the installation instructions and details within the official readme, no longer apply.
- Copy the castlecreep folder into your Half-Life folder.
- Restart or start Steam.
- Castle Creep should now be listed in your Library tab.
If you require more help, please visit the Help page.
Click on the thumbnails below to open a 1024 pixel wide image.
WARNING: The screenshots contain spoilers.
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2,612Overall
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1Today
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10Last 7 days
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19Last 30 days
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133365 days
Using Gauge: Users
Manually: 3 Users
Time Taken:
Average: 1 Hours, 10 Mins
Shortest: 0 Hours, 45 Mins by Dmitry
Longest: 1 Hours, 30 Mins by Qwertyus
Total Time Played: 3 Hours, 30 Mins
If you believe this release is missing important tags, please suggest them in a comment?
Nice mod! I’ve just finished it! The end was a little bit weird, but this mappack is great! If you read this, then download it!
Just read it. Just downloaded it!
Damn xp doesn’t like bat files
Starts OK from the bat file in xp, can’t choose the skill setting.
The executable installs a pak1.pak to the valve directory, and overwrites any pak1 that is there. You don’t get told this till you’ve run the exe. Doh!
It doesn’t work that way with steam thou.At least for me.I had to extract the maps from the pak and put them in the map folder to work.Also the exe also puts fred.wad into your valve directory to lol.What a stupid way to play a mod.
The mod other than that is OK but difficult to follow with multiple paths that lead to the same place but you don’t know that till you try it.The mod doesn’t give many clues as what to do along the way either
Agreed, Just about the most unhelpful installation process for any mod. Guess he’s trying to be smart with the installer!
There is a walkthrough called “Cheat.txt” and a ‘mission.txt” (assassinate Edward Marsden) that got installed to the Half-Life/creep folder (non-steam). Am working my way through and it is a bit different in the style of progress and gameplay.
OK, finished the mod. Started off a bit frustrating, with multiple paths and puzzles taking you back and forth between maps. Some switches trigger events in the previous or next map, but with cut scenes showing you what’s going on. Textures are a bit sparse and scenery is lacking, intentionally I think.
After the first two maps the scenery, lighting and gameplay much improves, with more fluidity and more fighting. The design of the last few fight sequences are above average. Some of Mr Lloyd’s ideas are unique, which is a very good thing, and for a first complete mod he should be congratulated.No bugs at all, although it is possible to get stuck behind things if you are careless.
As mentioned before, the installer written in 1999 doesn’t like xp, but it does work, with the non-steam setup batch file giving you skill 3 by default. More of a challenge that way!
Experienced users with steam should be able to cope by extracting the pak file contents.
Another new style today (yesterday we had Egyptian). This is a kind of Black Mesa meets Medieval castle.
I couldn’t be bothered reading the mission briefing but you don’t really need to know that stuff anyway. I do wonder why people bother writing it.
The mod itself is a little strange and once or twice you can get stuck or die and have to reload – I got stuck behind a staircase.
For me the mix of castle and other styles was too much and the coloured lights syndrome appeared in the lower levels.
There’s a cheats.txt that maybe be useful for some, I certainly used it near the beginning in part 2 where you have to go back to part 1.
Honestly, I didn’t really enjoy it that much and was pretty pleased to finish it.
There were a couple of nice ideas but not enough to redeem it. You should probably play it, but do check the other review and recommendations first.
Well unlike some other puzzle-oriented pack we’ve played so far in this 100 Days event, I didn’t hate this one. Just disliked.
Again thankfully there is a walkthrough provided (included in the download) that I had to refer to a few times. As usual, often times you’ll hit a button or pull a switch and have no idea what it does (sometimes opens a door in another map). I find this quite frustrating.
The maps are somewhat in a castle style, although it’s really only attractive at the battlements section and outdoors. Inside it’s a mess of huge corridors with crate textures for wooden doors. Also much of the architecture and furniture is way out of scale – often doorknobs are at eye level. Perhaps the author is 10 feet tall, who knows. And good lord, the flashing lights all over the place! This pack is proof that flashing and pulsing lights can still really slow down your framerate even on modern computers.
Thankfully the maps and gameplay generally improve as you progress, though there are random cutscenes that interrupt the action all over the place, and the finale battle is a good challenge. The only bug I came across was when you’re captured, the next map wouldn’t load for me. I eventually found the key: you have to stand on top of the bomb or whatever is in the hallway where you get captured (the bomb does no damage to you). If you move too far away you get trapped and the next map never loads.
Unless you really like puzzle mods, I recommend skipping this one.
The police storms the ancient castle, where the bandit lives. Our task is to prevent the bandit from escaping.
The beginning is not impressive. Some rectangular room.
I opened the central doors and saw a room with the suit, soldier, and ventilation entrance. I ran past the soldier, grabbed the suit and to the ventilation, but there was a dead end, so I had to wait until the soldier blows himself up with a grenade.
Then there was a search for a way to progress. Finally I found a hole in the wall, which was carelessly closed with a wallpaper.
The lighting on the next castle corridor is done well, but the corridor itself is somewhat flat and rectangular. At some point there are big desks – looks like a giant lives here. In the Readme the author writes, that the gameplay is similar to Hexen, and that’s right: at some point I pressed a button which opened the door on the previous level.
The battles are hard, because the health is often low, and we have to neatly shoot from behind the corner. I liked one fun fight, where I had low health, but it was balanced because the soldiers were distracted by alien slaves.
There was one strange moment when I stumbled upon a mine and a cutscene started. After the cutscene, the next level or last save should be loaded, but neither happened. I had to load the next map through the console.
After that there were some locked doors where I had to use noclip. I found some switches, but they didn’t do anything. The fast ride through the walls was fun, and in the end we find out that the aforementioned giant is that bandit, he is two giants, actually: the ending is cool and original.
It is noticeable that the author tries to create interesting, various, atmospheric and cinematic mod, but, likely due to lack of experience, the result is not as quality as it should be.
I remember this I played this CC it for my sierra HL, altough something strange happened because that time I couldn’t quit the main screen game image moddified that have Castle creep, so my Sierra HL have that wierd green gman image so much time, I remember that mod was ok, altough being in a medieval like castle playing HL is not really common, but I think iis original and unique, beacuse I can’t remember which mod else have that medieval style, so if doesn’t matter to you u can play this and have a good time.
Maybe I’m missing something here but this was awful. It looked awful in that in some places you appear to be a midget and others full size!
Again this is one of the 100 I’ve come back to and wish I hadn’t, doors made of crates does not look good by any stretch of the imagination, this is probably the first in the 100 where the the look put me off almost from the start. For me finishing this was a chore and definitely not fun. It seems like others in the 100 that the author knew what he wanted to achieve but not how to do it!
Similar to Conundrum except castle themed.
I was unsure whether to give this mod a TT or PiL as I had mixed feelings about it. I liked the whole castle theme but there were many areas that should have been improved, mainly the mapping and lighting. The action was pretty fun but nothing special and there were a lot of puzzles which were quite enjoyable, nothing in this mod was actually hard though. One thing that really annoyed me was the door textures, I spent ages crowbarring the closed door behind the broken wall and found out (via the text document) that I was meant to press use.
There is a walkthrough in the mod directory, but chances are you won’t need to use it unless it’s for something stupid that the modder had done (see above).
If you wanted a mix of Half-Life and a castle with puzzles then give this a go.
I kind of liked it.
Mixed feeling after finishing this mod. There are some cool ideas about setting, scripts and design but it lacks of quite many essential factors, better design and atmosphere for example.
It could’ve been way better, if only the author would’ve had stick to better design.
Nonetheless, it’s worth for at least taking a look if you’re interested in some nice puzzles, combined with some combat.
Note: For those who’re interested in the story, I suggest to read the text files within the mod’s folder, sorry. Just this: you primary goal is to find someone.
Pro’s:
-Some decent mapping – not always, but usually
-Castle setting with some surprises (about architecture, layouts)
-A few nice puzzles
-Okay combat action
-Okay story, some cutscenes
-Good balancing (less health, limited ammo at first but gets more quick)
-Good playtime (~1-1,5 hours)
-Partly non-linear
-Music
Con’s:
-Design oddities, such as weird layouts, empty rooms, and enemy placement etc.
-Bugs like not triggering events, getting stuck etc.
-Long walkways
-No HEV at start (you have to kill one grunt via crowbar who’s in the same room)
-Can get confusing to find out what to do next
-Many locked doors
-No atmosphere
-Deadly end
Conclusion: For it’s age it’s not that bad, but far away from great. I guess it was some sort of very nice back in 1999. “Castle Creep” could’ve been a very nice mod if there wouldn’t be so many flaws.
In the readme the author has very kindly written: “It requires a bit more thought than most Half-life levels “. That line, the huge story-line and the fact that the walkthrough is supplied in the zip should have given me a hint that this wasn’t going to be a simple level to complete. But still came as a surprise that after playing for 45 minutes I was completely lost with no idea as to where to go, on map 2 out of 8. In the end I had to read the walkthrough to find what to do. In total I needed to use the walkthrough 3 times in order to actually complete Castle Creep. So either I’m stupid or this is a tough level to complete. Central to playing this level is exploration. The corridors and rooms are laid out in a kind of approximation of a castle, hence corridors branch out and there a lot of of rooms that need not be visited in order to complete the level. Other than ammunition from the marines you kill, almost all the ammunition is picked up off route, so exploration is rewarded. That is a good thing and I’m sure many people will enjoy this style of play. The problem is that the route to completion isn’t entirely clear, and most of your time is spent searching for your next objective (generally a switch to activate). This is the main problem with the design, as it can be frustrating and confusing not having any purpose. Often you find a switch, activate it, but don’t actually know what it does.
Combat doesn’t play a major part in the level. There were some good fights, sometimes involving an ambush from an expected direction, but action-lovers will be disappointed and bored by the long lulls in activity. I was mildly impressed that the author made an attempt to provide opportunities for stealth. A marine, for example, guards the HEV suit,, and you are armed with only a crowbar. Taking the guard on directly would be foolish but there is a clever solution to the problem. Unfortunately the stealth idea doesn’t always work, partly because such opportunities are so hard to spot. You don’t normally look for ways to sneak past enemies when shooting them is generally easier. Once again the level would have benefited from a more instinctive design.
The greatest part of the level is the ending. Too many levels end with a poor anti-climax and some don’t bother with an ending at all. Castle Creep, however, ends with a surprising cut-scene, some good architecture and a cool fight. There were a few other set pieces that fitted the story line nicely. Most of the locations, such as sewers, dungeons, offices, barracks and research labs tie in closely with the plot. It seems a pity that the switch based puzzles don’t relate to a logical sequence. If they did then this would probably solve a lot of the flaws.
Architecture is another weak point. In support of the (attempted) realism the rooms and corridors the rooms have been decorated with a large number of prefabs, such as desks, chairs, microscopes (in laboratories) and even shackles (in the dungeons). Unfortunately the scale is quite badly wrong – most of the times are around twice as large as they should be. At one point I came across a toilet so large it could almost have been a bath. The surreal proportions shatter any illusion of realism and make the architecture look messy. The prefabs cause problems for framerates thanks to the high-polygon counts. Many areas suffer from serious framerate drops, which could have been avoided with more careful detailing. Texturing seems to have been a problem in some areas, as Half-Life’s textures aren’t suited to the environment and some of the textures (particularly one of the brick textures) get heavily overused. And most of the rooms are very rectangular. In a way this is realistic, but it doesn’t help the aesthetics. There were some places that looked quite cool, such as the ending, the huge sewers and some atmospheric dungeons, but there is plenty of room for improvement even in those places.
If you really enjoy puzzles and exploration, don’t mind scratching your head and spending a long time searching for your next task, and have grown tired of the simple aim and shoot mentality of the grunt fests then I would recommend you take a look as the exploration aspect can be rewarding and it has its high-points. And if you can complete it without looking at the walkthrough, you have my respect.
Notes
This review is republished here by permission and was originally published Tuesday, 4th January, 2000 by Chris.
This review was originally posted on the Ten Four Website, which is now offline. Permission has been granted to republish the full review and more details can be found on the About page.
Mapping is quite not perfect here, but gameplay is interesting, with some surprises and fun ending. Beware a level transitition bug in the end of map 4 – don’t go further of that point where a bomb is placed, otherwise level change will not work.
Manually
Hard
1 Hour, 30 Minutes
For 1999, this must have been pretty cool. But unfortunately, it hasn’t aged well.
The story… well I didn’t feel like I should pay attention to it.
The combat, is …meh. In the beginning the HEV Suit is found with a grunt and there is no other way than get the crowbar.
The atmosphere is not there. Even though the castle does feel like a castle, why grunts would be there?
Overall, it’s a good mod. Though, playing it again after a long time, I don’t have the same feeling.
I enjoyed this map and I think it’s worth playing if you are specifically fond of old maps. It’s definitely better than most of the ’99 maps on RTSL but it’s not amazing and definitely has it’s own not-so-hot idiosyncrasies
Below are my notes which I wrote while playing through the map:
Wow, a long story. Reasonably well written too. Readme says it partly has ‘Hexen like gameplay’ and that’s got me concerned about backtracking.
Very cool and interesting feel to the map. The grand hall/hub area is getting me excited to explore the mansion. This map has a very ‘Quake 1’ vibe to it.
Cool cutscenes. Intuitive flow. Another case of crate texture used as a door texture. Needs more health on hard.
More weap variety would be good too, only have crowbar, mp5 and shotgun. Found gauss in secret room (in the bedroom with the scientist asleep on the bed). The secret was indicated with an offset texture but misalignments are very prevalent in 1999 so it’s pure chance that I decided to test this wall. Or, it may actually be intuitive by design.
There’s a staircase where if you jump over the railing you get stuck under the stairs until you noclip out. Couldn’t figure out how to finish the map, I even noclipped everywhere to check and couldn’t find it. I feel like I’ve basically finished it so meh.
Manually
Hard
1 Hour, 15 Minutes
Absolutely not recommended to play on Hard. Some areas are so hard that requires multiple repitition cause you can’t lose too much health, just the minimal gauge. Ignore the first grunt, not worth the fight. When the alarm sounds, eliminate 2 grunts in the catwalk from the window without taking damage. The stealth part is critical. Save before getting close. I don’t what it triggers, but something is not working in stealth area. Many times you get up to the platform and they start shoot, this is absurd. You try many timings and the same result. So to eliminate them 3 grenades and stay away behind corner with pistol. If you are lucky, just ignore them all by using stealth. Anyway you can past run them if returning back as well. Blue area, grenade to the right, if lucky to eliminate quickly the first grunt, go left, you can surprise next both grunts. The hardest part is outside the castle where battle between aliens and soldiers happens. First you may try eliminate 2 surprise vortiguants. Save and carefully go to the right to attack the soldiers cause they have higher superiority. That position is the nicest I would call it flanking. Crouch before stepping on the bomb, if you go fast, you may trigger an error, and the game do not proceed further. It’s the BIGGEST GLITCH of ther game. Do not overpass the bomb!! Shoot the candle inside the cage, use Barney in the corner to shoot out all headcrabs. Up there, choose which group of grunts you are going to fight: elevator or lobby. Handling everybody is quite hard. There’s never enough health in this castle. On the final battle you may go pass quickly past both Gargantua, pick the alien weapon and eliminate one of them. Do not shoot rockets, it gets you into trouble. Once 1 Gargantua is done, go for another by shooting to the head with the rocket and finish with remaining 50 alien shots. As I said too many trials and error here. Very annoying.
Manually
Hard
45 Minutes