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CODI Bloodwar tileset
This tileset is not my work, but the work of the City of Doors Initiative! I only completed and uploaded it.
This is CODI's Blood War Battlefield tileset. At least what I could reconstruct from the unfinished work I got from MafiaDong and later Schazzwozzer. There was only one tile for forest/tree terain from which I made that terrain, so it could be very different from what was originally intended. Chasm and Mountain terrain was more finished, in the case of the chasms even completely except for a few missing textures and some blending of ground meshes. The crossers were also more finished than the water or the tree terrain, while the bigger groups like Forlorn Town, the ship, the crossing and "The Landing" weren't textured yet. While Forlorn Town had the buildings almost finished, the other groups often just had placeholders which needed a lot more work to complete.
There were also two terrains (Dark Forest and Crags) of which nothing at all existed as well as raised chasm terrain. Since I had no idea what these were supposed to look like, I didn't include those terrains.
Thanks to Cory Sponseller from CODI for the permission to upload this.
Latest Update June 2020: added minimaps and loadscreens made by Shadguy and fixed the edge.2da.
Credits:
TheBarbarian completed an unfinished texture for the front of the saloon, Shadguy made loadscreens and minimaps and Cervantes made minimaps.
These are some of the names of people from CODI who worked on this which I found in the files. There may have been more.
Andy Nisbet (batinthehat) [Art, Tileset work, portraits and Creatures]
Cory Sponseller (Schazzwozzer) [Tileset work]
Papermonk [Coding]
Jupp [Tileset work]
Tanquil [Tileset work]
J. Adams [Art, Portraits and Creatures]
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
 This PDF has some concept arts for the cancelled premium module "Survivor". (73) | 4.03 MB |
| Blood war tileset, fixed animations (61) | 16.65 MB |
| Portraits in directories (1234) | 5.55 MB |
| Concept Art (27) | 617.63 KB |
Thanks to CODI and to Zwerkules!
Thank you!
Oooh, shiny ! I like the barren, desesperate vibe. The stairs climbing to the mountain cliff are specially great. Thanks.
Thanks for picking up the pieces and putting them back together, Zwerkules.
For those who made them, should you read this, you should know that your work is beautiful and we appreciate it.
Great recovery, Zwerkules! Thanks alot! I go with the words of henesua!
Amazing
Wow, I thought this was lost forever. How absolutely awesome that you managed to recover and expand it! Kudos to both you and the original developers, and especially to Schazzwozzer who made it possible.
Brilliant once again, Master Zwerk, but I have come ot expect nothing less. Any new doortype.2da entries we should watch out for?
Starting at 971 there were lines reserved for CODI. Since this is a CODI tileset, I used those lines.
What an amazing tileset, thanks so much for this.
..Can someone pick up my jaw from the floor?
I was sure that we won't see any more CODI related stuff ever again.
Glad to be so wrong...
Big props for putting it back again, Zwerk.
Wow! Really nice looking tileset and amazing PDF/artwork too! Great ideas and inspiration in there....
Zwerk great work and many thanks to you and the CODI team for getting this out. It has been almost two years since I have been to the sight and it was a great surprise you posted this lost set with your touch.
Zwerk seeing this has got me thinking about this old game once more, I am goimg to do some minimaps for you and if I can remember how to do load screens maybe some of those too. I will post the minimaps in one of my old projects and post a link here. I have taken a look already at the minimaps I have created and the 5X4 forlorn has some problems, I will have to do these 19 tiles by hand, I will keep you posted.
Minimaps are up check them out Zwerk make sure you want to use them, I also had to make a couple of corrections in your set file a new copy is included.
https://neverwintervault.org/sites/all/modules/pubdlcnt/pubdlcnt.php?fid...
Oh, thanks! Shadguy has already made load screens and mini maps which I was going to upload soon. I'll add yours to his loadscreens if you already made loadscreens, too.
Very coool tileset - thank you to the original devs, and to Zwerk for the final work to make it available!
A very nice tileset indeed. I give it a 11 (out of 10).
And now? What could be done with it?
Which existing tilesets could be combined with it ? Which existing Creatures, placeables are suitable?
And most important, what's the story?
Do you mean the story behind the tileset creation or the story of the Blood War? The Blood War, as you might or might not know, is the eternal conflict between the denizens of the Lower Planes, on one side the lawful evil devils (Baatezu) and on the other the chaotic evil demons (Tanar'ri). So those would be creatures fitting for the setting; Baatezu include cornugon, gelugon, hamatula, pit fiend, erinyes, osyluth, lemure; Tanar'ri include balor, succubus, vrock, marilith, nalfeshnee, bulezau, glabrezu, hezrou, babau, mane, dretch. CODI and other content creators also did some cool models for several of these.
If all of this is news to you, I strongly recommend giving the old "Planescape: Torment" RPG a try. :)
Hello Oliver,
no, bloodwar and such is nothing new for me. That is not what I meant.
What I meant is: There is a really cool tileset. Now, if somebody is going to use it for a mod, what are the existing tilesets, creatures and placables which would be suitable, just from an aesthetic point of view? If you have an area with this, then you won't have a NWN-Forest tileset in the next.
And the possible story for such a tileset: I confess, bloodwar wasn't the first thing which sprang in my mind as I saw this. There is a town and a large vessel which reminds me more on some remote pirate stronghold on an island as anything else. Of course there are some tiles which fit into a bloodwar scenario, but they can be omitted.
The tileset has enough versatility (a good sign for any tileset) that it could serve multiple interests. A pirate stronghold to be sure, or some barbarian/orc badlands or, with the right ambience and lighting, the first layer of Hell:
I just had a look at the tileset in-game, as a player, with the help of mmat's demo module (https://neverwintervault.org/project/nwn1/module/bloodfeud), and what I saw was very nice! I also noticed two issues though that you might want to look into, unless you're already aware of them:
1. In mmat's module, there was one door (inside of the saloon, back to outside) the transition of which worked in 1.69, but not in my version of the EE (8193.9). Since my version isn't completely up-to-date yet, I don't know if this issue has been fixed with the latest patch or if it still persists. Maybe someone with the newest version could confirm?
2. In the first area of mmat's module, the western border background at the edge of the map is broken:
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50029220471_deeb0cd300_z.jpg
https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50028681513_eff6d301f6_z.jpg
EDIT: The issue demonstrated in the screenshots was fixed, and now the tileset contains mini map and loadscreens, too, so I'm raising my vote to "absolute CODI fanboy and admirer of Zwerkules' work". ;)
WOW! Long ago we dreamed that these content would be published!
I remember that I spent more than one evening looking for any information about this tileset. :)
I have several unfinished 3D models related to Sigil.
Maybe someday I'll be able to share them. :(
Zwerk have found three tiles that have errors. bwr01_d07_01, bwr01_d10_01, bwr01_d11_01, I am posting pictures for you to see.
Sometimes urban legends are true. Great work Zwerk ! What's next,... Bigfoot lives !
Warm winds! I have a small question regarding the tilegroup "The Landing". There doesn't seem to be a way to walk to it if you are on the other side of the water. Likewise, if you are on the landing side one cannot leave either. The only back out are the stairs in the Mountain. Perhaps this was by design? Or maybe oversight. Perhaps there should be a bridge terrain or feature?
This is by design. The exit is the cave. The beach is not supposed to be reachable by foot. That's what boats are for.
Since your most recent update (6/28), an area I already built now crashes (List Index out of Bounds) on open.
Late Edit: I somehow managed to fix it by reverting to an older version and making some modifcations to the area. My only problem is I don't know what changes I made that fixed it. I suppose there is a slim chance that it is another insidious Starting Location bug which was introduced in one of the recent Beamdog patches. I did have the start location in that area when I overwrote the old bloodwar.hak with the new bloodwar.hak. Still, that shouldn't have overwritten the start location but...
I did some writing for CODI at the time this tileset was developed. I haven't thought about NWN in over a decade, but I saw it was on Steam sale and fell down the rabbit hole a bit, eventually stumbling on this site. I'll try to provide what info I can remember--unfortunately, the computer where the files for this project were located melted down in 2007, and I hadn't backed up any of the work.
The module centered around a group of mercenaries fighting for the baatezu (of which the player was a minor officer) during an invasion of a layer of the Abyss, which is what the tile set represents. The leader of your regiment and the overall baatezu commander have a falling out, and most of your troops are killed in an ambush. The player survives and slowly picks their way across the Abyssal battlefield, finding various members of the unit, including a sergeant who serves as your companion for most of the module. This layer of the Abyss had part of the River Styx flowing through it--the Landing tile feature is where the module started, in a camp where you could meet some of the characters before moving out. Since it only showed up in that one scene, there was no need to connect it to any other features, except for the stairs up.
During the module, there were a number of bizarre locations to encounter, some of them off the top of my head were two duergar arguing over a broken-down juggernaut, a nest of slaad who had carried off mortally injured troops from the ambush, a town of refugees who had arrived via the Styx (hence all the planking and boat shapes in the town) and were protected by a githyanki sheriff (I think), a dretch who was feeding lost soldiers Styx stew and had convinced them he was a god (think Apocalypse Now), and a demon outpost crewed by gnolls and a succubus used for broadcasting propaganda. Eventually, the PC and the companion sergeant catch up to the devil who betrayed you at the beginning of the module, sneak aboard his command juggernaut during an assault on the main demon outpost on this layer, and have a big boss fight. There's a cliffhanger as the PC enters the demon citadel alone.
The module was never completed for a lot of reasons, most of which I don't remember. I know we turned in a couple of drafts and were given revisions on which to act. The main things I can remember is that the module was quite short, and the areas in general needed more content and design, which we were working on. Another point of contention was art licensing: creature models were supposed to look like the 3.0/3.5 visions, but CODI artists had their own unique visual takes on a lot of creatures (especially barbazu). We also had a custom devil for the final boss, but it didn't look like any established fiends in the art.
I feel like there's more lost content for the module out there, probably stored in a forgotten hard drive. There was custom music for the town, and some battle music as well. Some of the voice acting had been completed. There were also custom portraits for many of the NPCs--some of this art would be represented in the PDF that can be downloaded with the tileset. There were a couple of custom creatures, most notably some barbazu variants, as they formed some of the main fodder enemies during the module.
I never thought I would see any of this work again and had honestly written off the CODI and NWN part of my life as just a weird side excursion during college. Seeing it all again brings back a lot of memories :)
Awesome, thanks for providing all these background informations! A real pity that so much of it got lost, but all the more exciting that this part was salvaged. :)
Thank you for describing the module in detail!
I have the portraits and a few creature models, too. Many creatures need animations, but two barbazus are finished. I can upload them here. Sadly the files contained no music or sound. That would have been great.
If you like, I can pack all the files I got from MafiaDong and put them in a dropbox for you.
It would be great to see the creature models intened for this module as finished or unfinished as they are.The wierd bug is a chasme demon.
> First off, the barbazu look as good as I remember! At the time, I recall thinking that they were the best model I had seen in NWN. I think they were all rigged up for animation, since I remember fighting them during our QA passes.
> I can't remember why we decided on including crawling claws, except that we thought they were fun.
> The entrance to the demon citadel that would be the focus of part 2 was under the River Styx, so the baatezu were trying to raise a bunch of undead shock troops to send under the river. The baatezu had built a couple of magical "Styx-proof" suits, but they were rare. At either the end of part 1 or the start of part 2, the PC would acquire a suit to enter the citadel--which was named either "Alcazar Odium" or "Alcadizzar Odium." I think the layer of the Abyss on which the module took place was original and named "Aceldama."
> The reason the PC's unit was ambushed was partly because of baatezu bureaucratic infighting, and partly because the devils had been drawing a lot of mortal mercenary units to this conflict, just to double-cross them and raise them as undead to storm the citadel via the Styx as mentioned above. Most of the PC's regiment had already been used in this manner and would be encountered in the module, especially in swarms near the end. When the PC equipped the Styx-proof suit and stormed the demon citadel under the Styx, they would be, in effect, leading their old regiment again--except that all the soldiers were zombies. The zombie model in the orange and red uniform is one of the PC's soldiers, now undead.
> Another plotline of the module was that members of the regiment had accepted deals with an arcanoloth, trading military service for some reward the fiend could provide. The leadership of the regiment—the officer corps with which the PC would interact the most—had acquired over time a number of “tokens” that, when gathered together, would break the contract for the last surviving member of the regiment. Part of the module was focused on tracking down the bodies of key officers and recovering their tokens, so that the PC could be released from service (think the “Hellfish Bonanza” from Simpsons). I think the arcanoloth got a custom portrait for conversations and was supposed to get a model, but I don’t know if it was ever finished.
> There were custom robes made to represent the uniform of the PC's regiment. I think there were a couple variants made with different levels of armor: so one for cloth robes, one with chainmail over top, one with plate, etc.
> I don't remember the specific identity for the "kung fu granny," except that she was probably one of the inhabitants of the refugee town.
> As part of the tile set, Viper tree terrain and placeables were being developed. One of the storylines for the refugee town was going into the forest, but I don't remember why. These models were never finished, and it sounds like they were cut from this package.
> The development of the tile set was somewhat in response to Doom 3, which had come out recently. The Hell in that game was very obvious, Heavy Metal, and over the top--black rock, lava, skulls everywhere. The artists of our tile set wanted to go for a feel that was more muted, lonely, and bleak, with level designers filling in details to suit their own vision. One of the background ideas that informed the tile set was that this layer of the Abyss had hosted a number of civilizations and cults that had fallen to ruin, hence all the rubble everywhere. I remember pictures of Angkor Wat serving as inspiration for one of the artists, and the juggernaut tile (if it still exists) had a lot of inspiration from Angkor Wat's architecture.
Those creatures would be so useful if someone could animate them!
The manes look like the working versions already published (in CEP etc) but otherwise...