Unofficial Modding Tools for Lionhead Studios' Black & White

Posted for archival purposes.

These are the CHL Assembler and CHL Extractor tools I (going by "Anthem" at the time) developed for modding Lionhead Studios' game "Black and White".

CHL Extractor

This tool extracts the game's .CHL ("Challenge") file to an assembly-code-like format that can be used as input to the CHL Assembler to produce a new .CHL file and change the game's scripted behavior.

CHL Assembler

This tool takes an input file in the format produced by the CHL Extractor as input code, and compiles it to the .CHL file format. By replacing the game's original .CHL file, the game loads the modified script code and executes it when loading a world.

More details and examples are included in the program archive.

A Brief History

In the winter of 2002-2003, I spent a month developing these tools and learning how to mod the behavior of the game. Later forming "Team Grey Area" with a friend of mine and a few others, we had released a proof-of-concept prototype mod for the game. It consisted of a very basic cinematic showing a Villager child being chased by wolves, and you, as the local god, had to rescue him by moving the child to an island nearby. The mod was released on Planet Black & White.com, back in the good old days of the GameSpy network. However, I still have not to date found a copy of the installer that was released to install the mod (anyone with information about this, please contact me!)

However, sources for the mod (untested since then, your mileage may vary) are included in the CHASM archive's 'examples' directory.

Notes and Disclaimer

Documentation about the internals of the virtual machine used by the game, and used for development of these tools, still exists, and I may release it here in the future after cleaning it up for modern consumption.

Please note that any website addresses in the readme.txt files within the archives, or found within the program, are no longer active and not being monitored. These tools work only with the original release of Black & White. They have incomplete support for the offical add-on Creature Isle due to changes in the .CHL file format. They may not be compatible with any later version or port of the game.

These tools are released here into the Public Domain, as-is, without warranty or claims of suitability for any purpose. Black & White, Creature Isle and any related names are the intellectual property of Lionhead Studios, with whom I have no affiliation or relationship.