[medal] Taw for Opifex

**The Hedge Knight** · January 28, 2011, 04:13 PM

Proposer: ’The Hedge knight
Cdec Support: Legio, y2day, Nanny de Bodemloze
Support: T.C., Hader, .Mitch., MasterBigAb, Aanker, davide.cool, Gigantus, MorganH. , La♔De♔Da♔Brigadier Graham, Commander Flasheart, Ishan, cedric37

Dear Curia.

I would like to propose to you today that Taw be awarded the medal of opifex for his phenomenal contributions to both Empire and Napoleon Total War Modding. For several months now he has developed multiple tools which have made the so called ‘unmoddable’ games moddable by writing converters for many compiled formats which were previously uneditable. As well as this Taw offers to at least attempt to convert almost any format you ask him. He has not failed yet as far as I know.

Contributions

-Early (For Med II)

1: Fixing Medieval 2 Diplomacy –Though no one really recognised it back then this was a significant problem with vanilla Medieval II total war. This fixes almost all of the issues which made vanilla a non sensual nightmare.

2: Vanilla concentrated submod Implementing many of his small fixes into vanilla in order to make it a more dynamic game with a small minimod. Onsite link

3: Scripted MedII modding examples

-Later (For Empire and Napoleon)

1: Complete unlocking (bar two) of Empire tables This makes 76 new tables available for Empire Total war including one which was widely considered impossible (method outlined here). This also led to HusserITW being able to parse all tables for Napoleon bar three soon afterwards.

2: Fixed the python pack extractor

3: Fixing Empire Diplomacy (a huge problem with vanilla)

4: Fuse mounting for Osx and Linux as well as Usage Tutorials

5: Farm Fields Tile texture unpacker (an on request format)

6: Bridges.Markers Unpacker (campaign map files for displaying bridge locations)

7: Groupformations.bin converter (for editing ai formations in both Ntw and Etw, previously unmoddable)

8: Atlas to tsv converter - greatly facilitates editing these files, particularly as pack file manager cannot edit the x and y coordinates making anything other than than texture replacement with pfm impossible

9: .cs2.parsed converter –proof these files do control hit boxes

10: Fixed luadec for decompiling luac (compiled lua) files. These files control parts of the Ui in both empire and napoleon and were previously un editable.

11: Ui files converter -An extension and general fixing of Alpaca’s Ui converter which opens many more of the Ui files including many of the Napoleon ones. This for example would have been impossible without Taws work

12: Db to tsv converter –a script for converting all Empire db tables and some napoleon ones directly to .tsv and back without the need for pack file manager.

13: Lua code snippets for general Empire and Napoleon Scripting

14: Esf2Xml converter Perhaps the most revolutionary of taws scripts is this. It converts all Empire and Napoleon esf files (which control all aspects of the campaign map) to xml making them far quicker to edit than when using the esf editor. One must remember that each esf is a 50mb compiled document so making them into a plain text readable format is an incredible achievement in itself let alone converting it back to an esf again. As well as this the converters split the documents into easy to edit chunks and can unlock bitmaps within the esf’s which esf editor cannot and are far less prone to crashing as they do not suffer from memory leaks or other problems relating to editing large file.

15: Esf Transformation scripts Removing the need to manually edit many common features of esfs greatly improving accessibility to these files.

I think you can all see from this the simply vast amount of work Taw has done so far for these games, he has so far made the impossible possible on many fronts of modding. Before Taw came many of Ca’s monstrous array of file formats were untouchable but now many are open to be modded, it has been marvelous to see such progress being made with these games and it largelly thanks to Taw.

To finish, all Taws code is available at this Github repository if you would like to see it yourself

Thankyou for your consideration.
-'The Hedge Knight

**Legio** · January 28, 2011, 04:15 PM

Yes, yes, an overwhelming yes.

I have been stalking the mod workshops for some time. Whenever there is a new tool, taw is there. A new breakthrough? Chances are that it's taw. He is a true gem to the modding community. He has never even asked for recognition. He does not post outside of the mod forums, preferring to work on his tools. I can't say enough about this man. He is irreplaceable.

Did I say support?

**T.C.** · January 28, 2011, 04:16 PM

Support.

**Hader** · January 28, 2011, 04:21 PM

Svscipio

**.Mitch.** · January 28, 2011, 04:24 PM

Support. Oh dear god Support.

It would be a travesty against all human kind were this not to go through.

This guy is the epitome of everything it takes to be deserving of this award, and every modding award that TWC offers for that matter.

His work, and I cannot stress enough, is the reason ETW/NTW is going to be something special one day. He is turning an unmoddable game into a moddable one. This guy isn't just a modder, he is one of the guys who makes modding possible.

He has single handedly revolutionised the way I mod. I am a first hand example of his work being used for staggering results. One of his tools for example the Esf2Xml converter, it has saved me more hours than I can possibly count. An example? Changing the diplomacy on the campaign map originaly took me a long time, and when I say long I mean long, literaly changing by hand thousands and thousands of variables. When I had to repeat this work with this tool alone, it took me no more than half an hour... I can't begin to tell you how much of an effect the tools like these have on modding.

He's not only revolutionising the way we mod currently on the warscape engine, but he is making things possible that we never could even imagine we would ever be able to do.

I could go on all day about his work, but instead I will just plead with any on-the-fencers to vote yes, as Taw is a modder who is in every regard deserving of this award.

SUPPORT

**Nanny de Bodemloze** · January 28, 2011, 04:45 PM

strong support...a well presented case for someone very deserving

**y2day** · January 28, 2011, 09:34 PM

support - wow!

**MasterBigAb** · January 29, 2011, 05:21 AM

Süppôrt

**Aanker** · January 29, 2011, 07:54 AM

I raise my Scandinavian hand in support.

**DAVIDE** · January 29, 2011, 10:12 AM

support

**Gigantus** · January 29, 2011, 10:28 AM

Always a pleasure to support a (rightly deserving) fellow modder.

**MorganH.** · January 30, 2011, 12:41 PM

Support o.c

**Hector Barbossa** · January 30, 2011, 05:41 PM

This guy is a phenomenon support

**Ishan** · January 30, 2011, 09:37 PM

Support a long list of overwhelming modding contributions.

Lol he is not an Artifex yet, someone patronize him, Brother Gilbert (Legio) capture his mortal soul.

**.Mitch.** · January 31, 2011, 11:45 AM

Originally Posted by Ishan

Support a long list of overwhelming modding contributions.

Lol he is not an Artifex yet, someone patronize him, Brother Gilbert (Legio) capture his mortal soul.

He automaticaly becomes a citizen when he recieves his medal. So it would be a matter of accepting him into a family lineanage rather than patronisation. Though I doubt Taw is interested.