[Artifex] crazyroman (Patron: Van Zandt)

[Gaius Baltar]

Citizens of the Curia,

I would like to present to you today the Artifex application for crazyroman. I first came across his work while performing some Modding Staff duties in the forum for Lanjanes "Barbarian Empire Series". I noted that crazyroman was a significant contributor to the material, even developing a spinoff "Hellenistic Legacy".

I came into TW Center back in 2013 because of my love for R:TW, which i started playing in 2009, when i was just a child . My first experience with mods was before my registration into TW Center when i discovered various mods here in this forum . I remember a certain mod about the Gallic Wars that when i first managed to install it ( i didn't know a lot about pc stuff back then ) and actually run it i was very happy.

My actual first experience with modding the game, was in the summer of 2014, when i learned how to add officers to units and i was very happy about it because i wanted to do that for many years, but i didn't know how . I started getting more serious with modding in the winter of 2014-2015, adding various units from other mods to the base game, trying to recollor some officers and stuff, renaming factions etc. I never released anything that i have worked on until the summer of 2017, where i released a very basic mod that added officers for all units for R:TW. I released another small mod for BI in spring of 2018, with very bad recollored equites cataphractii and equites clibinarii for WRE . I released a very basic mod that used the captain (lesser general ) skin for the campaing map also captain, for R:TW . Oh, also i want to add that i have done a lot of research for the lost units of R:TW and BI . Unused skins and models, units that appeared in very early screenshots of R:TW etc.

Also i tried working with Robbe Aerts (20ninescene) in various mods and ideas he had . I first had a contact with Lanjane through his workshop, where i asked him if he could make some various skins and unit cards for me and we had a discussion for about the lost units of R:TW. I wanted to do a project about these units but, thank God, it didn't came as i planned . Anyways, even though i enjoyed many of them, i was never actually happy with R:TW mods because i never found the things i was looking for.

And one time i saw a mod called Macedon Expansion. It had everything that i wanted pretty much. And i enjoyed it, but still there was something missing . In the autumn of 2018 i saw a thread posted from Lanjane here, about a mod called Barbarian Empires and he was asking for help with the translation. I've saw again his mod in the ITW forum, a russian forum. His mod has started as a simple submod for Macedon Expansion, so i knew i had to contact Lanjane. I sended him a PM and he told me he had finished the translation and he invited me in the RTR Project Slack forum where i came to contact with other people and their mods, Ahowl11 Vanilla Enhancement, Suppanut's XC 5 and other things.

I helped mostly with Lanjane's Barbarian Empires but i helped also in other mods with various things. In Barbarian Empires i added voices for the units that didn't had a voice through editing a certain file . I did a lot of beta-testing with Barbarian Empires with lots of campaigns and reporting bugs and other things to Lanjane. I inspired him many times for various things for the mod.

After some months (February 2019), i started having an nice obsesion with the Greco-Baktrian Kingdom. Naturally i wanted to add it in my favorite mod, Barbarian Empires but it wasn't an easy thing. I had never done such thing again in my modding life. After many hours and with the help of Suppanut we achieved adding Baktria. Then Bosporus and Epirus came into the game. I did the main coding and had most of the ideas. Lanjane did all of the skinning and modelling, some coding and had some ideas. Suppanut helped a lot with bug fixing and mapping. Barbarian Empires: Hellenistic Legacy was a very ambitious project, that without these 2 people, it wouldn't had existed, so i thank them.

Right now im taking a small break playing with my mod, but i have 2 projects on my mind. The first one is a third addon for Barbarian Empires with 2 new factions, Kingdom of Saba and the Kingdom of Nabatea and many other small things. Of course im working on it with my friend Lanjane. The other one is a BI Vanilla mod, with new, more nice units from an old russian mod called Pax Barbarica and many other fixes.

I want to thank everyone. Lanjane for his understanding me, his patience and awesome modding skills, Suppanut for his help and his patience, Ahowl11, Robbe and many other people i've contacted with in Discord and Slack, TW Center people for helping me with their guides on modding and other stuff, Total War Org for more guides and pretty much everyone . Hope im not forgetting anyone or something .

crazyroman is also well regarded by his peers, who have agreed to provide him with some references.

Marios is one of the greatest lovers of RTW in our community, and his interests cover not only games and modding, he also is a big fan of military history of Ancient and Medieval times. While RTW modding world is fading almost everywhere, in our small community some mods and modders survived the extinction, but as they see how little interest people show to RTW mods in general, they slowly get disappointed and give up too, or just make some few and easy tweaks for their personal use and never release to the public. But not Marios. If not him, both me and Suppanut would barely finalize our big and clunky projects; Marios was always around, modding, helping, inspiring and keeping our community alive. He was, and is, like a new hope for us all. I know him for a few years already and we became a very good friends. To be honest, I have seen people come and go in the internet world for so many times in my life, losing interest, that I used to not get attached to any community for too long, too. But Marios and our friendship is so solid exception that he changed my life. He is a very kind, honest, humble, nice and hard-working guy. Truly he deserves an Artifex!

Crazyroman is a good modder which do good service for both Barbarian Empire/Macedonian Expansion, Hellenistic Legacy, and Extended Cultures mods. Most of his works on Extended Cultures are mostly related to testing of concept and
stability especially on battle formations. His input prove to be vital for release of Extended Cultures V last Xmas.


Suppanut, Modder of Extended Cultures

Here is my pitch as to why crazyroman should be given the artifex badge.


I have known crazyroman for a few years now, and he once was just a fan of RTW and its mods. He had a few small mods that helped make the game a bit more immersive and fun. As myself and fellow modder Lanjane got to know him, he was eager to learn more about modding and we taught him. He also learned a ton by himself, following tutorials and asking questions. About a year ago, he started making his own mod, Hellenistic Legacy which is a spin off of Lanjane's Barbarian Empires mod. He has done all of the coding work, and the mod has been popular, even getting some attention on YouTube.
He is a prominent member on our RTW discord server, always active, and always helpful. Crazyroman is very passionate person when it comes to ancient history, modding RTW and maintaining a healthy and friendly community. He is very deserving of an artifex badge and I hope this pitch will help him achieve that feat!

Thank you very much!

Sincerely,

~ahowl11

I thank you all for your attention and of course I feel I must add the traditional picture to tug at your heart strings.


Lets us all welcome crazyroman into the ranks of Artifex!





https://www.moddb.com/mods/lanjanes-...enistic-legacy Hellenistic Legacy

https://www.moddb.com/mods/barbarian...on-vanilla-mod BI Vanilla mod

https://www.twcenter.net/forums/show...=#post15876317 Proper Export_Descr_Buildings for KGCM