intricate than in previous titles, he felt that forcing players to concentrate too much on logistics would serve as an unwelcome distraction, and so decided to remove the need for a road network. Instead, settlers would have the freedom to move anywhere within the player's settlement, with the AI handling pathfinding. Another early decision was that the different races in Settlers III wouldn't just look different, they would have different abilities, different economic models and certain buildings unique to each one. Wertich, in consultation with Hertzler, also decided to create the game in high color, a first for the series, which had used 8-bit color for previous titles. Programming and animation With the basic design concepts in place, Wertich hired Dirk Ringe as his fellow programmer. Torsten Hess was then hired as the main graphics designer/artist. After making some pencil sketches outlining his basic ideas, Hess began to render the graphics in 3D Studio Max, as Wertich had decided to integrate the 2D isometric graphics of the first two games with certain 3D graphical elements. Meanwhile, Hess began work on the buildings for each race, creating textures in Adobe Photoshop, which he then "dirtied", so as to create a lived-in, real-world sense; for example, he ensured the diagonal lines of the Egyptian pyramids were crooked, as he felt to have them perfectly straight and geometrical would be unrealistic. The textures were then "hand painted", and Gouraud shading was later added to complete the look. By July, Hess had begun working on the sketches for the individual settlers, paying particular attention to the differentiations between the same settler from different races (the specific differences between a Roman and an Egyptian baker, for example). It soon became apparent that the workload was too much for one person, and in August a second artist was hired; Thorsten Wallner, who also worked as the game's 3D modeling artist and character animator. Once on board, Wallner realised that Hess's designs were too detailed, and, as a result, were unrealisable given the current level of technology, so the pair decided to scrap them, and redesign the characters from scratch. Hess had failed to take into account that the designs of the settlers couldn't be too complex, since small details would be lost, given their size (32 pixels in height). At the same time, the designs had to be detailed enough so as to seem at least