somewhat realistic, even at such a small size. To solve this problem, Wallner decided to exaggerate their proportions, "so that the subtleties could be recognised". He also decided to give them weapons and tools proportionally too big, as correctly sized implements would be far too small to be seen. After a week, Wallner presented his first 3D designs to Wertich and Hess (the standard Roman carriers, diggers and builders), who decided to make some additional changes, such as making the settlers more rotund and enlarging the heads. Wallner then turned his attentions to the animations. As all the animations in the game had to be interchangeable for every settler (walking, bending etc.), he first needed to work on the skeletal animation. Unsatisfied with the results when he attempted to use 3D Studio Max, he chose instead to build an "extremely primitive skeletal settler which we could put under the visible structure of our figures". The drawback to this approach was that all actions had to animated separately, frame-by-frame. Plot and cutscenes In January 1998, Hess met with Blue Byte's head writer, Wolfgang Walk, to discuss the game's storyline. As it had already been decided that a new gameplay element would be "Divine Intervention", Hess suggested the plot have something to do with the gods of each culture, and the two worked out a rough draft in a single evening, based around a competition between Jupiter (Roman), Horus (Egyptian) and Chi-yu (Asian). Hertzler and Wertich approved the concept, but it quickly became apparent that the team currently working on the game would have no time to design or render any cutscenes. As a result, Hess suggested using a traditional animation studio with whom he had worked in the past, a Turkish company called Denge Animation. Subsequently, based on designs created by Hess, one of Blue Byte's in-house artists, Tom Thiel, drew sketches of the three main characters, with different facial expressions and seen from different angles, from which Denge would ultimately produce the finished animation. Copy protection The Settlers III was notable for its method of copy protection. Using Blue Byte's own in-house copy protection system, Sysiphus, pirated copies of the game would seem to run perfectly at first. However, iron smelters would produce only pigs, residences wouldn't produce new settlers, newly planted trees wouldn't grow, goods placed at a harbour for transport would disappear, and manna couldn't be generated. In