Hess had employed on Settlers III; after the textures were applied, they were "dirtied" so as to create a lived-in, real-world sense. Hess explains, was: "Rigid and straight edges should be avoided. Beautiful curves and moving lines are instead used to suggest life in the settlers world. For the textures, this means stronger colours, a slightly higher contrast than the figures, as well as a lot of detail and the use of many different colour families. We definitely want to avoid a sterile look. We also draw all the textures by hand". For the settlers themselves, the designers also used the same basic techniques as developed on Settlers III; the figures couldn't be too graphically 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 somewhat realistic, even at such a small size. To solve this problem, the settlers' proportions were exaggerated, and their weapons and tools designed so as to be proportionally too big, as correctly sized implements would be far too small to be seen. For the process of animating the settlers, character animator/co-writer Thorsten Wallner explains, "We place a skeleton behind each settler, which controls the movement sequences. Each skeleton dictates the standard movements, such as bending, running or standing. Additional animations can then be added to individual characters. With this technology, we do not need to animate every settler anew, but only add additional animations". Promotion and delay In July 2000, Blue Byte advertised for 5,000 participants for an online closed beta. However, the beta was postponed in early August, due to "technical issues related to the lobby software causing disruption to Battle Isle: The Andosia War". In late August, Blue Byte revealed it would be at least mid-September before the beta began. In October, Blue Byte released "Smack a Thief", a minigame designed to promote the main game. A variation on Whac-A-Mole, in "Smack a Thief", the player must click on Viking thieves before they can raid the Roman stores and escape. Available as a free download from Blue Byte's website, the game allowed players to upload their high scores to a global high score table. In early November, the online beta was cancelled, with Blue Byte's stating, "We have decided to take this step to concentrate on completing the game. Conducting a large,