The next step is a feedback process where we will decide if everyone is cool with the design or if we have to change somethingĪnd here the final work piece, you can see blocked out areas and basic level of terrain.Įnvironmental Storytelling and future stepsĪnd now it’s time to bring some individual character to our island in the so-called “visual stage.” That means basic texturing, defining construction and harbor areas, placing obstacles, mining slots, basic vegetation and more. In this first iteration of our future island, we will bring it to a playable state. When we are happy with the three dimensional form of the asset, we implement the island in our engine. The resulting model is a perfect foundation for the next steps. While we spend a lot of time in our actual engine, handy tools such as World Machine, allow us to create a basic preset terrain based on various parameters (ground land mass, cliffs, plateaus, mountains, beaches, erosion etc.). In our daily work, we make use of various tools fitting the needs of the different steps we are working on. When our shape got a thumbs up from game design or other stakeholders, we can start to work on the actual 3D model. We always have to keep one thing in mind: from the beaches to mountainsides, the layout will have an impact on your future city layout, such as having the choice of two beaches allows you to decide where to build your harbor and start your city. When defining these areas, we usually check back with the Game Design team for their requirements such as the size of a beach or mining resources, but how we implement that is usually up to us. The first concepts for island shapes often include color-coding, where we block out construction areas, mountains and other obstacles. Do we need a few larger but easier islands or are we talking about a design which should test the skills of our veteran players? Beginner islands should not have overly complex structures, mountains or other obstructing details as these terrain elements can determine the difficulty level. We are always on the hunt for the right middle ground between interesting shapes, a good challenge and gameplay freedom.It also depends on the type of island currently needed for the game. It usually starts with a shape: Ideas for the look and form of an island come often from different sources, sometimes just creative brainstorming in the team full of crazy ideas but we also spend time researching satellite data or photos from real islands as an inspiration. Okay, let us see how our level team actually creates and shapes that playground for you. Overcoming that limitations feels rewarding and often results in a more organic and beautiful city layout. We call that “Creative Constraints”, where limitations result in solutions and interesting designs in order to overcome that challenge. The specific features and difficulty level of an island has a strong impact on the gameplay. Islands in Anno come in various shapes and sizes, some of them making it easy to expand and to grow your city while others have a higher difficulty, challenging the player to optimize and deal with the situation at hand. It’s a creative puzzle you need to solve as you alter and shape the game world surround you. In the game, islands are more than just a blank space, islands have personality, add to the feeling of the game and even create gameplay challenges, as players have to work within the given space. I started to play around with level editors to create my own levels and with that, to become the writer of my own environmental stories.Īnno 1800 is in fact the first strategy game I’ve worked on. That enthusiasm allowed me to experience games beyond gaming. Questions like, “is there something hidden behind that mountain?” or “look at that landslide, is there a story why it collapsed?” was probably even the driving factor for me to become a level artist. Becoming an explorer of the game worlds around me, always on the hunt for hidden secrets and stories, fueled my passion and creative investment in videogames since I was a kid. Playing a game is more than progressing in the campaign or advancing your city. Islands are both the playground to let your creative energy loose and the challenge which stands between your goals, such as expanding your city’s population by just a few thousands citizens. But at one point in any discussion about the series, you will be able to hear players talking about another really important element of the game: the islands themselves. I joined the team here in Mainz roughly a year ago and today, I would like to give you some insights into my job- both what motivates me and how us Level Artists shape the world of Anno, one island at a time.Īt its heart, Anno is about vast cityscapes, ships on high waters or citizens roaming through narrow streets. Hi, my Name is Simon Wolf and I am a Level Artist on Anno 1800.
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Once all components to be cleaned are set, the running of the tool takes only a single click on the “Start Cleaning” button to begin, live progress is shown in the bar at the top of the tool as well as an analysis of how much was cleaned when complete. The pane on the left of this tool (as can be seen above) allows certain aspects of the Windows system to be included or excluded in the clean-up, th is can include the Windows system components themselves, installed browsers such as Chrome and Firefox plus commonly installed applications such as Google Earth, Dropbox and LibreOffice amongst many others. Thankfully, this is an area in which Glary Utilities Pro excels and provides several tools which can be u sed to do everything from removing trash from the drive to checking the integrity of the system disks, defragging and even one click memory optimisation amongst many other things.Īs can be seen above, the main disk cleaning tool (conveniently called “Disk Cleanup”) is where we can being making a comprehensive clean-up of our PC. One of the main reasons for using software such as Glary Utilities is for the effective cleaning and optimising of a Windows PC. Overall, a nicely designed home screen which makes getting started easy and helps greatly in finding the individual tools and settings needed to get the most out of the application. Moving on to the bottom of the home screen and here we see a toolbar where all of the main tools contained within Glary Utilities can be accessed, backing this up is a menu to access all remaining tools to the right and a top tabs bar which features access to more settings and the 1-Click Maintenance tool. Once opened up, the Glary Utilities Pro home screen is where we can start making use of the tool for the first time, it makes accessing all of the main tools easy as well as providing information such as the licencing, product updates and ability to see the Windows start-up performance amongst other things.Īlso on this home screen we can set a schedule for the automatic maintenance components as well as customize some other commonly used elements, these include turning on “deep clean and fix” and the allowing allowing automatic updates or not. Once installed the 30 day free trial starts straight away and requires no personal or payment details to be entered, so at this point we can immediately start using Glary Utilities Pro straight after installation, a great experience so far! Getting Started Installing Glary Utilities Pro begins at the Glarysoft website, from here you can download the main installer which also includes a 30 day free trial of Glary Utilities Pro.Īt just under 19MB the installer can be downloaded quickly and easily and the install, in my case, took just a few moments and a few clicks before the everything was installed and ready to use. In the next section I will begin with the installation of Glary Utilities Pro, a 30 day free trial of which can be downloaded form the Glarysoft website! Installing Glary Utilities Pro In-fact, I couldn’t realistically even review all of these utilities in any real depth (as this review would be about a mile long) so, for the usability section of this review, I will be focusing on how the software works in general and then going on to look at several of the key areas covered in more detail. One of the first things to point out about Glary Utilities Pro is that it is a very comprehensive system maintenance and optimisation tool containing (at my count) well over 30 individual utilities for helping Windows PC users get the very best out of their device! Syncany provides data encryption and incredible flexibility in terms of storage type and provider. Securely synchronize your files to any kind of storage. Syncany is an open-source cloud storage and file sharing application. The Seafile server is written in C language and released under GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2. With Seafile, you can organize files into libraries, access files in the cloud in local S: drive without syncing them, it has a library that can be encrypted by a password chosen by you. It features built with enterprise environments in mind: AD/LDAP integration, group syncing, department hierarchy, fine-grained permission control. The file sync is a share solution designed for high reliability, performance, productivity, it helps to collaborate across devices and teams. Seafile is an open-source cloud storage system with privacy protection and teamwork features. It has a powerful synchronization algorithm, schedule engine, filters, easy, clear, and user-friendly graphical user interface. ) to synchronize files to another desktop PC.ĭirSync Pro is the best application that spares lots of time and provides some preconfigured modes such as mirror, backup, contribute, and more. Use this USB stick (/Externa HD/PDA/Notebook. It builds with Java.ĭirSync Pro is used to easily synchronize files from your desktop PC to your USB stick (/Externa HD/PDA/Notebook. This software aims to make incremental backups. It is built with C++.ĭirSync Pro (Directory Synchronize Pro) is a powerful utility for file and folder synchronization. It is released under the GNU General Public License. The system is an open-source software, available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. In this article, we will list the best open-source alternatives which you can install them at your personal cloud, and use it to back up, sync your file without a hassle.ġ3 Open-sources self-hosted alternatives to Google Photos:įreeFileSync is an open-source folder comparison and synchronization software that creates and manages backup copies from all your important files and hosts your photos and videos.įreeFileSync the most reliable synchronization tool, this program is actually easier and simpler than copying folders by hand, it transfers only the minimum amount of data that you needed.įreeFileSync offers mirror synchronization, folder comparison, task scheduling, RealTimeSync, and more. Easy photo, video sharing among team, family and friends.Syncing up your phone and your computer with the same photo library.What the benefits of using google photos? So, it is time to find the open-source alternative. You could always access it too on the huge benefits of using google photos, so let me say what those are first, and then we'll talk about 13 Open-source self-hosted alternatives for Google Photos.īut all good things come to an end, Google Photos ends up its free unlimited storage by June 1st 2021. Google photos app is available for the iPhone and tablets like the iPad for Apple devices, and it's also available in android devices actually on android here is the default app for photos called google photos. |
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