First and foremost, the purpose of Peak Design is to create happy, meaningful lives for our employees

Peak Design makes award-winning bags, camera accessories, and an ecosystem of rugged phone mounts. We design truly radical gear, unparalleled in thoughtfulness, and have managed to build an equally radical company in our 12+ years of doing business. We have zero outside investors, crowdfund massively ambitious products, speak our mind on environmental matters, are totally carbon neutral (co-founded Climate Neutral!), are a certified B Corp, and give 1% of our gross revenue to environmental nonprofits through our 1% For The Planet membership. Peak Design exists to provide happy, meaningful lives for the people who work here. Our six-point mission allows us to achieve that purpose: 1. Make the best things 2. Succeed at the expense of nobody 3. Treat our customers as peers 4. Offset our environmental impact 5. Use our voice to inspire positive change 6. Prioritize happiness over growth

Peak Design

Here are some of the best web designing and development trends for the year 2019. These top web design trends are based on various stats. Are you planning to launch your website this year? Have you analyzed the market in which you are going to enter? There are around 1.5 billion websites working on world wide web. Here are the number of websites from the year 2009 to 2019, as announced by internet live stats. The increasing number of websites have created a cutthroat competition among online businesses. It is quite easy and cheap to construct a website in current times. The challenge begins at the latter stage when you want to reach the goal because of which you started the website. (The goal of reaching and gaining customers). Let me tell you that it is one of the most strenuous tasks to do! The thing which stresses the website owners the most is the bounce rate. Website bouncing is when a user leaves your website without interacting further. No business person likes when their bounce rate goes up. It is a nightmare for most of the web or too because it shows their lack of skills. Do you know the average bounce rate industry-wise? app designers & developers According to an infographic on the blog of the bounce rate metrics of various industries is given below: Niel Patel , This data is not meant to scare you but its motive is to gear you up for the heavy competition in every business niche. To outshine in this growing dynamic market it is vital to formulate a website which compels the visitors to interact with it. It is not easy to design an efficient website. When you , you have to make sure that they know about the trends of website designing which will rule the market in 2019. hire web developers Website designing trends are constantly evolving according to the needs and preferences of internet users. Proficient website designers keep an eye on these trends and incorporate them into their projects. Here are some of the top website designing trends in 2019: 1. Responsive design (Obviously) 2. AI, deep learning and Machine learning 3. Minimalism 4. Chatbots 5. Design systems Web Design Trend 1: Responsive design: In the era where every other person has a mobile in their hand, do you think it is smartness to ignore this platform? According to research, the number of mobile users will reach to 4.68 billion in 2019. Here is the graphical representation of their findings: Statista This is why the mobile version of websites are given more priority by website designers. With SEO friendly web design you can reach social media as well. A strong presence over social media platforms can enhance your overall website performance. It was announced by Google that it is changing algorithms to prioritize mobile-first-indexing. It is to encourage designs to choose mobile as the first platform for responsive design. It will enhance the experience of mobile users. Now a days, businesses are choosing those which provide Mobile-First web designing solutions. web designing companies Web Design Trend 2: AI, deep learning and Machine learning: Machine learning is a sub-field of artificial intelligence where a computer is trained to make predictions using per-determined algorithms. It is a data-driven task that makes predictions based on past data samples. Some of the applications utilized in web designing are: machine learning services Wix artificial design intelligence is an builder. It gathers information from social media about related contents which help in making a website beautiful. It helps in creating awesome website designs using machine learning algorithms. WiX ADI: AI-based website It helps in creating customized workflow and applications. It identifies related backgrounds, illustrations, and images. This automates the repeated task which in turn speed up the process of web designing. Adobe Sensei: It is an AI-based website builder that uses machine learning to formulate mobile responsive website. It assists in skipping the web development process and builds the website at minimal cost. Thegrid: It is used by a number of web designers all over the world. It utilizes machine learning to construct a website in a fraction of seconds. Its AI based chatbot Sacha helps you in making tailor-made website designs. Firedrop: Web Design Trend 3: Minimalism: Minimalism design makes the website to load faster and makes their appearance hassle-free. This web design is based on the principle of simplicity. The fewer the elements will be, the more convenient it will be for visitors to grasp the information. A well-designed website with proper white-space, contrast, and soothing typography make the delivery of information accurate and simple. Moreover, it ends up making the navigation easy and providing an excellent user experience. Minimalism will continue to shine in 2019 by giving enough place on web pages for distracting elements. This will make scrolling a fun part and help the visitors to find the information they are looking for easily. Most of the are focusing on this trends to make advanced web & UI/UX designs for their customers. software development companies Web Design Trend 4: Chatbots Artificial intelligence has taken the website design to its peak by making it more independent of human support. With more efficiency and intelligence, chatbots are expected to rule websites in this year. It is expected that they will be seen in the higher customized form on websites. Friendly mascots representing brands are also predicted to be a part of future web designs. They might be seen in bright colors to add prominence to their presence. This, in turn, will result in asking attention towards chat-bots from every visitor. That’s why are high in demand these days. chatbot development services Web Design Trend 5: Design systems: As every smart business person is looking for better website designs, various design tools of web designing are being introduced. These design tools are evolving constantly with new features and versions being introduced at timely intervals. Some of the tools that will be ruling in 2019 are: Mockplus (rapid prototyping tool), FrontMap (front end tool), Sketch (UI interface tool), WebGradients (gradient tool), etc. Wrapping up: There are plenty of innovations introduced in the market to improve the technical support in website designing process. These technologies which are introduced in web designing are reshaping the whole process continuously in brilliant ways. To make a website survive in the market it is essential to meet the pace of these evolving trends. This is the only way to make your website an awesome tool to avail new business opportunities! If you are a business owner, you need to first take help from a . It can provide you advises on how you can save your time and cost in your next web designing project. software consulting company <a href="https://medium.com/media/3c851dac986ab6dbb2d1aaa91205a8eb/href">https://medium.com/media/3c851dac986ab6dbb2d1aaa91205a8eb/href</a>

5 Top Web Designing Trends in 2019

The software development market is flooded with various frameworks, tools, platforms, and environments. Regardless of their structure, design, and goals all of them are sharing a common primary purpose to ease the development process. Howsoever your application is exclusive or innovative, in most cases you will be required to use the structure, components, and methods that have already been used earlier. This is where you will understand the significance of handy tools. Instead of writing everything from scratch JavaScript programmers use the so-called collections of libraries to lower the costs in shorter time-to-market. In the monarchy of front-end development, there are hundreds of options to choose from. The development market is dominated by such generally acknowledged heavyweights as React and Angular, but now the new player has taken the place. Vue.js that has managed to cause quite a stir. It’s been just 3 years, Vue.js has been introduced and it has already started snapping at the heels. So, if you are too wondering what makes Vue.js unique and why it has garnered so much attention, then to make you understand its advantages here I have compared Vue.js with React to see if it can really ensure resourceful and reliable development environment. Vue.js vs React: Which JavaScript framework is better? So, what makes you chose a software development framework, regardless its ultimate framework? To bring your product faster to market, right? Go through the listed below points before you make a final call. Bacancy Technology is in world vue.js development company This is what the product owner wants from a software environment for their end-user. Performance stands for the speed of the application response. The faster the time period takes to respond it makes it better. Software programmers often regard JavaScript framework performance as one of the significant criteria. Performance: Scalability regulates the way your solution will deal with the cumulative number of requests and what is significant at the sudden peak of loads. JavaScript app designed for large numbers of users, scalability is of utmost importance. Scalability: The preference of development is given based on the preferred programming language and the language that is being used in the other development components. The programming language and its essentials also influence the integration and compatibility of diverse application components as well as further improvements and new feature implementation. Programming language: If the framework is easy to use and straight forward, programmers can quickly master it and start contributing the entire community. Learning curve: This criterion is associated with the above the two above-listed, as you are more likely to find skillful developers for a framework based on a popular programming language and at the same time, efficient and being user-friendly in everyday tasks. Bacancy provide . Availability of developers: VueJS Application Development Services The clients can have their own specific criteria for the selection of development tool. For example, a customer can have a specific preference for his support team. Of course, he can have such points as scalability and performance, as well, but the common principle is that you should not argue with your customer. Customer requirements So, considering the above-mentioned points now lest have a look at the JavaScript development framework to find out the differences between Vue.js and React. React vs Vue.js Performance Both Vue.js and React use Virtual DOM and let me tell you that virtual DOM is known for its performance issues. However, Vue has given special attention to this problem. This can be the reason why Vue,js is faster and less overhead. Vue owns special ability to handle higher frames-rates that is 10 frames per second as compared to 1 frame per second typical for React that makes it a better choice for development of apps involving animation. So, from the point of view of performance, clearly has an advantage over React. Vue.js Scalability of Vue.js and React Vue.js applications are developed using the template-based syntax. Whereas, React makes use of JavaScript to write DOM, often with the JSX extension. When the application reaches more or less large scale, template become more difficult to reuse and decompose JavaScript components. In this scenario, React is more consistent in performance and reliable in handling large-scale software solutions.In the matters of scalability, React scores a point over Vue.js and it is being regarded as one of the preferred options for large-scale applications. Programming Language and Learning Curve React and Vue.js are both JavaScript-based frameworks and both of them are continuously gaining the top rank in the programming languages rating. And I can be more or less certain that both of them gets a firm “yes” from most developers’ teams; however, there are certain differences, one must need to understand. Vue.js template-based syntax and it is easy to understand. As it is a pure HTML, so there is no complicated setup required. code can be directly included into any HTML file. Vue.js With React, you will be required to master JSX, a syntax extension to JavaScript that is less intuitive and visual. However, the React community has not come across proves at all. So, the favourable benefit for Vue.js is organized documentation. Vue.js, has its very small team and they maintain their guide in a perfect condition, while React documentation is less organized. Developers’ Community React is backed by the global giant Facebook. Already holding a strong position from the point of view of a community as well as recognition. Vue.js, on the other hand, managed by Evan You, he is a former Google programmer who has served AngularJS.As per the bestof.js.org, considering the statistics of GitHub, Vue.js is at the top in the UI Frameworks category with the average of 110.6 stars per day. Whereas React is nearer to the 72.7 stars per day. This is the same statistics that show that the average number of contributors for Vue.js is only 137, while React.js stands at the top with an impressive number of 1,073. So, you can easily hire React developers than the Vue.js developers. Customer Requirements This is something that can’t be analyzed properly. However, as per the geographic trend that shows that Vue.js is more popular in China and other countries of the East. Whereas, clients from US prefers to React or Angular for their frontend development purposes. So, US-based customers are most probably reluctant to accept Vue.js as one of the development tools for their application. Stateofjs 2017 Frontend Framework results https://stateofjs.com/2017/front-end/results https://stateofjs.com/2017/front-end/results Stateofjs 2016 Frontend Framework results: http://2016.stateofjs.com/2016/frontend/ So, 1 year passed and is clearly leading by a huge margin and the next year would be the year of Vue.js success. React seems stable on its growth. However, Angular does not seem be able to keep up with these two rivals. Vue.js definitely dominating, but only in the web, not in the overall frontend world. Whereas, React is clearly becoming the technology that will rule the frontend the world.So, wondering the what’s the answer to the above big question? Vue.js or React.js? Well, I have briefly touched upon the listed significant pros and cons of Vue.js and have come across the following conclusion: Vue.js When it comes to choose a high-performance framework, try Vue.js, especially if you are using the animated content. However, React is not at all behind when performance is concerned If you are planning to build a large application that can be able to scale up or down quickly and easily, give React a preference with its dedicated library, Redux. If the US market is your core focus, then, probably, Vue.js is not at all the optimal choice. If you are already using one development framework that it suitable to fulfill your requirements, then stay with it. It does not matter what you are using — if it provides the necessary performance and functionality, fulfilling your purpose to handles the errors, you have already made the right choice. Howsoever, you are satisfied at the moment, never forget to update with the market. Epilogue Owning our expertise, based on your personal preference whatever you ask us to develop, whether it is technology X or Y?” we are open for both. We are a web and mobile application development company for entrepreneurs with an appetite for new challenges. So, did you get the exact reason, which is your personal preference React or vue.js as your next web or mobile application development platform? We have Vue.js and React.js developers to assist you with your personal preference. Being an active member of both communities, we are always ready to help!Consequently, if you are looking to , you can mail us your requirement at Vue.js development company solutions@bacancytechnology.com Originally published at www.bacancytechnology.com .

Vue.js Vs React.js: Who’s one step ahead

Effective Proxy Server Design and Implementation

Cracking System Design Interviews: Answers to Top 25 Interview Questions for Software Developers

In the realm of modern software engineering, establishing a robust notification infrastructure is not just a preference but a strategic imperative. Notification systems, whether tailored for web or mobile applications, are pivotal for ensuring user engagement. However, the complexities of building and managing these systems can pose substantial challenges. This article aims to delve into the advantages of harnessing within the context of notification systems, underlining concrete real-world instances and providing in-depth technical insights. serverless architectures The Advantages of Serverless Architectures for Notifications Here are some advantages of serverless architecture for notifications. 1. Enhanced Scalability and Elasticity The flow of notification traffic is inherently dynamic, often experiencing surges during specific events or at particular times of the day. Serverless architectures provide the requisite scalability and elasticity to gracefully handle these peaks. Let's dive into the implementation of serverless platforms like AWS Lambda for executing notification logic. Technical Implementation 1: AWS Lambda Function for Sending Notifications import boto3

sns = boto3.client('sns')

def send_notification(event, context):
    user_id = event['user_id']
    message = event['message']
    
    # Insert your custom notification logic here
    response = sns.publish(
        TopicArn='arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123456789012:MyTopic',
        Message=message,
        Subject='Notification',
        MessageStructure='string'
    )
    
    return {
        'statusCode': 200,
        'body': f'Notification sent to user {user_id}'
    } This example demonstrates how an is triggered to send notifications. Notably, the serverless platform takes charge of scaling, allowing you to concentrate on refining the notification logic. AWS Lambda function Real-world Example: WhatsApp's New Feature Announcement Consider WhatsApp's recent introduction of a new feature. In a matter of hours, millions of users receive notifications. A serverless architecture seamlessly scales to accommodate this influx, ensuring that every user receives timely updates. 2. Cost Efficiency Traditional server-based architectures entail provisioning servers to handle the anticipated peak loads. Often, this results in underutilized resources and heightened operational expenses. Serverless architectures, in contrast, charge only for actual usage, rendering them cost-efficient. Real-world Example: Cost Reduction at Coca-Cola Coca-Cola, a global brand, significantly reduced operational costs within its notification system by transitioning to a serverless architecture. They now exclusively pay for executed function invocations, resulting in substantial cost savings. 3. Reduction in Operational Overhead The management of servers, software patching, and infrastructure maintenance can be resource-intensive. A serverless architecture alleviates these responsibilities by shifting them to the cloud provider, effectively reducing operational overhead. Technical Implementation 2: Streamlined Serverless Deployments with AWS SAM AWSTemplateFormatVersion: '2010-09-09'
Transform: 'AWS::Serverless-2016-10-31'

Resources:
  MyServerlessFunction:
    Type: 'AWS::Serverless::Function'
    Properties:
      Handler: index.send_notification
      Runtime: python3.8
      Events:
        MyNotificationEvent:
          Type: S3
          Properties:
            Bucket: my-bucket
            Events: s3:ObjectCreated:*

Outputs:
  NotificationFunction:
    Description: "My Notification Lambda Function ARN"
    Value:
      Fn::GetAtt:
        - MyServerlessFunction
        - Arn This AWS SAM (Serverless Application Model) template showcases the configuration of a serverless function with an S3 event trigger. This YAML-based setup automates deployments, effectively reducing the operational workload. Real-world Example: CloudCore's Shift to Serverless CloudCore, an enterprise entity, migrated to a serverless architecture, resulting in a 30% reduction in the workload of their operational team. They now channel more efforts into optimizing notification strategies as opposed to infrastructure maintenance. The Constituents of a Serverless Notification System A serverless notification system comprises a synergy of various components designed to deliver messages efficiently. Let's explore these components through tangible examples. 1. Lambda Functions AWS Lambda functions serve as the lifeblood of a serverless notification system, executing the notification logic upon activation. Real-world Example: Netflix's Content Recommendations Netflix harnesses Lambda functions for rendering personalized content recommendations. These functions trigger notifications about recommended shows when user preferences change, thereby elevating user engagement. Technical Implementation 3: Lambda Function with Event Trigger import boto3

sns = boto3.client('sns')

def send_notification(event, context):
    user_id = event['user_id']
    message = event['message']

    # Embed your custom notification logic here
    response = sns.publish(
        TopicArn='arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123456789012:MyTopic',
        Message=message,
        Subject='Notification',
        MessageStructure='string'
    )

    return {
        'statusCode': 200,
        'body': f'Notification sent to user {user_id}'
    } This code example demonstrates the creation of a Lambda function that dispatches notifications upon event triggers. 2. API Gateway API Gateway bridges clients and serverless functions, facilitating secure and efficient communication with the notification system. Real-world Example: Spotify's API Gateway Spotify's API Gateway streamlines the integration of its notification system for developers. It provides endpoints for sending notifications, empowering developers to control the user experience effectively. Technical Implementation 4: Definition of an API Gateway Endpoint MyApi:
  Type: AWS::ApiGateway::RestApi
  Properties:
    Name: MyNotificationApi

  MyResource:
    Type: AWS::ApiGateway::Resource
    Properties:
      RestApiId: !Ref MyApi
      ParentId: !GetAtt MyApi.RootResourceId
      PathPart: 'notifications' This AWS CloudFormation template is dedicated to establishing an API Gateway endpoint for notifications. 3. Data Storage For notification systems, data storage serves as a fundamental requirement for preserving user preferences, subscription data, and notification details. While serverless systems are primarily event-driven, the need for data persistence arises, especially for personalization purposes. Technical Implementation 5: Leveraging Amazon DynamoDB for Storing User Preferences import boto3

dynamodb = boto3.client('dynamodb')

def save_user_preferences(user_id, preferences):
    response = dynamodb.put_item(
        TableName='UserPreferences',
        Item={
            'UserId': {'S': user_id},
            'Preferences': {'S': preferences}
        }
    )
    return response In this example, Amazon DynamoDB is employed to store user preferences, which are pivotal for tailoring notifications. Real-world Example: Airbnb's Personalization Engine Airbnb leverages DynamoDB for storing user preferences and booking history. This data forms the foundation for personalizing notification content, including travel recommendations and special offers. 4. Real-time Analytics and Monitoring The maintenance of a robust notification system necessitates real-time analytics and monitoring tools. Platforms like Amazon CloudWatch provide insights into performance and expedite the debugging process. Real-world Example: Uber's Real-time Analytics Uber effectively uses real-time analytics to monitor the delivery times and success rates of their notifications. This data is invaluable for fine-tuning their notification strategy and ensuring the prompt delivery of ride updates. Addressing Traffic Peaks During significant events or marketing campaigns, notification systems can experience a sudden surge in traffic. Serverless architectures are explicitly designed to manage such surges effectively. Auto-scaling Serverless platforms autonomously scale in response to the volume of incoming events. Be it Black Friday sales or breaking news updates, your system is equipped to manage the load. Concurrency Control While scaling is an automatic process, you can manage the maximum concurrency to prevent unexpected billing spikes. Define concurrency limits that align with your budget and expected traffic. Technical Implementation 6: Establishing AWS Lambda Concurrency Limits MyNotificationFunction:
  Type: 'AWS::Serverless::Function'
  Properties:
    Handler: index.send_notification
    Runtime: python3.8
    ReservedConcurrentExecutions: 100  # Set your desired limit In this AWS SAM template, we set a concurrency limit for an AWS Lambda function. Real-world Example: Zappy's Flash Sales Zappy, an e-commerce platform, conducts flash sales that generate a substantial surge in traffic. With the assistance of serverless auto-scaling and concurrency control, they adeptly manage the sudden influx of user activity. Security Considerations Given their frequent handling of sensitive user data, security assumes paramount significance in notification systems. The following are key security considerations and their corresponding technical implementations. Authentication and Authorization It is essential to ensure that only authorized users or systems can access your notification infrastructure. Authentication mechanisms like OAuth or API keys must be diligently implemented. Technical Implementation 7: OAuth Authentication for API Gateway MyApi:
  Type: AWS::ApiGateway::RestApi
  Properties:
    Name: MyNotificationApi

  MyResource:
    Type: AWS::ApiGateway::Resource
    Properties:
      RestApiId: !Ref MyApi
      ParentId: !GetAtt MyApi.RootResourceId
      PathPart: 'notifications'

  MyMethod:
    Type: AWS::ApiGateway::Method
    Properties:
      AuthorizationType: CUSTOM
      AuthorizerId: !ImportValue MyCustomAuthorizer
      RestApiId: !Ref MyApi
      ResourceId: !GetAtt MyResource.Id
      HttpMethod: POST This CloudFormation template showcases the configuration of OAuth authentication for an API Gateway endpoint. OAuth guarantees that only authenticated users can access notification endpoints. Data Encryption To safeguard against unauthorized access, data must be encrypted both at rest and in transit. Utilizing and serverless functions is indispensable for preserving data integrity and confidentiality. HTTPS for secure client communication Error Handling Robust error handling is a pivotal facet of security. Implementing comprehensive error handling mechanisms, including logging and auditing, facilitates the prompt detection and response to security threats, thereby averting potential breaches. Access Control The implementation of fine-grained access control is instrumental in restricting access to sensitive data and notification logic. By skillfully managing permissions and access policies, you can ensure that only authorized entities can interact with your notification system. In Conclusion Serverless architectures bring substantial benefits when constructing notification systems. They endow these systems with scalability, reduce operational overhead, and offer cost-efficiency. With the right design and security considerations, a serverless notification system can effectively engage users and dispatch timely updates. Serverless is more than just a buzzword; it represents a pragmatic approach to crafting robust and efficient notification systems capable of meeting the demands of contemporary applications and users. Whether you hold the role of a CTO or a senior developer, contemplating serverless architectures for notifications is a strategic choice capable of elevating user engagement and operational efficiency. The realm of serverless notification infrastructure, architecture, and system design harbors the potential to revolutionize how information is disseminated to users. Embracing this technology is not merely an option but imperative in today's rapidly evolving digital landscape. As you embark on your journey to explore serverless solutions for your notification system, remember the technical advantages and real-world illustrations elucidated in this article.

Building Serverless Notification Architecture Design Using AWS: A Step-by-Step Guide for Developers

Larian Studios is perhaps the only company with a vast RPG history that still produces genuinely old-school RPGs. Behind this name are fantastic worlds, hours-long gameplay experiences, classic game design, and, of course, humor. The company has distinct canons and rules that give its games a recognizable touch. But at the same time, these also create limitations. Today, we'll discuss Baldur's Gate 3, Larian Studios' most popular project. It introduced the general public to something new - something long known to genre enthusiasts. game The founder of the studio, Swen Vincke, loves board games and has always aimed to transform that passion into a computer game format. This became the foundation for every game design element in the studio's projects. The direction for realizing their ideas was set by a game called Ultima VII. A direction that, according to Vincke, was never continued by anyone else. We're talking about a huge open world, many interactive items and their combinations, various ways to approach a single situation, and thrilling world exploration. These are the very pillars on which Larian Studios' game design stands. From a , the development of every gameplay situation in their games is built on a "+1" model. This means that developers simulate every possible outcome for a gameplay situation and then add... one more on top. This is not only about the progression of the main plot but about interactions with the world. Every barrel in Baldur's Gate 3 can be broken, exploded, or moved. Barrels can block a building entrance or be stacked into a staircase or tower to elevate an archer. One can even put something or someone inside a barrel and carry it around. And that's just the barrel, only one of the many interactive objects in the game. game design perspective Due to this interactivity, players encounter countless unexpected events and twists in their gameplay. Some passage options are always hidden from the player. Access to them might depend, for instance, on a skill to talk to animals or the dead, a random encounter, completing a companion's quest, or performing a specific action. Every chat or minor in-game event can spawn many new scenarios based on the "+1" idea. This makes the game world grow immensely, making even small areas and starting quests feel incredibly expansive. The desire to make the entire environment interactive has been with the studio since its earliest projects. But for me, the Divinity Original Sin series remains the most exemplary and innovative. Its ideas are what Baldur's Gate 3 primarily continues. In Original Sin, players could perform some utterly insane actions. The idea of interaction with "unremarkable" objects was executed brilliantly there. This world here is divided into several components: the regular world inhabited by various humanoids, the world of animals, the world of objects, and the world of living objects. Here, you could mediate disputes between a dog and a cat, accept an intriguing quest from a chicken, argue with a chest, and wear buckets on your head. In this world, objects aren't insignificant, as in most games. Any unliving object in the game might be more important than an NPC. The animals possess a set of qualities, emotions, and motivations that rival those of humans. For instance, in Baldur's Gate 3, there's the story of the "dark urge," obsessed with a desire for blood, paralleled by an emotionally similar dramatic tale of the "Strange Ox." The popular scene from Baldur's Gate 3 trailer, where one has intercourse with a druid in bear form, might be shocking and innovative for the general audience but certainly not for the studio. Compare this with the possibility in Original Sin for elves to peek into the past by eating a corpse. This feature is also continued in Baldur's Gate 3, where players can activate brains and converse with their former owners by inserting them into a skull. The idea of high interactivity brings the element many of us love in games – randomness. In some places, the stakes of this randomness are high, and you wish to encounter it as rarely as possible, like in From Software games. When rolling, the planks beneath you break, and you plunge to death, losing souls. But these random moments are nice in other cases, such as in Baldur's Gate. Both types entertain the player and make their journey emotionally rich. In the discussion on randomness, I'd like to highlight another crucial mechanic in Baldur's Gate 3 – turn-based battles. I won't go into deep details; they're complex and worth a separate discussion. But I'll mention the role of surfaces and how they interact in battles, which makes combat amazing for me. You can set oil, explode barrels to create fire zones, electrify water with lightning, or use gravity to push enemies off the map. This is just a glimpse of the possible interactions. These can be advantageous or dangerous - you might harm teammates or face cunning enemies who use the same tactics. The game's AI is smart, often outthinking the player. So, if an enemy immediately pushes your top character off a ledge, it's intentional, not random. Surfaces play into the primary element of combat – strategic mechanics, but they often emerge from randomness and accompany it until the end. Each player's battle is a unique combination of characters and their builds, abilities, strategies, and the player's reactions to surprises. Developers craft confrontations such that every fight has a vexing element for the player. An archer perched atop a staircase, a necromancer summoning skeletons each turn, or an approaching massive troll. Players strategize to neutralize these threats by prioritizing them and assessing the situation. They are given many opportunities and allowed to combine them as they please. This is why the battles are turn-based. Players have time to ponder the situation, fantasize, and decide. In the first act, you always feel you're given a platform to shine, showcase your intellect, and find an intriguing solution. In the first act, you get to know the game's classes and characters, form your team, and discover how they work together. Every battle becomes an opportunity to try out new skills and strategies. This new game installment nails this aspect, making it feel like you're in . The magic amplifies when you play cooperatively. Imagine exploring a cave while your friend tackles city quests and then meeting to exchange stories at a tavern. Larian Studios has outdone itself, creating a cooperative experience that stands out among games. Their previous titles hinted at this brilliance. It's hard to put into words, but this is what top-notch multiplayer feels like a game where players can engage in rich dialogues, approach quests differently, and even follow their secret goals. a real DnD session A genuinely unique aspect of Baldur's Gate 3 is the DnD mechanic tied to dice rolls. In real life, DnD lets participants role-play any character and do almost anything, guided only by their moral compass and imagined character traits. Lifting restrictions on variability was the developers' most significant challenge when porting this mechanic into the game. They achieved this with minor plot influences from a plethora of small actions. The success of almost every action depends on a dice roll. If the result surpasses a certain value, the action succeeds, and vice versa. It's sometimes hard to resist reloading the game to achieve the desired roll. The most "correct" approach is to accept what happens, like in real DnD, and enjoy a unique storyline with successes and failures that shape your path. Thanks to thousands of these small checks, Baldur's Gate 3 allows each player a unique playthrough. If you play honestly, you can be certain that the likelihood of someone having a playthrough similar to yours has never been so low. Such a scale is impressive. However, it leads to an exponential increase in complexity. The more content and gameplay situations in the game, the more tangled the system becomes, making its realization harder. Hence, the peak number of bugs is concentrated in the third act. And here, I move to the critique. Firstly, all the mentioned mechanics were excellently implemented in Original Sin 2, the studio's previous game. While Baldur's Gate 3 handles them with care, it doesn't bring anything new to the table. Secondly, the vast world and its reliance on constant interactivity mean that after a perfect first act, there's always a second one with less variety. Items might be unique, but they function similarly to the first act's items; enemies become less surprising, and by this point, a character's abilities allow the player to establish a repetitive battle pattern. The game becomes duller. It still entertains with its narrative and nuances, but holistically, the player starts to feel burned out. Statistics show that most players drop off during the second act. Typically, only about 30% make it to its end. By the third act, the situation gets even gloomier. It's usually riddled with even more bugs. Characters, leveled up to god-like statuses, can easily make up to five attacks each turn and land critical hits every time. Gameplay variations start to narrow, and choices that appear different often lead to the same results. The game drags on as the story wraps up its loose ends, leaving the ending a bit diluted. Speaking of the narrative, it's always secondary in the studio's games. Baldur's Gate 3 is no exception. The spotlight is always on gameplay. And while this is good for gameplay, it's not cool for storytelling. The narrative is filled with funny jokes and cool side quests; the companions' stories and the dark urge's plot are enjoyable. But the main plot leans on clichés and templates from two decades ago, now feeling more like post-irony than a well-thought-out script. The mere 12 general endings don't intrigue and blatantly overlook most of the player’s choices. There's no satisfaction from the finale. The pleasure is hidden in the process. Only that process isn't all smooth, either. In Baldur's Gate 3 and all previous Larian games, I start to feel bored by the third act. I don't understand why they always structure the game using the same pattern every time, limiting themselves to the same path. Each new game so closely follows the template of its predecessor that it loses its uniqueness, feeling like an endless update. The glorious Act I, among other things, is conditioned by close interaction with the audience. It was in early access for years, and the developers received tons of feedback during that time. As a result, the game's beginning turned out to be as staggering as possible. Naturally, maintaining that initial benchmark becomes very challenging with such expansive world dimensions focusing on interactive interactions. There's always a shortage of time somewhere, and compromises must be made. My playthrough took 80 hours, but my overall impressions were mixed. I spent most of that time on the first half of the game, where, in my opinion, the most exciting discoveries and beautiful solutions are. I trudged through the second half forcibly, kept taking breaks, and finished two other games before I wrapped up Baldur's Gate. The six-year development of the franchise, born in the 90s, culminated in a significant and well-deserved success for the studio. The increased attention brought hordes of new fans to Larian Studios, discussing a genre they were unfamiliar with just yesterday as if it were a 21st-century revelation. Someone could tell that Baldur's Gate 3 is the best game in history. While the game is one of the year's standout releases and opens up a new genre for many players, an extra year or two in alpha development could have made it even better.

Digging Into The Game Design of Baldur's Gate 3. 

Design and Simulation of a Green Energy Grid

একটি সবুজ শক্তি গ্রিড ডিজাইন এবং সিমুলেশন

Entwurf und Simulation eines grünen Energienetzes

Diseño y Simulación de una Red de Energía Verde

Conception et simulation d'un réseau d'énergie verte

हरित ऊर्जा ग्रिड का डिजाइन और अनुकरण

グリーンエネルギーグリッドの設計とシミュレーション

그린 에너지 그리드 설계 및 시뮬레이션

Projeto e Simulação de uma Rede de Energia Verde

Yeşil Enerji Şebekesinin Tasarımı ve Simülasyonu

Thiết kế và mô phỏng lưới năng lượng xanh

绿色能源电网的设计与仿真

Some popular iterations of an on-demand video streaming service today are: YouTube Netflix Vimeo TikTok Requirements The user can upload video files The user can stream video content The user can search for videos based on the video title Data storage Database schema The primary entities are the videos, the users, and the comments tables The relationship between the users and the videos is 1-to-many The relationship between the users and the comments table is 1-to-many The relationship between the videos and the comments table is 1-to-many Type of data stored The wide-column data store ( tree-based) such as is used to persist thumbnail images for clumping the files together, fault-tolerance, and replication LSM Apache HBase A cache server such as is used to store the metadata of popular video content Redis Message queue such as is used for the asynchronous processing (encoding) of videos Apache Kafka A relational database such as MySQL stores the metadata of the users and the videos The video files are stored in a managed such as AWS object storage S3 Lucene-based inverted-index data store such as Apache Solr is used to persist the video index data to provide search functionality High-level design Popular video content is streamed from CDN Video encoding ( ) is the process of converting a video format to other formats (MPEG, HLS) to provide the best stream possible on multiple devices and bandwidth transcoding A message queue can be configured between services for parallelism and improved fault tolerance Codecs (H.264, VP9, HEVC) are compression and decompression algorithms used to reduce video file size while preserving video quality The popular video streaming protocols (data transfer standard) are (Moving Pictures Experts Group — Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP), (HTTP Live Streaming), , and (HTTP Dynamic Streaming) MPEG-DASH Apple HLS Microsoft Smooth Streaming Adobe HDS Video upload workflow The user ( ) executes a DNS query to identify the server client The client makes an HTTP connection to the load balancer The video upload requests are rate limited to prevent malicious clients The load balancer delegates the client’s request to an API server ( ) with free capacity webserver The web server delegates the client’s request to an app server that handles the API endpoint The ID of the uploaded video is stored on the message queue for asynchronous processing of the video file The title and description ( ) of the video are stored in the metadata database metadata The app server queries the object store service to generate a pre-signed URL for storing the raw video file The client uploads the raw video file directly to the object store using the pre-signed URL to save the system network bandwidth The transcoding servers query the message queue using the publish-subscribe pattern to get notified on uploaded videos The transcoding server fetches the raw video file by querying the raw object store The transcoding server transcodes the raw video file into multiple codecs and stores the transcoded content on the transcoded object store The thumbnail server generates on average five thumbnail images for each video file and stores the generated images on the thumbnail store The transcoding server persists the ID of the transcoded video on the message queue for further processing The upload handler service queries the message queue through the publish-subscribe pattern to get notified on transcoded video files The upload handler service updates the metadata database with metadata of transcoded video files The upload handler service queries the notification service to notify the client of the video processing status The database can be partitioned through (key = user ID or video ID) consistent hashing or algorithms can be used to detect the duplicate video content Block matching Phase correlation The web server (API server) must be kept stateless for scaling out through replication The video file is stored in multiple resolutions and formats in order to support multiple devices and bandwidth The video can be split into smaller chunks by the client before upload to support the resume of broken uploads Watermarking and encryption can be used to protect video content The data centers are added to improve latency and data recovery at the expense of increased maintenance workflows Dead letter queue can be used to improve fault tolerance and error handling Chaos engineering is used to identify the failures on networks, servers, and applications Load testing and chaos engineering are used to improve fault tolerance configuration improves the hardware throughput RAID The data store is partitioned to spread the writes and reads at the expense of difficult joins, transactions, and fat client Federation and sharding are used to scale out the database The write requests are redirected to the leader and the read requests are redirected to the followers of the database is a storage middleware for scaling out MySQL Vitess Vitess redirects the read requests that require fresh data to the leader (For example, update user profile operation) Vitess uses a lock server (Apache Zookeeper) for automatic sharding and leader election on the database layer Vitess supports RPC-based joins, indexing, and transactions on SQL database Vitess allows to offload of partitioning logic from the application and improves database queries by caching Video streaming workflow The client executes a DNS query to identify the server The client makes an HTTP connection on the load balancer The CDN is queried to verify if the requested video content is on the CDN cache The CDN queries the transcoded object stored on a cache miss The load balancer delegates the client’s request to a web server with free capacity using the weighted round-robin algorithm The web server delegates the client’s request to an app server using consistent hashing The app server queries the metadata cache to fetch the metadata of the video The app server queries the metadata database on a cache miss The app server queries the thumbnail store to fetch the relevant thumbnail images of the video The app server queries the transcoded object store to fetch the video content The app server delegates the search queries of the client to the inverted index store The read and write traffic are segregated for high throughput Popular video content is streamed from CDN (in memory) The push CDN model can be used for caching videos uploaded by users with a significant number of subscribers The moderately streamed video content can be served from the video server directly (disk IO) Consistent hashing can be used to load balance cache servers Caching can be implemented on multiple levels to improve latency LRU cache eviction policy can be used Entropy or jitter is implemented on cache expiration to prevent the thundering herd failure The video files are distributed to the data centers closer to the client when the client starts streaming The traffic should be prioritized between the video streaming cluster (higher priority) and the general cluster to improve reliability The videos can be recommended to the client based on geography, watch history (KNN algorithm), and results A/B testing The video file is split into chunks for streaming and improved fault tolerance The chunks of a video file are joined together when the client starts streaming The video chunks allow adaptive streaming by switching to lower-quality chunks if the high-quality chunks are slower to download Different streaming protocols support different video encodings and playback players The video content is streamed on TCP through buffering The video offset is stored on the server to resume playback from any client device The video resolution on playback depends on the client's device The video file should be encoded into compatible bitrates (quality) and formats for smoother streaming and compatibility The counter for likes on a video can be non-accurate to improve performance (transactions executed at sampled intervals) The comments on video content are shown to the comment owner by data fetching from the leader (database) while other users can fetch from followers with a slight delay The services can be prescaled for extremely popular channels as autoscaling might not meet the requirements of concurrent clients The autoscaling requirements can be predicted by performing machine learning on traffic patterns The autoscaling service should keep a time buffer due to the anticipated delays in the provisioning of resources Fully baked container images (no additional script execution required after provisioning) improve the startup time of services The infrastructure can be prewarmed before the peak hours using benchmark data through load testing The emergency mode should shut down non-critical services to free up resources, and skip the execution of failed services for improved reliability References Cuong Do, , Google Talks YouTube Scalability , vitess.io Vitess Architecture Also published . here Featured image . source

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51-200 employees

Since 2011

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