Pictures and Wiki

Sunday January 6, 2008 | by IncaWarrior

Picture Section Back:

Some of you might remember how we used to have a picture section on this site several years ago. Well after a lengthy hiatus, the picture section has returned! It's a bit empty at the moment so we need lots of people to submit picture to go on it (you'll get full credit for anything you submit). You must be logged in to submit a picture, and all picture must be approved by an admin after you submit it.

Populous Wiki:

Long time contributer to Populous and programmer of serveral useful Populous programs, TedTycoon has setup his Populous Wiki on our servers. If you have any handy facts about populous, just head on over there and add them to the appropriate section, or go ahead and browse the many pages already created.

[Network] Tribe Swap Callouts:

Over at one of our network sites, The Dakini Hut, Suleiman is working on a project somewhat like Populous: Reversed was suppose to be. If you have experience with Populous sprites or AI and want to contibute, you should take a visit to the site and submit an application

Winter Update

Wednesday December 19, 2007 | by IncaWarrior

New Website Address:

So it should be pretty obvious to anyone who visit's this site regularly, but the site has changed it's address from the rather lengthy http://populous.strategyplanet.gamespy.com/ to the nice and short http://popre.net/. There is a redirect set up from the old address but you should probably update your bookmarks anyways.

Clan Forums:

I've implemented a new system so that each clan gets a private section in the forums. If you are in a clan, it will appear at the very top of the forum page. The administrators of the clan should be the moderators and anyone in the clan should be able to post. I couldn't really test it as well as I'd like so if you're in a clan and things aren't working exactly like the rest of this posting says, then please email me.

Interview and Maps

Wednesday September 12, 2007 | by IncaWarrior

Interview with Stuart Whyte:

Not too long ago, Suleiman collected some interview questions from members of the community in our forums and gave them to the producer of Populous Stuart Whyte to answer.

He's graciously let me post the first few here for you to read!

WackyAnimation: Is there any hope of going back and finishing or start over the creation of Populous 4?

SW: I don't know. I've heard talk in the past from friends who work in EA LA (the EA 'RTS' studio) that they’re big fans of Pop:TB and would love to do a sequel. However games nowadays are very expensive to make and Populous' tribal theme probably wouldn't be thought of as mass market enough – which is a shame. The original Pop:TB, whilst critically acclaimed (and still loved after all these years by fans which is fantastic!), didn’t sell huge numbers compared to other RTS games of the time and due to this it's pretty unlikely I would imagine that EA would do a sequel. Peter Molyneux, MD of Lionhead Studios, has also said to me in the past that he'd love to go back and do another Populous game (remember Pop:TB was the 3rd game) but again i think this is very unlikely for the reasons i mentioned above... but who knows! - I remember when Prince of Persia was coming out a couple of years back and thinking ''they'll never be able to resurrect such an old franchise'' – and they did! Ultimately though, while EA owns the IP, it's down to EA and i can't really comment on what they will do – as i don't know!

[TLW]Swords: What kind of AI scripting did you use?

SW: It was completely proprietary. Nowadays companies use scripting languages like LUA etc – in those days it was something made by the programmers. I don’t even think there was a name for it – maybe PopScript? I can't remember. It was pretty powerful though from memory – one of the testers from Populous:TB worked really hard after the game finished to learn the scripting language and became a level designer/scripter on the expansion disk and did some very cool things with the scripting language.

[Rw]Jops: Were there any big problems whilst making Populous 3?

SW: Loads! Making a game is always an ongoing series of big problems! I think when Pop3 was started it was a DOS game. Then it transitioned to Windows. Then it needed to have Direct3D support (which it didn't at first as it was software render). Lots of issues with trying to get all the features balanced and working right (a stable multiplayer during development helped a lot for this) and some pretty major features were removed in the final months as we just couldn't get them working as we wanted them to (such as direct raising/lowering of land).

You can read the full text of the interview at Suleiman's site: The Dakini Hut

User Submitted World Update:

Well I said that I was going to make another user submitted map pack after gathering some new maps from the community - but then you guys went ahead and submitted over 50 new and original maps! So it looks like it may be more than one pack at this point. I'm not exactly sure how we're going to pick out which ones to go into them, if anyone has ideas, go ahead and post them on the thread in the forum or email them to me.