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.

New Map Pack

Friday July 13, 2007 | by IncaWarrior

User Submitted Worlds 2:

The first User Submitted Worlds were quite popular, but they involved sending in a picture of what you wanted your map to be like and then waiting for TheGabber to make them for you. However these days we have ALACN's World Editor which is a fairly easy to use program availible to everyone.

So for this map pack, all of you who have a great idea for a map, but don't want to make an entire map pack, you can make your perfect map and just submit it to the site where it can be included in this map pack!

To submit you map, just fill out the form on the linked page and include just the .dat file. For the description please include all information about what heads have and any cool effects or other notable things that people should know about it.

Everyone can view the submitted maps (a picture of the map is automatically generated when you submit the file), and then comment about the maps on the thread about new maps in our forums.

Moderator Elections:

Ok, so the moderator elections really started a while ago, and congratulations to [TDM]Smudgey on being appointed as a moderator.

But I'm still looking for new moderators, so go and vote for the player you think would make the best moderator on the voting page.

More information on the subject is availilibe on the thread in the forums.

New Matchmaker Features!

Monday May 28, 2007 | by IncaWarrior

PopMM 1.3.0.2 Released:

The latest version of the Populous Matchmaker includes several new features, and comes with an auto-update program which checks for updates every time you start the matchmaker.

The new options include the ability to sort names alphabetically, or now by rank.

There are also a few major improvements with options to set the graphics mode to hardware or software before you start the game, as well as set the default resolution (including many sizes).

NOTE: If you use PopRes (Resolution Changer), please restore it before playing!

Finally we have included options to fix flickering mouse issues, and the boxy texture problems as well.

Tournaments:

Smudgey has been coordinating several tournaments. Information and updates on those tournaments is included in the welcome message when you login to the matchmaker.

IRC channel:

As some people have expressed disapointment at not being able to join the main Populous room (you wouldn't want to anyways, it's kind of messy without the matchmaker interface), I have created another IRC channel that people can connect to just to chat. To connect to it, you need an IRC client (such as mIRC). Then connec to the server irc.freequest.net, and join the room #populous.