Cold Worlds BETA is open!

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The time has arrived, now you can play some of the Cold Worlds levels. As I promised, the Beta has opened with 4 levels, the first 3 and the 5th, but the game will number them in order, this is because Populous loads them without the gaps. As soon as a new level is completed it will be added to the Beta pack immediately so there will be frequent updates. The changelog and known bugs will be written here.

Known bugs:

  • On The Great Wall of Ice, Chumara is using the Land Bridge spell even after the wall no longer repairs and there is a way out.
  • On Wrath of the God, in a very very rare case, nobody attacks you for a long period of time (due to the randomness). This probably won’t be fixed if it occurs very rarely, but it will if it occurs too often. Also the chances of the three different kinds of attacks and the Human Factor itself might be adjusted further.
  • On Tribal Time Bomb the pathfinding of the AIs is very poor and may render the Chumara unable to attack you – will be fixed with small terrain changes.
  • On Wrath of the God and Tribal Time Bomb there’s no lead out event, you simply win the game when the conditions met. They will be added along with the FlyBys in a later patch.

What’s NOT a bug: On The Great Wall of Ice, when Chumara dies Dakini stop attacking and become passive. This is not a bug and it’s the intended behaivor, simulating that Chumara is hypnotising the Dakini followers.

WARNING! On The Great Wall of Ice if you do a massive damage to the wall with cheats (without cheats it’s not possible to damage it that much) massive object overflow may occur leading to a crash or unexpected game behaivor, like spells don’t cast.

To participate in the Beta test with the Launcher, go to the Options menu and tick the Allow BETA updates checkbox (if you can’t tick it click Updates to update the cached Beta state). Once ticked click Updates to download the Beta pack. When the Cold Worlds logo lit you got the Beta pack.

To participate in the Beta test with the Mod Manager, select The Solar System of Devil Worlds BETA mod on the main screen, download and play it like any regular mod. If you can’t see it ensure that downloading of new mods and skins is enabled in the Options menu. If you’ve upgraded from the Launcher during a previous Beta it’s also possible that the old Beta pack file has stuck, in this case go to the SPPacks folder, delete popdwbeta.pop and then restart the Mod Manager, the Beta mod should appear now. Please note that you must have the regular Devil Worlds mod installed and the Library must be updated to version 2 in order to play the Beta mod, otherwise “Dependency missing” error will occur during the launch progress.

The Wrath of the God

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First, please apologise for no news. I had exams and I also had a business with a company to do their website. Now, as the exams are over and the website is ready, I’m back to Populous and I proudly announce the next level of Devil Worlds: The Wrath of the God. As the name suggests, it’s a Godmode level so it sounds easy for first, but the truth is that this is the most challenging level in Devil Worlds yet. You have (almost) all spells and you can cast them anywhere, but the goal is different this time: you don’t have to defeat your enemies, in fact, you can’t fully kill them and any attempt to do it is just waste your mana. Your goal is to protect a small base from the invading enemies. They attack from everywhere and for the first time in the history of Populous, you don’t know where they gonna strike next. You have limited ability to rebuild so any damage you get is fatal and can lead to a defeat, but if you can save your base you’ll have a nice ammount of spells to use later. What I mean by “you don’t know where they gonna strike next”? The AI is fully random! Most Populous levels, including the current levels of Devil Worlds are deterministic, so whatever you do the AI will always do the same. It’s because of the limitation of the game. There is a way to get a random number (and some Devil Worlds levels use this), but the seed is constant so you’ll get the same numbers every time you start the game so the AI will do the same in all games. But the player won’t. So I’ve introduced the secret Human Factor, the thing that delays the AI by a few game turns depending on some script-readable stats of the player, leading the random number to differ in most, if not all games. I won’t reveal the algorighm of the Human Factor as it could be abused to always get an easy setting if you know what the script looks for. Later, when all Block 3 levels are in the public beta, I’ll patch the old levels that already use the constant random number to use the Human Factor, bringing some randomness in some levels. It won’t affect evented free for all levels, like the Legend of Kikikini and Evil Land where all attacks and events are pre-planned. It’s very hard to sync the scripts on levels where everyone attacks everyone. I might try to find a way for this (I have ideas but I have to test them), increasing the replay value of all levels, but the priority now is to get Block 3 done.

The Great Wall of Ice

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Early in the morning, we recorded and uploaded a video from the level 18, called “The Great Wall of Ice”. On this map, the Chumara is defended by an indestructible great wall risen and guarded by they evil God. As the Matak promised, you are enemies for now, so you have to defend your base against them and the Dakini while you try to find a way to enter and destroy the Chumara settlement. The Dakini Shaman is still imprisoned on a frozen planet and her people are controlled by the Chumara. If you are interested to watch the video, click on the image below.
[HD]Populous: The Solar System of Devil Worlds Block 3 Level 2 Preview (Level 18)





Also let me write a little sneak preview about the next level (level19):
The Blue Shaman was left this planet and called her god to help her people. Fortunately she returns and the Chumara have to face with the wrath of the god. On this level, you have to defend your base against the attacks of the Chumara, and the Dakini. When the countdown is over, Taitaki, the evil god will destroy the blue base. But if you survive as long as you can, you will win!

Old Launchers

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It’s got to our attention that serveral people are still using a very old version of the Devil Worlds Launcher. Those were used in the Classic Worlds Beta (with Single Player Manager at the top) are no longer working because the update system is broken. Launchers used from the Classic Worlds Final can update itself to the latest version by starting the update progress 3 times, this is due to incompatibility between the versions. The oldest supported version is 1.4, older versions no longer receive mappack updates. However, you should migrate to the Mod Manager as the last update the Launcher will receive is the Cold Worlds Beta, the final version will be released for the Mod Manager only.

Anonymous ratings

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From now on you can rate mods without a Populous Online account. The same rules applies: Only one rating per person (PC) is accepted. If you attempt to rate a mod again the old rating will be replaced by the new one. The detection is not IP based so multiple ratings are accepted from the same IP. We reserve the right to delete ratings and restore the registration-only system if we detect cheating on a massive scale.

Updates in the YouTube channel

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As the subscribers of the Populous Online YouTube Channel probably already noticed, there are some updates. There weren’t much updates since 8 months, most of the previews of Block 2 were also missing. So I’ve been re-cut the video, recorded new parts and uploaded it. It’s a bit long, exactly as long as the entire Populous soundtrack, so you can hear it during the video, including the menu music. But that’s not all, you can also see the first preview video of Block 3, level 17: Cold Welcome. You weren’t see this level in the live previews. I’ll upload the previews of new levels as soon as the level reaches the stage of public showcase so subscribe to our YouTube channel today to be notified immediately. There’s also one more thing to notice: Users has started to make Devil Worlds videos. To feature them in the official channel I’ve created a playlist “Devil Worlds unofficial” and collected those videos there. If you got a video I didn’t found yet just drop a comment here with the video link and I’ll add it right away.

To compensate the delay of Block 3 we’ll open the Public Beta with 5 levels (the cold ones) and add the rest (the asteroids) later. Hope to see you soon as a Beta test participant once again.

An update has been released for the Mod Manager and the Devil Worlds mod (Mod Manager version only), changes:

  • Skin reloading is much faster.
  • Open Skin support for those interested in making a skin. We’ll offer you a template skin soon that you can edit.
  • Fixed a bug that caused the Mod Manager to think that the skin is corrupt if you exited from The Beginning window last time.
  • Fixed Allies Torn Apart, now the Dakini will kill the Matak Shaman as intended.
  • A well placed backdoor to Dakini could break ISC on Evil Land, it’s now been corrected.
  • Dakini’s Stone Head will now rise much later, 15 minutes before they actually going to worship it on Evil Land so you can’t steal it early.
  • Small balance change on Evil Land: The Chumara totem will now rise 2 minutes earlier but you have 2 extra minutes to get it – this gives you a little advantage to prepare for the fight but also increases the frequency of the reappear.
  • Adjused ISC on Allies Torn Apart and Evil Land to use half of the CPU time used earlier, improving performance on old PCs.

Hotfix for Land of the Wilds

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It’s rare that we have to touch old contents, but now it’s time for an update for Level 7 of Devil Worlds. A Populous script bug (most likely it is, but it’s not been verified yet) caused the Land Bridge sometimes to not trigger. Now I’ve patched the level to use triggers instead of script commands to cast the spell so it should be always triggered properly from now on. The hotfix has been released for both the Devil Worlds Launcher and the Mod Manager for Normal mode. Since this level works in a different way in Hard mode the patch only affects Normal mode. If you’re using the Mod Manager you can report bugs and send us suggestions by clicking Feedbacks on the main screen.

The detailed level information page is also been updated to reflect the new object info. The gameplay and story of the level weren’t changed.

Update: A Mod Manager hotfix has also been released, fixing the Public Game Monitor window when it’s been minimized, also fixed the bug that allowed downloading of Devil Worlds while in offline mode (it’s been failed because the Mod Manager didn’t know the version and resulted a corrupt mappack file). A new option has been added to the Options menu that allows you to set the Public Game Monitor window Always on Top and also updated the hint texts of some options.

Devil Worlds BETA is over – Support of the Devil Worlds Launcher is ending soon

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The Devil Worlds BETA has been ended. The Hard Mode of Block 1 has been merged to the main Mod while the Block 3 previews are no longer available… Don’t worry, they’ll be back soon with fully functional AIs. Also the following changes has been made to other components:

  • Default and Galaxy skin: Removed the images of the Help document and the old Survey screen, making them about 40% smaller.
  • Default skin and Mod Manager: Small UI tweaks and fixes in Plain skin mode.
  • Mod Manager: Fixed a crash when Populous don’t start for any reason in Standalone Levels mode.
  • Images of Standalone Levels are now cached to RAM (both Local and Online) so you can check levels faster and decide which one to play – this also reduces server load and data sent through your network. The cache is erased when you return to the main screen.

The Beta mod is no longer available via the Mod Manager and the Beta entry has been closed in the Launcher. Stay tuned, the AI tests of Block 3 will start soon, expected availability is around the middle of May.

Please note that the support of the Devil Worlds Launcher will end soon. You’ll be able to participate in the Beta of Block 3 with it but the final version won’t be delivered for the Launcher. As soon as the Mod Manager Beta is over the Launcher will update itself to the final version of the Mod Manager but you should update as soon as you can since it offers you a variety of extra features like other cool Mods, Levels, Skins and Open Folder for testing your own levels and play non-Mod Manager Mods. However if you’re not interested in playing Mods other than Devil Worlds you can disable the downloading of new Mods in the Options menu.

Mod Manager Beta 2.5 is out

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It’s the last major beta release before the final version with extra features and bug fixes. The full changelog:

  • Open Folder is now available. It’s a special testing area for developers to try mods just like if they were in the Mod Manager. It’s also useable to play mods that weren’t submitted to the main mods area, like Age of Chaos. A detailed tutorial about how to use this feature will be available soon, until that read the config.txt within SPPacks\openfolder
  • Public Game Monitor. If you’re hosting a Public Game and waiting for players now you can do whatever you want with your computer without missing the players who joined your game. Just minimize the game, the Mod Manager will display the current number of players and the game status. It also play sound by default when a new player join your game but this can be disabled in the Options menu. Please note that this feature will only alert you when players join via the Public Game list, Direct joins are not registered by the server so they don’t count as players.
  • A bug has been fixed that allowed you to return to the main screen while the game was still running.
  • Fixed the Public Game registration and un-registration problems with The Beginning and Undiscovered Worlds, now you can play the original game properly via the Mod Manager.
  • Fixed a bug caused I/O errors when clicking through Standalone Levels too quickly.
  • Querying the online Mods, Skins and Standalone Levels list is now three times faster because it’s done with one query instead of three.
  • Changed the annoying popup notification of new Standalone Levels to a download icon that appears next to the level heightmap.

In addition, check out the two new Standalone Levels submitted by our most active developer Impboy. Please note that the order of the level list is depending on your file system (the order of the list is the order the Mod Manager finds the files and the Online list is appended to the end), so after downloading a new content it may move up above already installed levels, it’s normal.

Milestone

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It’s time to announce that we reached the magic number of 1000 files in our Image Gallery. It’s time to check it out! You can contribute aswell by uploading your screenshots, just click Upload Files in the top navigation bar. Please upload jpeg, gif and png only, there can be problems with bmp (pop takes screenshots in bmp). If you’re uploading a screenshot of a Mod Manager level or mod type the level name to the Level Name field so when your screenshot is apporved it will appear on the detailed info page of the level.
Additionally a hotfix has been released for the Mod Manager fixing the File Error dialog when hosting IP games, also now it returns you to the section where you launched the game upon exiting. It now also downloads the level descriptions for new Standalone Levels. Also a new Standalone Level is released, one of the “minimaps” from the long gone Populous Downloader so now you can have fun in an infinite uber hole once again. It can be played in LAN Multiplayer too (just like in the original) however since the Standalone Levels feature is designed for Single Player levels you can’t play it via the Public Games service or direct IP game.