Devil Worlds promotion for Your Freedom!

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As most of you have probably noticed, the first preview video of Grass Worlds were uploaded in these days. While it doesn’t contain anything inappropirate and should be watched by everyone, I’ve recently heard that some people can’t watch it because their country is censoring YouTube. It’s also common that schools blocks games for no reason so you can’t play Populous during your free time. The good news is that there is a solution for this. The Your Freedom software can create a tunnel through your censored connection to an unrestricted server so you can watch our videos, play Populous and do whatever you couldn’t do before. And we have a special limited time offer for the visitors of Populous Online. If you go to the Your Freedom website by this link, download the Your Freedom client and register an account, I can offer you a free week of the premium Enhanced Freedom package. To learn more about Your Freedom and how you can use it just go to their website or download this user guide.

To qualify for the free premium week:

  • Go to the Your Freedom website from our website by following this link.
  • Register an account keeping the referer inact, you’ll need an account to use Your Freedom.
  • Download the Your Freedom client, configure your connection and connect at least once (your account will be a Free account once activated via the e-mail verification link so you can use the free low speed service instantly).
  • Send an e-mail to support@your-freedom.net including “Devil Worlds Promo” in the subject line.
  • I’ll upgrade your account within 48 hours.

You don’t have to enter any payment details, this promotion is not a recurring subscription! After 7 days your account will be downgraded automatically to a Free account.

If you can’t access the website using these links send an e-mail to support@your-freedom.net, we’ll help you.

Classic Worlds 1.5

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While working on Grass Worlds we learnt new things with the scripts and got Populous to do things normally you can’t see. I’ve used those new techniques in Grass Worlds and found that they performs better than the Classic Worlds scripts and produces fewer problems. I’ve decided to change the Classic Worlds scripts to work with the new techniques and for example on Legend of Kikikini 90% of the problems simply went away, for example Matak now builds enough boats in time and will always have space for the training huts and Dakini can rebuild properly after a stronger attack. But that’s not all.

Update: The patch is released. It’s suggested that you turn on Auto check for updates to be notified when patches are available. If you’ve opted in to the Beta tests it will also warn you when the Beta test of Grass Worlds opens.

All the changes:

  • Changed the scripts on Matak Attack, the Lights of Darkness, Land of the Wilds and Legend of Kikikini to use the new building technique. They now have a better base, boats/balloons and troops faster.
  • On Lights of Darkness Dakini will cast some spells on your old base when worshipping the obelisk that starts the random earthquake events all around the planet.
  • On Land of the Wilds Chumara is now rebuilding properly after Dakini dies.
  • Small trees on Land of the Wilds got a different texture – will be used in future blocks too.
  • On Legend of Kikikini a secondary tree texture is introduced on swampy areas. Most trees of such type worths extra wood. This technique will be used in Grass Worlds too with different textures. See attached screenshot.
  • Ghost Army (called Illusion in Devil Worlds) is introduced for the player as a Guest Spell (the AIs already had it earlier). Like other Guest Spells it won’t be available permanently but only on certain levels and you can’t charge it, you can get it either from a stone head or your ally can grant you shots when they feel that you need it. This doesn’t affect Multiplayer games played via the launcher, in Multiplayer mode the Illusion spell is available as a normal spell and can be turned on or off by the host in the Restrictions panel. Please note that the launcher updates the spell panel every minute so the question mark might not appear as soon as you start the level.
  • On Legend of Kikikini Chumara – like the other tribes – will not shrink down the stone head as soon as you start to worship it but when you got a shot of the new Illusion spell. See attached screenshots.
  • Software Rendered mode texture fixes applied on custom terrain styles. Hut plans in World View are now visible and hut plans placed to the wrong place no longer turns green on some styles.Screenshot

Devil Worlds Top10

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I’ve just got some interesting info from Populous Reincarnated. The most played Devil Worlds levels via the MatchMaker (games via the Launcher is not counted):

  1. DW4: Swamp of Kikikini
  2. DW3: Double-Love
  3. DW2: Four Cats
  4. DW1: Two on Four
  5. DW3: Totem of Destruction
  6. DW1: Devil Craters
  7. DW2: Tree-Way
  8. DW2: Grassy Castles
  9. DW3: At Your Base
  10. DW1: King of the Hill

New video

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While I know that most of you are waiting for the Block 2 preview videos, it’s still being recorded. Most of the levels don’t have a terrain style yet and without it it’s impossible to make a video. Meanwhile I’ve just found a recorded match in my archive. I still remember that game and since it’s now possible to upload long videos I decided to share it with you in it’s full length. There are lots of cool tactics and even some mistakes in this video other players can learn from. Follow this link to watch the video or click the Video Gallery link on the right side of the page to go directly to the Populous Online YouTube Channel for more cool videos. If you have a YouTube account you can subscribe to be notified when new videos – including the Block 2 previews – are uploaded.

Launcher 1.1 is out

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The launcher that supports the BETA features is out. There is a new checkbox in the Options menu that lets you to opt in or out of the public BETA tests of Devil Worlds. There are 3 states that the launcher supports: Closed, Preparation and Open. When the BETA is Closed you can’t access the new checkbox in the Options menu, in the Preparation phase you can opt in by using the checkbox but no content will be downloaded to your PC. When the BETA is Open the actual content are downloaded to your PC via the Update system and you can play the new levels. When in this phase a Survey screen will be displayed so you can easily share your options with us. The current phase is Preparation so you can opt in and start testing as soon as the public BETA opens. Since the launcher is not Internet-dependent it caches this state and only updates it when checking for updates. If you have Auto check for updates disabled the state will not update automatically, you must click the Update button first.

Update: An obsolete code was activated that displayed the Survey screen with the Classic Worlds levels even if you didn’t opted in for the beta. A hotfix is released to correct this issue (obsolete codes were entirely removed making the launcher a few kilobytes smaller).

Other changes:

  • The nickname on the IP Game page is now stored so you don’t have to type it again.
  • The launcher no longer hangs when it can’t start for any reason, it displays an error message instead.
  • Few small corrections.

Changes in the MP mappack:

  • Neighbors Released, now you can play 15 Classic Worlds levels from the Classic Worlds page. One more is still under development.
  • Inferno Duel restyled to use the terrain style of Lights of Darkness. Since nothing is changed on the actual level it’s safe to play against someone with an older MP mappack but please note that the levels not included in the older MP mappack will not start, the player with the older version can’t click Ready to let the host start.

Progress Report

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It’s been 2 weeks since the last post, sorry about that. There is no much to tell you at the moment apart from the Grass Worlds progress. It’s progressing very well and faster than I expected earlier, the first two levels are almost ready (requires little balance changes only), the heightmaps of them is available on the SP Packs page. Keep watching as the levels progresses even more heightmaps will be available. The Public BETA test will be open once all eight levels reached the Beta Ready status. It’s open for everyone, all you have to do is to wait for the next launcher update (will be available this week), go to the Options menu and tick the BETA participation checkbox to opt in.

It’s suggested that you turn on the Auto check for updates option too so the launcher will warn you when an update is available (including the BETA pack). Note however that participating in the BETA test will show you a survey screen after you quit the game. It’s entirely anonymous and optional but all your comments are very helpful for us to find and fix bugs and balance the levels. All comments sent via the survey will be public and can be read by anyone, also the most helpful ones will be included in news posts with answers just like we did in the Classic Worlds BETA.

Grass Worlds development: The first heightmap and screenshots

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The development of Grass Worlds is already started and as a result the heightmap of the first level is now available on the Single Player Challenge page. I’ve also uploaded 5 screenshots that features the new and improved Grass style that will be used in the Multiplayer pack. Check them out here. The level name is Help From Nowhere, you’ll see why on the first video that will feature the first 3 levels soon.

Devil Worlds updates

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An update pack has been released. The following has been changed:

Launcher:

  • Added a 2 seconds delay between file requests from the server – should get rid the Connection closed gracefully error.
  • If an error occurs during update or loading of the IP Game screen it returns to the main menu and no longer hangs the program.
  • In case the launcher can’t check for updates it no longer displays the update is available message.
  • The Update button is now greyed out until the server responds – if it does not responds the button will be grey forever, prevents starting an update progress if the server is unavailable.

If the launcher can’t update itself because of the Connection closed gracefully error but the launcher update progress has started you can extract the launcher.zip file manually downloaded to your Populous folder to update the launcher. If it stucks while downloading mappack updates please download launcher.zip from this link, replace the old launcher and start the update progress again to complete the mappack updates.

Single Player mappack:

  • On Land of the Wilds when you killed the Chumara shaman before she could Landbridge to you the script stopped and you were stuck on the level. Now a backdoor is created by the Gods before the second attack attempt so you no longer stuck on the level. This also happens if the Landbridge was successful giving you an extra challenge if you didn’t killed them after their first attack.
  • On Legend of Kikikini there were 4 in 1 chance that the Conversation messages dropped were disappeared instantly. It’s because the scripts runs independently from each other and kills the messages in different time patterns. Now the message killing mechanism is only activated when a message is actually dropped by that script so the other scripts won’t kill it and it’s stopped once the message is killed.
  • Corrected few texts to make it more clear for certain people.

The following multiplayer levels has been released: Land of the Wilds 2 and 4 Players version, Small Islands, Inferno Duel and Two on Four. The heightmaps has been updated on the Classic Worlds page. At the moment Inferno Duel uses the style of the old Evil Land. As soon as the new style is made during the development of Grass Worlds it will be replaced. Only 2 levels is missing from the Classic Worlds pack, as soon as it’s ready it will be submitted to Populous Reincarnated to replace the old mappack. Please note that due to the size limits the Populous Reincarnated mappack will not include all styles.

The development period of Block 2: Grass Worlds will officially begin at Wednesday (October 12). Public Beta is expected before the end of the year. As soon as the first few levels reaches to a state we can show it for the public a video will be uploaded to our YouTube channel, as we did earlier with Classic Worlds.

Update: The initial SP mappack has been shrinked by removing 4 unused landscape styles, the size has been decreased by around 3,6 MB. This change will not affect people already have the mappack (because the launcher only supports adding new files and changing existing ones, it doesn’t support deleting) but people downloading the mappack for the first time will not download the unused styles. We’ll most likely use those style spaces in future blocks so they’ll be replaced, no garbage will be left in your game.

Server Speed

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A rather large load on the domain has been lifted tonight from a website that had no longer been required by the users. This results in a rather poorly managed MySQL server being taken off the system.

Bring on the speed! (Within reason)

First updates

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The first SP mappack update is released. Changes:

  • Fixed the first 3 levels, they now don’t crash and appears on the list properly.
  • On Power of Faith Chumara now attacks more than once, also the preachers teleported to the COR earlier now teleports behind the little hill where the obelisk was risen.
  • On Lights of Darkness when you destroyed the prison too early the Matak shaman didn’t had enough mana to cast the tornadoes so she just stand still and do nothing near the Dakini towers. It’s now corrected. Also Dakini now builds a Firewarrior Training Hut.
  • On Legend of Kikikini Chumara and Matak now builds the initial base properly, also Chumara now LandBridges to the Swamp vault when she LandBridges the connection Matak erodes (did anyone noticed that only Chumara LandBridges when needed? It’s because only the Chumara knows this spell until Block 2 level 3 – you’ll see it why on this level).

The first Launcher update is also released. Changes:

  • The Updates screen displayed the available MP mappack updates instead of SP mappack updates in the SP updates row. It’s now corrected.
  • The launcher now cleans up after the game is closed to save disk space.
  • Host and Join multiplayer game, Back to SP menu and Update buttons were only clickable on the text, now the entire buttons are clickable.
  • When the mappack was unavailable the launcher displayed the story of the Classic Worlds, now it displays a warning about the mappack is missing.
  • The pictures of unavailable blocks are now displayed as grey images instead of entirely hiding them.
  • Memory usage fix: Images on windows are loaded into the memory only when the window is displayed for the first time.

The MP mappack update will late because of technical reasons but will include 3 new levels instead of just one: Land of the Wilds (2 and 4 players version) and Two on Four. The heightmaps will be updated on the website shortly after the update is released. We’re also planned to release more Bonus Multiplayer levels in the future from the dropped Devil Worlds mappacks that won’t be released on Populous Reincarnated (good thing that I’ve found them in the archive). After all we have 120 Multiplayer level spaces left (we have 49 SP and 81 MP levels planned for now that totals 130, Populous can read 250 with our memory hack). I don’t think we’ll use them all but some extra levels fits in.

 

If you found a bug please let us know, either post a comment or send me an e-mail. Grass Worlds will activate the launcher’s internal Survey system too. Please don’t report that the multiplayer levels crash or don’t start until you sure that all players using the same MP mappack, the launcher displays the version on the main screen. If you have a permanent Internet connection the best is to enable Auto check for updates so you’ll get a message when an update is available.