This document was originally written to remember the old events we had. It begins from December of 2003.

2004:

In December of 2003 we joined to the world of Populous. I had my first match at midnight on Linked Isles, i was yellow. In the first days of 2004 we joined Populous Reincarnated. This was good because EA ended up closing their servers. We started making maps and the first Devil Worlds pack was released in February, at the same time as Dragon Worlds. We had race with the Dragon Team to see who’s mappack ended up being more popular. We were happy in the end and started making a new mappack called Crazy Worlds, this ended up having a lot of mistakes, so nobody liked it; it ended up going unreleased and we started making more mappacks. In the middle of the summer, this site had been launched with a shared forum of Populous Dawn of a New age. This was cool and funny at the same time. We decided to make a shared website, although JJ wanted to continue his own. This ended up causing two different sites running with same name. Soon after we started the Devil Gallery – The online screenshot album. We thought this would be a simple gallery but it has ended up becoming the biggest one. The main traffic came when the entire Populous game was available for download, but someone (I know of his name but wont tell it to the public) asked EA whether the game can be distributed; they answered: NO. This caused the most popular download location to be taken down. But still good responses come from people. To quote: “I am writing to you to let you know that I would reccomend your website above all the other populous websites. It’s clear, easy to use, and i found all the populous files I needed almost instantly once I got here.”.

2005:

This was the wrost year in the site’s history. The number of visitors went to half, but this was not the biggest problem we had. We had to find a new server for the site, as the one we hosted our site on decided to only permit traffic inside Hungary, and since this is an International site, it was not acceptable for us. We had to move to a very slow server with tons of ads, also with a very bad looking address. The site was mostly inactive and had very low ammount of visitors. In the end of the year, a good friend John gave us webspace, where the site is still hosted today. This was a big day in the site’s histroy, as it got its third name Populous Online, and the 4th design. Also in the last days of the year, the unique Video Gallery has been started.

2006:

The site is now operating as Populous Online, has a unique address in the JohnNet network, but it had most of the contents out of date. The map making guide I wrote by my hand was also outdated, because more powerful tools were released such as Alacn’s World Editor which is the most popular mapeditor today. So, we had a clean-up, and the half of the site was erased. The site was alive, but not very contentful. This was the year when Populous Downloader XP Live ended up being highly developed.

2007:

Our most active year in history. We have started to make the new Devil Worlds Series, now known as the Solar System of Devil Worlds, and Populous Downloader 6. Most of our content was made in this year, and yet the year the most visitors came. The site got a new “face”, and many changes.

2008:

JohnNet undergoes another change, Populous Online tops the rankings in most active site* (stat services provided by hosting)! Also, Populous Downloader 6 is now completed, and hopefully it will not need another big change until Windows 7. Also the Solar System of Devil Worlds is on its way, including some bonus map, with unique storyline, fun new levels to play and new cool terrain and sky (Software Render compatible). Also a yet secret thing is planned after the five mappacks (as the part of the Devil Worlds Player which is in development), so keep your eyes on the site! We have set up new visiting records this year, so we can say, this is our best year at the moment. But stay tuned, as long as Populous alive, this site will alive!

2009:

The Solar System of Devil Worlds is now released, and we are working on a surprise. We will reveal it soon. Right after the beginning, we kicked off May 2008 from the best month position, now January 2009 is the best. The rest of the new and improved Devil Worlds has been released as a Populous Reincarnated MatchMaker mappack but the 5th mappack has been dropped. This was the year when the Single Player challenge has been announced but progressed very slowly because of the problems a single player level makes. I’ve studied scripting languages but PopScript is totally different.

2010:

It was an inactive year. We’ve put our projects on hold then resumed it – there was always a reason to not work on them. After the summer I’ve finally learnt the PopScript language and now I can do many cool things using top-secret script commands not documented anywhere – most likely because they’ve never been used by Bullfrog. The public beta of the first 8 levels is finally started and we’ve received lots of feedbacks in the first days. This was the year when – after 6 major versions (version 4 was never released) and 6 years of service Populous Downloader has been shut down. The reason is that the Populous Reincarnated team (finally, after 6 years) implemented the automatic mappack and skin downloading feature into the MatchMaker. While it had other features like a restorer and a skin maker I’ve decided to shut it down and release those as seperate programs – they were never completed.

2011:

By looking at the available web-stats, Populous Online is still one of the most popular Populous fan-sites around on the internet. A lot of the old sites have since diminished or had their hosting cancelled. We felt that it was now a good time to give the site a refresh, using a new back-end system and a new, simple design. Welcome to Populous Online, version 7. Populous is still very popular today, 7 years after EA officially shut down the MatchMaker, so we’ve decided to complete the Devil Worlds project whatever comes. It’s progressing very well and hopefully it won’t be put on hold for a long time again.