Populous Reincarnated
From Populous Wiki
Populous Reincarnated has been dedicated to the complete rebirth of Populous: The Beginning for several years by providing new innovations for the Populous community. First starting out with the creation of several new Mappacks (called New Worlds), then later creating a new home for the Populous community and then making a new matchmaker for the populous community to play on. Populous Reincarnated always has, and always will provide the ultimate experience for Populous players new and old alike. On top of casual games, tournaments are occasionally hosted by popre staff/members.
History
In 2001, two Populous players (Hepple and TheGabber) got together with the intent of creating new maps for Populous Online. During this time, Hepple worked out the structure of the Populous level files and wrote one of the first Map Editors for the game. This Map Editor was kept from the public to ensure that only decent maps could be played online, or so that was the original intent. As New Worlds began to grow, so did TheGabber and Hepple's success in the Populous community. Hepple left soon after he made an early release of his Map Editor, but TheGabber and 1/4lb worked together on Populous New Worlds. TheGabber focused exclusively on making maps wheras 1/4lb worked on their website. This website stayed around until 2002 when they moved their site to Strategy Planet and became Populous Reincarnated. During this time, New Worlds began to grow increasingly popular. 1/4lb left the Populous Reincarnated team and was later replaced by the current webmaster, IncaWarrior.
In 2003, a programmer by the name of Alacn emerged on the scene with the first release of a 3D Map Editor. This 3D editor did not actually save maps at the time, but it would modify maps loaded into the editor's engine. Alacn joined Populous Reincarnated in late 2003 and provided them with new capabilities far beyond what anyone could have predicted. Alacn was responsible for developing a displacement editor (used to change the land textures of Populous), as well as a Resolution Changer to allow people to run the game at any legitimate screen resolution of their choosing. That same year, Alacn wrote the Populous Reincarnated Matchmaker, which is the most popular Matchmaker in use today. Shortly after Alacn joined in, TheGabber asked TedTycoon to produce a Pallete Editor to edit the landscape/object colours so new Mods could be developed. Khickman joined the team to help TheGabber with the production of new maps and sign new ones made by fans. On January 8, 2004, Electronic Arts pulled the plug on their Populous online server, causing Populous Reincarnated to host their own service. This is the service utilized by the Populous Reincarnated Matchmaker (one of Alacn's biggest contributions to the game). As time went on, Alacn completed work on the Map Editor. It became the first real publicly used and accepted Map Editor because it was the first program which actually edited the maps, objects and the header files at the same time. As a result, more and more Mappacks have been put in production for people to play, providing a bigger interest in Map Making for Populous.
Over the course of 2004-2006, Populous Reincarnated has done many things for the the Populous community. Some of the larger contributions would include the built-in leagues table, made by ProtonageNet, which allows players to compete against eachother by total points from won games. They have also hosted several tournaments including a team tournament and several individual tournaments.
Staff
Populous Reincarnated's most important contributors have ultimately been everyone involved with them at one point or another. Some of the high points would be IncaWarrior and 1/4lb for their work on the Populous Reincarnated websites, TheGabber and Hepple for their work on the first maps, TedTycoon for creating the first Pallete Editor and other utilities, Protonagenet for designing the Leagues table, Khickman for becoming a Mappack Signer, CDPlayer for all of his provided publicity of the game, Alacn for his numerous contributions, and a few others.
Moderators Included into this category are the main Admins as well....TheGabber, IncaWarrior, Alacn and ProtonageNet. Other "Moderators" include cdplayer_TA, Seabass, RuthlesSpy, Walhallah. The latter three moderators work behind the scenes, usually on the forums.
Contributions
Populous Reincarnated has provided the following innovations for the Populous community:
- Populous Reincarnated Matchmaker
- Populous 3D Map Editor (with included script compiler)
- Populous Patch V1.03 - All fixes from version 1.01 plus some additional fixes (see: here).
- Populous New Worlds - A whole new set of maps made by TheGabber
- Displacement Editor - A utility which allows users to edit the textures in the land.
- PopCheck - For checking files for corruption in the game.
- PopFix - To fix Populous registry files.
- PopRestore - To replace modified game content with the original files from the Populous CD.