Similarities Between PA and Populous

I recently ran across this amazing old game that I played a long time ago, and I can't help but notice some similarities with what Uber is trying to accomplish with PA. Isn't it amazing what that game was capable off (on a technical level) at the time (1998)?

Populous was interesting no doubt. I kind of felt like Age of Mythology was a spiritual successor to Populous.

Edit: I just took a look at Populous 3. Did not ever see that game. Heh. It's planetary nature is impressive.

It is a very good game (in my top 10), limited multiplayer but excellent if easy single player. Crucial to its longevity for me is that each level is timed, I have a notepad of times that comes out whenever I feel like going at it again.

In most ways it is very different to pa, but the spherical map is the important similarity. I can't stress enough how different this will make pa feel to its predecessors.

If you liked Populus then you should like this http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/22c ... s?ref=card which I also missed out on the funding for because I didn't discover Kickstarter until early this year grr.

Peter's report card from the last few years has not been one that I find inspiring.
Constant lofty promises. Constant failure to deliver on those promises.

I hold little hope that he is able to re-capture the lightning-in-a-bottle that was Populous: The Beginning.

I adored that game. I'd still play it if it weren't so horrendously optimised for todays PCs :cry:

I am one of those lucky enough to have the joy of waiting for populous 3 to be released. A true gem, it was! Even the cinematics were stunning back in the days. The outro was bloody epic. I can still hear the Shaman's voice byte in my head when you give her commands.

Every single failure was under microsoft.

I am wary of damning every publisher the devil and every developer as a saint.

It is also worth noting that Peter left Bullfrog Productions before Populous: The Beginning (1998) to found Lionhead Studios (1997). His last project with the company was Dungeon Keeper.

Populous: The Beginning was the first in the series to be made without Populous' creator Peter Molyneux. And all better for it, IMO.

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Don't get me wrong. The man has vision. It's just he's not been able to deliver that vision for a long time... honestly if I may be so bold, since Black & White 1, everything Peter has produced has had lofty goals and fallen well short. I can not be 100% sure that the publisher was to blame in every case.

I reserve my ultimate judgement until after I see what Project Godus is like.

You're right, Fable is because Lionhead was in deep **** at the time and didn't have the funds to finish it. The Movies still turned out good somehow. Everything since has been Microsoft milking Fable.

You're damning him quickly without understanding the circumstances that caused these bad games. Everything he did before that was golden. And he hasn't done anything since. See a pattern here?

A little fact about Populous: The Beginning, it is not spherical. The game is a flat square game area that repeats, the view is just distorted to appear as it it's on a sphere. A number of older (and likely some newer) games do this, like the somewhat obscure Tetrisphere or the more popular Sonic 3 bonus stages. All gameplay still takes place in a normal flat game area. We had originally thought about doing this for PA but we realized this would make inter planetary stuff much more difficult and greater possibilities for confusion.

The topology of planets was discussed in this thread. I investigated Populous when wrapped rectangles were discussed and made this video to demonstrate a wrapped rectangle in populous.