Multiverse Version 3.4.1
The Multiverse Launcher has been quietly worked on over the past few months, with a number of exciting fixes and changes arriving that will improve your experience even more. On top of that, it’s creator has been working on a couple of projects that we’re teasing below.
Make sure to give the full patch notes a read below, because there are far too many for me to talk about in any detail.
Remember, to install this update you’ll need to run the updated installer:
>> Click here to download the Multiverse Launcher
WARNING: As always, your launcher settings will reset with the new version. When the launcher is opened for the first time it will crash and restart automatically, and any previous game saves will be unplayable.
Significant AI Improvements
You may not have noticed this, but the AI haven’t been building and expanding their tribes as well as they could have been. You’ll now find that other tribes will now build more than normal and they will build in different directions. Combined with the AI changes already implemented by the Multiverse Launcher, this is another successful step to creating a more enjoyable experience than the base game.
Saving Made Easier
It’s finally here folks! Your save files are now specific to whichever campaign that you’re playing. No longer do you have eight save files to use across 15+ campaigns, you now have eight save slots PER campaign.
You should know that installing a new version of multiverse makes your previous saves incompatible. Well if you didn’t, it’ll now be very apparent when you go to load your save file. You’ll see the “ver. mismatch” description that indicates as such, and you won’t be able to load the file. Previously you could load the file, which would load a corrupted game state, but now it simply won’t allow you.
And there were reports of a player’s toaster computer having issues with the autosave feature; you can now disable this in the launcher’s settings. Autosave feature? If you didn’t know, the game saves every 3 minutes of in-game time. You can load the most recent autosave by pressing CTRL+L.
Mouse Sensitivity Slider
As the Multiverse Launcher gets more popular, more issues tend to arise. Some players have sent reports of the mouse not performing as it should or as it does in other applications. To combat this, Toxicity has added a mouse sensitivity slider, which can be accessed in the in-game options menu.
Fog Revealed Upon Victory
Did you know that when an AI tribe surrenders (aka give up and sulk) and sends their entire population at your Shaman, their tribe is no longer hidden by fog? Well on top of that, as of version 3.4.1, when you have won a level, any and all fog will disappear, and you’ll be able to have a look around the globe to witness the devastation that your Shaman will have caused, or perhaps spot any secrets that you may have missed.
You can now also type ‘fog’ into the console (Tab+F11) to remove all fog. However, this is cheating!
Ascension: Chapter 2
Following the events of the civil war, a young Dakini Acolyte fled her home in fear for persecution on her life by the invading tribes. After a narrow escape she finds herself on an old and forgotten world of their ancestors, a time and place before corruption. As part of her challenge to become a shaman, she not only needs to purify herself from the flames of the past, but just like her tribe, become reborn and set out a new path that must ensure the survival and legacy of the Dakini.
The Witching Hour
A new and unique horror themed campaign that has been in the works since November of last year, designed to showcase what Multiverse is truly capable of. Witness never-before-seen features accompanied by audio narration courtesy of Keith himself! Divinity and Toxicity hope to publicly release this some time around July.
Significant AI Improvements
You may not have noticed this, but the AI haven’t been building and expanding their tribes as well as they could have been. You’ll now find that other tribes will now build more than normal and they will build in different directions. Combined with the AI changes already implemented by the Multiverse Launcher, this is another successful step to creating a more enjoyable experience than the base game.
Saving Made Easier
It’s finally here folks! Your save files are now specific to whichever campaign that you’re playing. No longer do you have eight save files to use across 15+ campaigns, you now have eight save slots PER campaign.
You should know that installing a new version of multiverse makes your previous saves incompatible. Well if you didn’t, it’ll now be very apparent when you go to load your save file. You’ll see the “ver. mismatch” description that indicates as such, and you won’t be able to load the file. Previously you could load the file, which would load a corrupted game state, but now it simply won’t allow you.
And there were reports of a player’s toaster computer having issues with the autosave feature; you can now disable this in the launcher’s settings. Autosave feature? If you didn’t know, the game saves every 3 minutes of in-game time. You can load the most recent autosave by pressing CTRL+L.
Mouse Sensitivity Slider
As the Multiverse Launcher gets more popular, more issues tend to arise. Some players have sent reports of the mouse not performing as it should or as it does in other applications. To combat this, Toxicity has added a mouse sensitivity slider, which can be accessed in the in-game options menu.
Fog Revealed Upon Victory
Did you know that when an AI tribe surrenders (aka give up and sulk) and sends their entire population at your Shaman, their tribe is no longer hidden by fog? Well on top of that, as of version 3.4.1, when you have won a level, any and all fog will disappear, and you’ll be able to have a look around the globe to witness the devastation that your Shaman will have caused, or perhaps spot any secrets that you may have missed.
You can now also type ‘fog’ into the console (Tab+F11) to remove all fog. However, this is cheating!
Ascension: Chapter 2
Following the events of the civil war, a young Dakini Acolyte fled her home in fear for persecution on her life by the invading tribes. After a narrow escape she finds herself on an old and forgotten world of their ancestors, a time and place before corruption. As part of her challenge to become a shaman, she not only needs to purify herself from the flames of the past, but just like her tribe, become reborn and set out a new path that must ensure the survival and legacy of the Dakini.
The Witching Hour
A new and unique horror themed campaign that has been in the works since November of last year, designed to showcase what Multiverse is truly capable of. Witness never-before-seen features accompanied by audio narration courtesy of Keith himself! Divinity and Toxicity hope to publicly release this some time around July.
In future updates...
- New units
- New world editor
Full Patch Notes
- Added a new Multiverse specific level format.
- Added ability to unlock the framerate cap during flybies.
- Added ability to disable tweeting sounds and sprites.
- Added ability to disable certain sounds emitted by persons.
- You may now customize additional effects through the in-game Mods menu.
- Added a Mouse Sensitivity slider in the game options menu.
- It is now much easier for scripters to toggle the background changes being made by the difficulty system.
- It is now possible to allow the Narrator to talk whilst the game is paused.
- Added ability to customize sounds of spell incantations during gameplay
- Fixed runtime error R6025.
- Fixed startup race condition that may have caused the game to crash on startup for some people.
- Fixed front end menu detour using a wrong pointer, resulting in dangerous undefined behaviour.
- Fixed custom music engine bug where queued music did not advance to the next track.
- Fixed custom music engine bug where the mainmenu background music would start playing once a nonlooped track finished playing ingame.
- Fixed a crash caused by eagles using sprites instead of 3D objects as their draw model.
- Fixed manually loaded scripts not unloading themselves upon level restart.
- Fixed scripting engine issue with thread mutex not unlocking.
- Fixed Raw Input memory leak.
- Fixed 1.01 buffer overflow occurring during people's victory dance.
- Fixed 1.01 bug where the Shaman would continue to reincarnate after activating God mode.
- Fixed 1.01 action table issue where the AI would fill up all of its free slots with building commands, leaving them unable to do anything else. This would be apparent when there was no building space left whilst trying to reach the set building threshold.
- Fixed 1.01 issue where the wrong sound sample was being played when issuing commands to multiple units.
- Fixed bug where saving and loading would randomly stop working.
- Fixed polygon rendering bug, where visible artifacts would appear and ultimately lead to crashes.
- Fixed some shady memory operations.
- Fixed struct packing mismatch, which would lead to memory corruption.
- Fixed crash occurring when removing persons from building queues.
- Fixed fighting crash occuring when a person would try to follow another invalid person.
- Fixed crash occurring when a person tried to split during fights.
- Fixed two crashes related to invalid persons displayed in World View.
- Fixed crash caused by persons inside invalid towers.
- Fixed object spawning command crashes.
- Fixed sky color deserialization crash.
- Fixed sky color not returning back to normal shade after firestorms.
- Fixed (possibly) AI preachers forcing during combat.
- Fixed bug where blasted wildmen were treated as allies.
- Fixed wildmen flying and falling animations.
- Fixed left/right arrow keys not working in the Solar System screen.
- Fixed bug where the AI would refuse to patrol with firewarriors when they had had no warriors trained.
- Fixed bug where people wouldn't cast shadows whilst in air.
- Fixed customizable alignment sounds (Evil/Good) not working with preachers.
- Fixed serialization of certain mods settings.
- Fixed bug with the minimap where it would fail to recognize texture paintings.
- The AI will now expand more and construct buildings in places they haven't before.
- The AI will now build in random directions once again.
- Save files are no longer shared between campaigns.
- Autosaving feature is now optional and toggleable (Settings -> Game Settings).
- It is no longer possible to load outdated save files.
- Several function optimizations were enabled.
- Improved Windows 7 compatibility by shipping xinput1_4.dll and xinput1_3.dll with the Multiverse installer.
- Fog will be revealed once the level is won.
- Added chat command "fog" that reveals the whole map.
- Solar System can no longer be accessed in Undiscovered Worlds.
- The game will no longer pre-emptively load the first level during startup.
- Default DoT Swamp settings has been buffed (damage and slow debuff).
- Cheat menu max. object count increased from 50 to 150.
- Many Lua scripting additions, changes and fixes.
- Poison effect no longer works on allies.
- Shielded units can no longer be poisoned.
- Damage over time Swamps can no longer be manually removed.
- Added lots more Lua scripting additions.
In other news...
Seasons: Spring
The final instalment of the Seasons saga has made a surprise appearance after being recently released to an unexpected audience. Promised to never be coming, it’s blown any expectations out of the water by being the first single-player campaign made for the Enhanced Edition of Populous: The Beginning.
It comes with a plethora of new features, one notably being the awesome new cut scenes and another being the different difficulty settings. The creators themselves had this to say about the difficulties:
This is the first time we’re using a difficulty system. Each level will have slightly altered AI and/or some minor changes to the map. Current season pack has 4 different difficulties to choose from:
Beginner – Easiest of all. AI doesn’t do much, game is generous to you and allies actually help.
Experienced – This is where game will start to sting a little. AI will be more aggressive, game is less generous to player, ally will not help you at all, as if they were helpful…
Veteran – Unfair. AI is even more aggressive towards the player because of their existence, they know you’re the one to be exterminated, not them. Game forgot how to be generous.
Honour – Nobody likes you, even game itself will only allow you to save once.
You can learn more about this campaign and about how to play it by visiting the Populous Reincarnated forum.
There’s also a video on The Beginning YouTube Channel showcasing the first level and its difficulties.
Devil Worlds Coming
Devil System: Chapter 1 has had a bunch of bug fixes that required the newest version of the Multiverse Launcher to be released. There will be a campaign page on the website within the next two weeks, allowing everyone to experience this unique 28-level campaign.
Robert Ashby v2.1 - New Languages
Thanks to user gba1990, there is now a Spanish narrator included in the Robert Ashby mod. And if Spanish ain’t your thing, user Gould has helped bring the French narrator to the mod as well. Head over to the Multiverse Mods page to install the newest version and experience the two new voice actors today.
Seasons: Winter Completed
I recently completed my playthrough of the Seasons: Winter campaign. This campaign I felt was easier than the Summer and Autumn campaigns, and I was almost about to label it as novice difficulty. However, due to a couple of levels being hard and one level being similar to expert difficulty, I felt advanced was the most appropriate.
Forge of Fates Completed
A while back I conquered the very difficult campaign that is Forge of Fates. Viewers joined me on stream for over a year whilst I tackled this beast, and I can honestly say that I enjoyed most of it.
I was really wanting this campaign to be the first that I award the expert difficulty rating, but unfortunately, there are two or three levels that need to be rebalanced, as having to rely on save-scumming to overcome unfair moments is not something that should be considered in a well designed campaign.
To become an approved campaign, besides the aforementioned balance changes, the insane difficulty curve (especially in the earlier levels) really needs to be addressed, and the story makes little sense in some areas. For the time-being, Forge of Fates is unjust.
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