Populous: Enhanced Edition – V1.5.3604 – Patch Summary
Quite a long post from me today as yet another version of the Populous: Enhanced Edition is now out, and it carries within it a few interesting changes, see below for the patch summary to gleam an overview of what has changed. Anything not immediately obvious I shall also be explaining further down, so sit back, grab a cup of tea and enjoy having a little read of the changes we have for you!
A direct download for this version is available here.
Summary of this Version:
- Major Performance Improvements [Summary of Overall Patch]
- Fixed a crash with AI and praying [Fix]
- Fixed an issue where units can attack objects they shouldn’t, causing games to crash [Fix]
- Fixed an issue where enemy highlight would not show you’re hovering over an enemy unit [Fix]
- Added a new legacy mouse mode to emulate the mouse movement in the 1.01 version of the game [New Feature]
- Added a confirmation window to resetting hotkeys [New Feature]
- Removed mouse acceleration scrollbar [Removed Feature]
- Removed Shared discoveries [Removed Feature]
- Removed Script3 support and all chai scripts [Removed Feature]
The Breakdown:
For some of you, the patch notes might not immediately be clear as to what they mean, well have no fear! We here at The Beginning are more than happy to break it down for you, and help make it even clearer! I’ll be starting at the top of the list and working my way down it, just providing that little bit of detail so that you know exactly what has changed.
Major Performance Improvements:
The previous rendition of the Enhanced Edition had a number of unusual crashes, issues that affected the way it ran for specific users and quirks that affected the natural fluidity and flow of the game. Tyler and his team have worked hard to make the transition between older versions of Populous more user-friendly, with a number of new features and fixes, moving between the versions is now easier than it has ever been!
Fixed a Crash With AI and Praying:
Vast amounts of experimentation revealed some unusual crashes when the Enhanced Edition was used when interacting with the AI, initially chalked up to weird interactions with the original PopScript. Whilst it is still the case that PopScript and the Enhanced Edition running together can yield some amusing results, it’s not entirely the fault of PopScript! Where the AI can be asked to pray, an unusual crash could occur which would inexplicably end an enjoyable match of either a single player campaign or the cooperative campaign. This issue has been targeted and promptly fixed, crashes when playing matches featuring the AI should now be less likely!
Fixed an Issue Where Units Can Attack Objects They Shouldn’t:
This issue is a fun one! In previous versions of the Enhanced Edition, there were no checks to confirm that when an attack order was given the target of the attack is a valid game object that could be attacked. What does that mean? Well in its simplest form, it meant that games would crash after units were told to attack things they shouldn’t. This included and most commonly occurred with trees, but was not limited to them as we even found that warriors could attack spells! Don’t overthink it, it’s fixed now!
Fixed an Issue Where Enemy Highlight Would Not Show You’re Hovering Over an Enemy Unit:
This is pretty straight-forward, Enemy Highlight is a feature activated by the ‘O’ key on a standard QWERTY Keyboard, it draws a red box outline around enemy units. This box now changes colour when you’re hovering over an enemy unit to clearly indicate that you’re clicking directly on them. Similar to how the box is drawn around units in the original game.
Added a New Legacy Mouse:
Easy to explain, but big in its impact! The original Populous: The Beginning ran the mouse through a mouse handler (it was a game built in 1998, after all!), this old piece of technology was no longer supported by Windows and was taken out in older versions of the Enhanced Edition. Well, the Devs have been hard at work and they’ve implemented a mouse handler of their own to emulate this original behaviour, so if you’re used to Populous: The Beginning, and can’t quite adjust your DPI to feel the same in Enhanced Edition, you can give this feature a try and see if that works out any better for you!
Added a Confirmation Window to Resetting Hotkeys:
While there is an ongoing investigation as to why some users have been losing their hotkeys in the Enhanced Edition, a simple change was made to have the game confirm that you do, in fact, want to reset them if you click the reset key mappings button.
Removed mouse acceleration scrollbar:
Because of the Legacy Mouse combined with the DPI settings of the Enhanced Edition’s Mouse, this scrollbar is no longer necessary as it didn’t function as precisely as these two new features can in unison. So we’re tidying up after ourselves!
Removed Shared Discoveries:
An amazing idea on paper, however the sharing of discoveries causes numerous desyncs in multiplayer sessions. This can still be achieved through scripting, therefore this being a part of the code itself was not necessary.
Removed Script3 support and all chai scripts:
If this doesn’t mean anything to you, I wouldn’t worry about it! Again we’re tidying up and just removing support for old features that are no longer used!
Remember:
The Enhanced Edition relies on the feedback of its members to continuously splat bugs and improve itself. If your game crashes while you use it, click the send report button to send us the results of your crash. If you encounter a bug, Shift + R or Shift+F1 are both ways that you can easily report bugs as you go. Doing so this way sends a save of your game to the developers, so they can launch right on in and experience the crash first hand!
Drew
Drew "Lovenji" Lovesey is a Writer with several years of experience in the eSports background, working with UK-Based eSports Team, Team Dignitas. He loves all things RTS related, and spends an inordinate amount of time with his favourite game, Populous: The Beginning. He also writes for a Comic known as Guided, and tries to keep himself busy with a large array of hobbies that he's inadequate at.