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Games Entertainment

Interview With 'Populous' Creator Peter Molyneux 64

Posted by emmett from the pika dept.
Anonymous Coward writes: "Gaming magazine Spank! has posted a new interview with Peter Molyneux, the madman behind Black & White, as well as the classic games Populous and Dungeon Keeper (amongst others). The interview is all over the place, with Peter talking about the genesis of Black & White, his thoughts on the upcoming next-generation console systems, his beloved Tamagotchi (which was drowned in a cup of coffee during Dungeon Keeper's crunch time), his thoughts on Pokemon, and if you can believe it, other topics as well."
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Interview With 'Populous' Creator Peter Molyneux More

Interview With 'Populous' Creator Peter Molyneux

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  • Somewhat different situation (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Molyneux has a history of shipping games. Games that make money and people adore for that matter. Romero hasn't shipped anything since he and Carmack parted ways (should be obvious where the talent in that duo was by now). Black and White has been in development for a long time, it's true, but unlike Daikatana it hasn't missed any announced ship dates, because there haven't been any. It gets a lot of press because Mr. Molyneux has an excellent track record.

    Either way though, previews are generally worthless, don't listen to them.

  • Re:Black & White? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It is indeed Molyneux's next game, and it looks pretty cool. Why not go to Lionhead [lionhead.com] and read about it?
  • In my day, Mario didn't have a brother...
    Y...y...you mean Luigi is... ADOPTED?! *sniff* I'm so disillusioned...

    --
  • Yeah, the modem network play was a really cool feature, I just wish I had done that back then more, instead of playing it solo.

    Bit planes? Was that like the later levels on the SNES port? Those looked really cool, and pretty freaky, besides...
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].
  • Oh man, I loved that game. And Masters of Magic, Heroes of Might and Magic III, and Little Computer People. :)

    I haven't played Dungeon Keeper yet, but I heard it was good, so I'll have to check it out.

    Hey guys, was the sequel (or later PC releases) to Populous any good, and would I have a chance in getting them to run on Linux? I know they had ports of the old game on lots of systems too, but most of those were harder to control than the original, and wouldn't map that well back to the PC. (well, ok, maybe the Amiga one would, but I'd end up having to use an Amiga emulator, and I don't know them as well, anyhow.)
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [152.7.41.11].

  • Wow, I loved that game. I think I made it to level 300 or so. I enjoyed playing, but one of the things I was most impressed by was the copy protection. (This is all for the PC version, btw.) It was one of those systems where you were shown a picture and you had to find it in the manual and type it in. Extremely annoying, especially since I'd actually paid for the game.

    The easiest way around these schemes is to find the strings in the binary and set them all to null. Then when it asks you for the key, a null answer is always right. But those same text chunks were used to let you start at a level other than 1, so if you wiped them out, you were screwed. You could probably still hack it by running it in a debugger, finding the comparison, and changing the logic. But that was beyond my clue level at the time, so I had to keep flipping through that stupid manual. Irritating, but clever.

  • Oh, lord molyneux! smite the unbeliever! smite! smite! seriously, 15:1, you'll eat those words when you play the game.
  • I adored that game. Kill them silly little white knight dudes. Grow your own giant insect colonies.

    I've never played Populous - what's it like?

  • I don't know if Lionhead studios is still planning to follow through on this, but originally they had an interesting plan for their product launch, where the game asks you an ethical question before you even bring it home.

    The game was to ship in two different formats, either in a black box or a white box. The white box would be more expensive, but a portion of the proceeds would go to charity. There would be no donation if you bought the cheaper black box.

  • nope... (Score:1)

    by Evro ( 18923 )
    Nah... that wasn't me. I got caught once replying to some guy bitching about the people posting articles, how CmdrTaco had to hurry home so he could "clean up Slashdot." I replied about, " what the hell does it matter who posts the stories," and then felt dumb when I got the "Ha-Ha!" reply. Sure made me feel stupid. Anyway, I thought I'd pass that love along to all!

    Gotta go write more Haikus...

    Is it ethical
    to moderate this post down
    if my others suck?

    __________________________________________________ ___

  • wow... (Score:1)

    by ywwg ( 20925 )
    I read some pages about Black and White, and I'm really pissed. Now I'll have to follow its development until september when it's released. I thought I was over anxious awaiting of hit games when Q3A was released, but now I've got this. Thanks a lot. :P
  • Well, yes - I have to breathe you know! Not everyone is a freshly risen mindless brain-seeking zombie like yourself you know.

    I was merley helping correct his estimates of the time it takes to read a paragraph so in the future his predictions would be more accurate - you wouldn't make a good Project Planning Manager, even though being a mindless zombie normally makes you a shoe-in.

    BTW - your caps lock key appears to be stuck, often a problem wind mindless zombies as chunks of flesh get caught in the keyboard. The simple solution is just to shake it upsde down for a bit, then if you see more than one light lit up on the keyboard merley press the "CapsLock" key again, rendering your prose more pleasant to all (in appearance, at least, if not content).

    Thank you.
  • They incorrectly stated he was involved in Dungeon Master at the top of the article - later on they said Dungeon Keeper, which was correct.

    I had the same reaction as you though when I read the Dungeon Master headline! At least about liking it, not about the wasting 15 seconds. Actually I think it took me more like 1.4 seconds to read the post.

    Anyway, Dungeon Master was a fine game but not his.
  • I've always hated virtual pets as well - but I've been really excited about B&W ever since I first heard about it. Gameplay wise it sounds like a cross between Populous and Magic Carpet, with an interesting no-icon interface on top.

    As for the Tamogotchi aspect, I think that is really used to describe the effect of your actions really affecting your environment - just like if you ignore a Tamogotchi you can make it die or grow up mean, so it is with your people and familar.

    Plus, the engine sounds really interesting with a smooth zoomable view from planet level all the way down to individual people.

    ---> Kendall
  • Hey....

    I had Populous for my Genesis, because unlike my cousin (whose family bought him his own Amiga... grumble, curse) my Dad bought himself a horrible 8088XT that would crash whenever I tried to play Pool of Radience and anything else with graphics (I mean Bureacracy and Trinity worked just fine on it... but sometimes I wanted a new mindless, graphical game, you know? Not that I ever got tired of Spy vs. Spy for my Atari 800... or Ultima III) I know, you'll say "you should've bought your own computer," well I was a freshman college student and had as much of my own money as your average 12 year old.

    Actually, the personal computer crash with it's FUD (you must buy an IBM clone, running MS-DOS! the Amiga and new Atari 520ST will never suceed... Resistance is Futile, decent graphics are for kids...) and the fact that my Dad bought into that FUD, really hurt my development as far as computers were concerned... I just didn't like that Vendex Headstart... even though I did try to create text adventures using AGT for it when I could use it... or play with my Atari 800, which was a better computer than that thing... pity they stopped making software for it...

  • Oh come on, Daikatana has been being hyped since, what, 1962?
  • I dunno, he got a brother pretty early on. The only pre-luigi game I can think of with Mario in it is Donkey Kong..
  • I know I get my jollies from twitch games (LANparties and the like) but every so often a game like Alpha Centauri or Dungeon Keeper creeps along and keeps me up for nights. I spen my entire christmas break a year ago playing Dungeon Keeper on the company's testing machine (the only wintel system) while everyone else was on vation or with their family. Not to get the hopes up too hight, but games like Unreal and Messiah might have taken years and years to developbut ultimately they were worth the wait. I sure hope B&W fits more with those than Daikatana; I trust P. Molyneux on this one.
  • i just read it, mostly full of fluff. shame. i really liked populus when was a kid, so i'd be interested in seeing what this guy has come up with lately.

    however, i'm not much of a gamer these days and a bit out-of-touch, so i have one question: what is "Black & White"? a new game of some sort, but i was surprised to see that the interview mentioned it as though it were common knowledge. there wasn't even a hyperlink from the story to 'read more.'

    so, what is "Black & White"???

    - j
  • What can one say about the man? I have never met him, but since I first got Populous for the Sega Genesis, I haven't forgot it. I spent more time on that game then I care to remember, as apparently many other posters have as well. Its admarable that he gives credit where its due in terms of Black & White dev in comparison to say Tamagatchi.
  • And to think, it's years after I played the game, and apart from 'xyzzy' it's the only code I remember from the early years.

    I still remembering the OMNI magazine having a review on this beast. It really paved the way for quite a couple of games methinks.

    Domini.
  • It's kinda cool to find that the creator is not some arrogant God's-gift-to-gaming twit.
    Actually, he is. As anyone who's worked for him will tell you, he's an egomaniac. He's a spin doctor, who's been involved in the creation of a couple of good games, and hogged the limelight. He gets new artists to fake concept art for existing sprites and then credits them to his friends in magazines. He's a twat. Really.

    Disclaimer: I've never worked with him, or even met him, but I have met several people who have, and their storys are consistent.

    I'd love to tell you the story about a party he threw, involving a chilli, and a bouncy castle, but its probably libellous. :)
    Thad

  • This is another one of Peters bullsh*t stories to keep the press interested. He's a media genius, nothing else.
    Thad
  • I expected everyone to go off on how they loved playing Populous way back when. ... Did these guys just jump on the nerd-bus when it became profitable? I say all of those people get banned immediately!

    Sirrah, I fear you are confused. You have mistaken nerds and geeks once again. I am frightfully sorry for you old chap, but Populous enjoyed immense signifigance on the Geek bus. The nerd bus was spending most of its time in the library, observatory, chemical lab, and other such places. A full two-thirds of nerds did not play Populous or even recognize it for a major development. I am one such. In the verbiage of current trends, geeks show an amazing tendency towards the computer and technical, whilst nerds tend to flow more towards the literate and scientific. There is a wide swath of overlap in the midst of these two pools of talent wherin your confusion has occurred.

    I, for instance, could be defined as a geek due to my profession as a programmer and occaisional game player. On the other hand, I am not much of a hacker due to lack of time and overriding inclination, so I am not a true geek. As a nerd however, I have collected an immense storehouse of useless or specialized knowledge in combination with my obsessive/compulsive tendencies towards whatever my current hobby is. This makes it more difficult for me to be defined as a non-nerd than a non-geek. Your personal prerequisite that nerds have played Populous on your platform of choice is your opinion, but your wording is incorrect. It should be a prerequisite for geeks.

    Thank you for your patience, sirrah. Have a nice day!

    B. Elgin

  • YAAAR:
    Arrogant? Of course. Many people are arrogant at times. I was struck by the extreme arrogance of the original post and responded in the same vein.
    Retard? My, how un-PC (Politically Correct). No, not according to any metrics I have seen. I do have a sometimes foolish tendency of talking to people who annoy me in a deliberatly assinine way just to annoy them back, though. It usually takes a lot to annoy me, but sometimes a single comment will do it. Luckily for all involved, I get tired of being immature after a little while.

    YHNF:
    That's news to me. I suppose it is possible that someone completed an infinate improbability drive ala Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy and we have hit the probability of all my friends inexplicably spontaneously combusting. ... Doesn't seem likely though.

    IDSHYCFWSSD:
    Ummm... Don't abuse depressants?

    HAND:
    Thanks. You too.

    B. Elgin

  • I thought it was just me! The guys a twat, and all his games are shite. I know i know, its subjective and all that... but in my opionion they`re all just the same game. Theme parks, hospitals etc etc who cares! If Lemmings was rereleased, only with a different animals and different graphics, it`d still be Lemmings.

    Someone had to say this...i know i`m not alone here!

  • Populous on their Genesis.

    No, I remeber it on the old Nintendo systems though

    Did these guys just jump on the nerd-bus when it became profitable?

    It is profitable? For who, I am still really fscking poor. I have been playing chess and tweaking on computer for years, I have sloved 90% of all the Final Fanasty series, where the fsck is my cash?

    I wish I could get paid for coding perl and playing in muds, dam I think I was to early for the bus and fell asleep waiting for it, while some newbie made off with my pass bus
  • undersized? don't you mean OVERsized shirts?

    try shinymonkey [shinymonkey.com], thinkgeek [thinkgeek.com] or copyleft.net [copyleft.net] (.com?) [copyleft.com]
  • What kind of nerds are we keeping with?! Did these guys just jump on the nerd-bus when it became profitable? I say all of those people get banned immediately! I hear ya man. Its not respectable to be a nerd anymore. damnit. we need to redefine the genere, "NERD" is ours, we were here first. let them call themselves something else, and we need a test to distinguish the two. any ideas for a test?
  • What kind of nerds are we keeping with?! Did these guys just jump on the nerd-bus when it became profitable? I say all of those people get banned immediately!

    I hear ya man. Its not respectable to be a nerd anymore. damnit.

    we need to redefine the genere, "NERD" is ours, we were here first. let them call themselves something else, and we need a test to distinguish the two.

    any ideas for a test?

    PS: TEST #1, anyone who HATES that slashdot doesnt default to "Plain old text" is in the club.

  • Sorry about that... slipped and hit the enter key too soon. Probably can kiss karma goodbye for that little screwup... watch my accidental blank post get moderated straight to hell.

    Molyneux is undoubtedly one of the top designers on this earth, and one of the few left who can consistenly deliver. Magic Carpet remains to this day a favorite, and I'm desparately hoping that someday we'll see a third game in the series. Imagine Magic Carpet on a GeForce DDR... sweet. And with the possibilities opened up with all these CPU cycles, we could have truly modeled creature behavior.

    And that to me seems to be what Molyneux is about... modeling an initial system and allowing the user to make changes to it. Kind of a proactive version of SimEverythingunderthesun.

    And yeah, this is definitely:
    1. News for Nerds. I'm a nerd, and I care deeply about such things.
    2. Stuff that matters. When Molyneux speaks, a lot of people still listen. If it were Carmack, would you still scream "Off-Topic"?
  • What a pile of crap. The longest response was 6 lines. Not worth bothering with.

    I didn't even realize that "some net magazine interviews some game guy" even qualified as news. You could fill Slashdot with this shit.

  • Anybody notice that the text posted is the EXACT same that was posted on Blues News? Either the same person submitted both items (probably from Spank) or whoever submitted it here was lazy.
  • "Populous was my favorite game for years. It existed for all the systems, including Genesis, PC, SNES, etc... I liked to kill off the people. I chose 'Armageddon', or sometimes 'Flood', and killed all the citizens. It was very fun! Superphenominal, I think!"
    Hehe, didn't even use babel fish, translated that with my head =)
    His sig doesn't make sense tho: "Thank you for having me hate."....
  • You sound like a dork to me =(

    - Jeremy Fuller

  • Well, oversized for normal people.. but undersized for them so that their breasts and nipples are readily visible through them :(

    - Jeremy Fuller

  • Hmm, you code perl and tweak computers all day long for years and you can't get paid? Sounds like a dumb nerd to me.. =(

    - Jeremy Fuller

  • Again, you sound like a dork to me.

    YAAAR. YHNF. IDSHYCFWSSD. HAND. For the Usenet Illiterate, YAAAR means You Are An Arrogant Retard, and YHNF means You Have No Friends, and IDSHYCFWSSD means I Don't See How You Can Function Without Strong Stimulant Drugs. HAND means Have A Nice Day.

    - Jeremy Fuller

  • You sound like a dork to me. :(

    - Jeremy Fuller

  • 1) Where are the best places to get undersized computer shirts?

    - Jeremy Fuller

  • FUCKING LEARN TO SPELL, YOU FUCKING TWIT
  • However, in at least one sense, I can claim superiority over him, as I can remember quite a few of the lyrics to the Anfield Rap. Here goes (from memory):

    Liverpool FC is hot as hell
    Everton Tottenham Arse-nel
    But they don't just play, they can rap as well

    [...]
    (John Barnes)

    I come from Jamaica, my name is John Barnes
    When I do my thing, the crowd go bananas (historical not: "throw bananas" would have been more accurate)

    (Steve McMahon, plus the other scouser, can't remember his name)

    How can he do de Jamaican rap?
    He comes from just south of the Watford Gap!

    (historical note: this is bollocks: Barnes played for Watford, but was a Jamaican)

    (Stevo again, with his mate -- ALDRIDGE! It was John Aldridge, of course):

    Alright dere Aldo, sound as a pound
    I'm cushty la, but there's nothing down
    de rest of de lads ain't got it sussed
    We'll 'ave to lern em to talk like us

    (Bruce Grobelaar, wearing huge comedy hands)

    Well I'm rapping now, I'm rapping for fun
    I'm your goalie, the number one
    You can take the mick and call me a clown
    But any more lip and you're going down
    (Aldridge comes right back, swapping lines, Run-DMC style)

    Dey don't tak like we do
    do dey do la
    we'll have to lern 'em
    to talk prop-ah

    All these typed from memory.

    streetlawyer, abusing his +2 bonus since a week ago

    The actual lyrics can be found at this mad bastard's site [demon.co.uk]. I seem to have got about 20%, but I'm not sure his version is right -- he doesn't seem to have Aldo's comeback.
  • yeah, I know, I've been paying about as much attention to consistent character development over the last few weeks as the producers of the Simpsons. It all started with that April Fools' thing, which gave me unwarranted delusions of adequacy. Though thinking about it, even before that I was losing the plot a bit -- the idea of having Montoya move to the West Coast and become CEO of a tech startup was meant to tie in with a hoax "Ask Slashdot" story that got rejected, and I didn't really have any ideas about what to do.

    So I decided to back off from things for a while. For the last week, I've only been posting silly jokes, plus a few ontopic things that I'd usually say under my "proper" identity. Although I was rather pleased with the revelation that streetlawyer is in the habit of extracting fellatio from his relatives in return for legal advice.

    Daft thing is, I've had a few trolls modded up to +5, funny and found myself in possession of this +1 bonus, which I like, as it means I can be even more annoying. I think I'm gonna stay on holiday until my score reaches 50, to give a decent cushion, and then to start some serious, old-school, mental Noo Yawk abuse. God, it's desperately sad that a grown man would spend this much effort on something like this.

    "Cushty" is Liverpudlian slang for "fine" -- I think it's a Yiddish borrowing. "La" is short for "lad", and is a form of address. You've obviously noticed that many UK references are sneaking out -- some people have asked why the streetlawyer always used to use the British spellings of words like "defence", "colour", etc. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

    jsm
  • I don't know about them building stuff out of Lego, but I do remember that if you got the expansion pack for Populous on the PC one of the "skins" was a Lego world, with little Lego people.


  • Re:dumb (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Peter Molyneux is the reason for this story. If Slashdot is even going to have a "games" category, then an interview with Molyneux certainly belongs in that category. Peter Molyneux ranks with the likes of Sid Meir, John Carmack, and Shigeru Miyamoto in terms of both history and influence in the industry. You just don't find any bigger names than these.

    Perhaps more to the point, you have the power to ignore both stories about games and stories posted by emmett, why not use it instead of spending much more of your precious time whining about the story than you did reading it?

  • I loved the "bit planes" landscape in the promised lands expansion pack - Atari Vs Commodore :-)

    I used to play those levels via 2400 baud modem with my friends all the time :-)
  • I never played the SNES version - so I can only tell you about the PC version.

    The Bit Planes (I'm pretty sure it wasn't plains) was one of the worlds on the promised lands expansion pack - it had Lego World, Bizarre World, French Revolution world, Bit planes, and I think a couple more.

    With the Bit Planes map, the world was sheets of tractor feed paper (green/white striped). Where crops were growing, there was printing on the paper.
    Where there were swamps, holes appeared in the paper.
    The landscape was dotted with coffee mugs, pencils, etc...
    Buildings ranged from abaci and calculators, up to clusters of supercomputers.
    Plus, instead of good vs evil, you had Atari Vs Commodore - great for working out that everpresent argument :-)
  • Why should the strength of a spell be linked to how well you can sweep the mouse in a circle?
    Well, if you cannot spell, you could use some spellchecking software.
    __
  • The Promised Lands also had a Cowboys vs. Indians tileset; the Cowboys were the evil ones. Bizarre world was kind of neat because it had such weird settings: only the smallest and largest settlements actually grew in population; everything else disappeared after a while.
    --

  • Here's a program that lists all the world names for Populous 1.
    I wrote it back in 91 when I bored one weekend... :)

    The astute reader will notice that you can't play all possible world combinations in Populous (32,768 world names I believe.)




    /*
    This program lists all the world names in Populous

    Written by Michael Pohoreski on Nov. 19, 1991
    */

    #include &LTstdio.h&GT
    #include &LTconio.h&GT /* getch() */
    #include &LTctype.h&GT /* tolower() */

    int Pprefix = 4; /* index to prefix */

    int Proot = 0; /* index to root */

    int root_add[] = { /* 32 world pattern */
    25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 26, /* -7, -7, -7, -7, -7, -6 */
    25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 26, /* -7, -7, -7, -7, -7, -6 */
    25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 26, /* -7, -7, -,7 -7, -7, -7, -6 */
    25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 26, /* -7, -7, -7, -7, -7, -6 */
    25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 25, 26 /* -7, -7, -7, -7, -7, -7, -6 */
    }; /* relative changes to each other */
    int Proot_add = 0;

    int Psuffix = 23;
    int suffix_add[] = {
    13, 14, 14, 14,
    13, 14, 14, 14, 14,
    13, 14, 14, 14, 14
    };
    int Psuffix_add = 0;

    char *prefix[] = {
    "RING", "VERY", "KILL", "SHAD", "HURT", "WEAV", "MIN", "EOA",
    "COR", "JOS", "ALP", "HAM", "BUR", "BIN", "TIM", "BAD",
    "FUT", "MOR", "SAD", "CAL", "IMM", "SUZ", "NIM", "LOW",
    "SCO", "HOB", "DOU", "BIL", "QAZ", "SWA", "BUG", "SHI"
    }; /* taken from populous.exe */

    char *root[32] = {
    "OUT", "QAZ", "ING", "OGO", "QUE", "LOP", "SOD", "HIP",
    "KOP", "WIL", "IKE", "DIE", "IN", "AS", "MP", "DI",
    "OZ", "EA", "US", "GB", "CE", "ME", "DE", "PE",
    "OX", "A", "E", "I", "O", "U", "T", "Y"
    };

    char *suffix[32] = {
    "HILL", "TORY", "HOLE", "PERT", "MAR", "CON", "LOW", "DOR",
    "LIN", "ING", "HAM", "OLD", "PIL", "BAR", "MET", "END",
    "LAS", "OUT", "LUG", "ILL", "ICK", "PAL", "DON", "ORD",
    "OND", "BOY", "JOB", "ER", "ED", "ME", "AL", "T"
    };

    void update_world( void );
    void display_world( void );

    void main( void )
    {
    int x; /* current world to print name of */
    char key;
    int pause;

    fprintf( stderr, "Display pause ( Yes / No ) ?" );
    do
    {
    key = getch();
    key = tolower( key );
    } while ((key != 'y') && (key != 'n'));

    pause = 0;
    if (key == 'y')
    pause++;
    fprintf( stderr, "\n\n" );

    /* x &LT 495 */
    for ( x = 1; x&LT 1500; x++ )
    {
    /*
    pattern changes at world 174,
    & world 333, 506, 679, 852, ...
    goto to next suffix if world &GT 174 & (world + 13 mod 173) == 0
    */

    if (x == 174)
    {
    Psuffix = Psuffix + 1;
    if (Psuffix &GT 31)
    Psuffix = Psuffix - 32;
    Psuffix_add = 0;
    }

    if ( (x &GT 173) && (((x + 13) % 173) == 0) )
    {
    Psuffix = Psuffix + 1;
    if ( Psuffix &GT 31 )
    Psuffix = Psuffix - 32;
    Psuffix_add = 0;
    }

    printf( "%5d: ", x );
    display_world();
    update_world();

    if ((x % 10) == 9)
    printf( "\n" );

    if (((x % 20) == 19) && pause)
    {
    printf( "\nPress a key to continue..." );
    key = getch();
    printf( "\n\n" );
    }
    }
    }

    void update_world( void )
    {
    Pprefix = Pprefix + 5;
    if (Pprefix &GT 31)
    Pprefix = Pprefix - 32;

    Proot = Proot + root_add[ Proot_add ];
    if (Proot &GT 31)
    Proot = Proot - 32;
    Proot_add = Proot_add + 1;
    if (Proot_add &GT 31)
    Proot_add = 0;

    Psuffix = Psuffix + suffix_add[ Psuffix_add ];
    if (Psuffix &GT 31)
    Psuffix = Psuffix - 32;
    Psuffix_add = Psuffix_add + 1;
    if (Psuffix_add &GT 13)
    Psuffix_add = 0;
    }

    void display_world( void )
    {
    printf( "%s", prefix[ Pprefix] );
    printf( "%s", root[ Proot ] );
    printf( "%s\n", suffix[ Psuffix ] );
    }

  • Populous was one of the first "God Games" where your goal was to make your people happy, so that they would worship you, create more people, and eventually launch a holy war against the other people led by the other god. It was rather cool -- you could raise and lower landscape features to make nice flat land for your people, create 'Acts of God" to kill off the other people (I enjoyed 'Volcano' myself) and just generally be a deity. I recommend picking up a copy if you haven't seen it. The game is somewhat dated technically, but it's like SimCity.. the gameplay carries it through the graphics.

  • I picked up Populous for my Atari ST (a decade and a half ago) and wasted many many many hours causing floods and earthquakes and what-not. It's kinda cool to find that the creator is not some arrogant God's-gift-to-gaming twit. Too bad the interview was short and full of fluff...

  • One thing I read about a long, long time ago was that Bullfrog were developing this great new game based on the idea of you being a god and controlling people, and that in order to test this idea they built landscapes out of Lego in order to test the various effects and game rules. There was a picture of this large Lego landscape complete with people and trees, just like in the actual game :)

  • Heh. YHBT. HAND.

    Translation for Usenet illiterate: You have taken a joke seriously. "Have a nice day" or HAND is code that a given comment is intended to garner a response, not be taken as serious or factual. YHBT or "You have been trolled" is the usual response. Trolls are usually moderated down on Slashdot.

    You learn something every day, huh?

    B. Elgin

  • When I first heard of black&white I thought it sounded like a cool idea, and the screen shots looked like it had some promise...I thought the same on the 10th, 50th and 100th preview of the game.

    Then I realized I was all wrong!

    This game is all hype and it screams it! *EVERY* day you can goto bluesnews or any other game news site and see at LEAST *3* new preiviews for this game, and at least 1 interview with the head developer, Mr. Molyneux....

    How can anyone program a game and do all those interviews and make all those screenshots and preview movies at the same time?

    This guy is more BS and hype then John Romero and the entire staff of monolith combined.

    If I see an announcement of Peter Molyneux doing a spread for playboy, I'm going to take my own life.

    NightHawk

    Browse at -1 as this will obviously be marked flamebait or a troll by moderators who cannot see these companies for what they are.

  • Was I the only one who was ever scared by Populous? Was I the only person who ever pulled my covers over my head at 5 AM, blurry eyed, as I realized that after long long hours, I couldn't find a way to defeat the forces of evil?

    A repetitve game that starts out the same every time, with the promise of new things...and then lures you in, as you repeat the same mistakes, and hope that this time it will work.

    Ironically enough, I am playing Civ II right now. Maybe this would be a good Slashdot Poll... Populous vs. Civilization vs. SimCity, although most Slashdotters seem to like all these new fangled first person shooters for some reason. In my day we didn't have such things. In my day, Mario didn't have a Brother...oh never mind, I am rambling.

  • I expected everyone to go off on how they loved playing Populous way back when. Now I say people saying "What's Populous?" and a billion people who played Populous on their Genesis.

    What kind of nerds are we keeping with?! Did these guys just jump on the nerd-bus when it became profitable? I say all of those people get banned immediately!

    - Jeremy Fuller

  • Re:Gesture recognition technology (Score:3)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Thursday April 13, 2000 @09:04AM (#1136517)
    Actually in practice I think this will work pretty well. I've not actually played the game, but I did use a CAD like graphics API once (whose name eludes me) with a gesture recognition part built in. Basically what it did was generate some unique number based on your series of mouse movements, and you could then tie the number generated to a particular command.

    That actually worked pretty well - you would circle something to zoom in on an area, you could shake the mouse right to left to delete something, etc. It was even pretty tolerant of variation in movement, so you did not have to be absolutley accurate for it to recognize what you did.

    It is true that in the middle of a game things might be different. I'd reccomend getting a 3M precision mousing surface, then putting that on top of a normal mousepad (as they tend to slip on desks by themselves).

  • Gesture recognition technology (Score:3)

    by spiralx ( 97066 ) on Wednesday April 12, 2000 @10:24PM (#1136518)

    Lionhead have developed a new technology - 'Gesture Recognition' technology - which allows spells to be cast, practised and perfected by mouse movement. To cast a firewall, for example, you must sweep the mouse in a circle. From this gesture, Lionhead's GR technology can sense the type of spell you wish to cast and (according to how accurately the spell was executed) determine how strong it was.

    Now this sounds all very well in theory, but how does it actually work out in real life? My mouse here at work is a bit of a bastard - when you try and move it left the ball sometimes sticks and doesn't move. Wouldn't this make playing the game pretty much impossible, or at the very least cut down on the available options?

    Even if I had a fully flowing mouse I still don't know if I like the sound of this all that much. Why should the strength of a spell be linked to how well you can sweep the mouse in a circle? For an action game then sure, but for a strategy game this seems more like a gimmick than a genuine aid to play.

    Can anyone who has played Black&White tell me what this is like in practice?

  • Re:Black & White? (Score:4)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Wednesday April 12, 2000 @07:38PM (#1136519)
    Someone else posted a link, but I'll give the executive summary -

    Basically, you are a god with a set of people who worship you. That sounds familiar, but this time you can "make a difference" as it were, for good or worse.

    You have groups of people that worship you to provide you with power, and also you get to pick any animal in the land to be your familar - a beast that will grow to huge size and aid you in your fight against other gods.

    The other aspect of the game is that as you perform good or evil actions, your followers, your land, even you familar will alter in apperance as well.

    One really interesting aspect of the game is that there are no more control icons, only your Hand. You can pick up followers or your familar with it, and use it to cast spells by gesturing - here's a bit from the technology page that describes it:

    Lionhead have developed a new technology - 'Gesture Recognition' technology - which allows spells to be cast, practised and perfected by mouse movement. To cast a firewall, for example, you must sweep the mouse in a circle. From this gesture, Lionhead's GR technology can sense the type of spell you wish to cast and (according to how accurately the spell was executed) determine how strong it was.



    It is true that pretty much every game magazine and web site has been covereing this for some time, though I agree they should have at least provided a link to Lionhead's web site!

  • Peter Molyneux (Score:4)

    by PhiRatE ( 39645 ) on Wednesday April 12, 2000 @05:16PM (#1136520)
    I've got to say, Peter Molyneux is, in the gaming realm, pretty much my idol. I'm not one for hero worship, and I don't follow his every move or copy the way he dresses or anything, but I firmly believe in every game he has written, and in every game he will ever write/direct, and he has never done me wrong. From Power Monger to Populous to Syndicate to Dungeon Keeper, he has been innovative, created a solid piece of software and I have always enjoyed the game, often for many months. I still crave Power Monger.

    Of course he's not entirely responsible for it himself, but it seems to follow him around, through Bullfrog and now Lionhead it seems, so I choose to hold him responsible :)

    I still remember learning 68000 assembler from an article Bullfrog did for Amiga Format years ago.

    As an example to the gaming industry as a whole, I would have great difficulty picking anyone better. There are others who are better technically (John Carmack for example) and sometimes strategically (Sid Mier perhaps? I don't know) but for the sheer combination of gameplay, interface, innovation, and unadulterated joy, Peters games have caught me every single time.

    I look forward very much to the debut of Black&White, and even more so to whatever he comes up with in the future.

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