Low Res Sky Textures and No Skybox Animations!

[WolfHound]

How do you get the game to give you the higher res animated skybox?

I remember back in the day on my pentium 2 windows 98 seeing animated clouds in the skybox. Now all I see are the spotty solid textures that just rotate at a fixed speed and no matter what I do in the settings nothing changes it!

Please help!

[Daikatan]

Have you tried launching game using D3DPopTB exe?

[WolfHound]

Originally posted by Daikatan:

Have you tried launching game using D3DPopTB exe?

Let me try.

[WolfHound]

It keeps saying:

A 3D device with the required capabilies could not be found. If you do have one, please consult the Troubleshooting section of the Reference Card. Otherwise, run the software version of Populous.

[Daikatan]

Oh. For me it worked as it is, but I know it doesn't for many people.

When you check Guides here on Steam, they usually recommend using Populous Enhanced 1.5 or Multiverse - which are fanmade improvements to the game that add plenty of quality of life features (like zdoom for Doom 1-2), but afaik they also have pixel-based skies which I personally not a fan of (that dithering... ew).

I wonder why d3d worked for me, but not for you though. First thing you could try, check if you have DirectPlay enabled in your Windows Features -> Legacy Components..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJVxam-FxBA

If that doesn't work, you can try using dgvoodoo wrapper and/or so called "fixed" poptb_hw executable someone made.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYmRfbgqtcg

p.s.

Which gpu you have? I've read that those with ATI / AMD cards might encounter this problem more, and there is some workaround.

[WolfHound]

Originally posted by Daikatan:

Oh. For me it worked as it is, but I know it doesn't for many people.

When you check Guides here on Steam, they usually recommend using Populous Enhanced 1.5 or Multiverse - which are fanmade improvements to the game that add plenty of quality of life features (like zdoom for Doom 1-2), but afaik they also have pixel-based skies which I personally not a fan of (that dithering... ew).

I wonder why d3d worked for me, but not for you though. First thing you could try, check if you have DirectPlay enabled in your Windows Features -> Legacy Components..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJVxam-FxBA

If that doesn't work, you can try using dgvoodoo wrapper and/or so called "fixed" poptb_hw executable someone made.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYmRfbgqtcg

p.s.

Which gpu you have? I've read that those with ATI / AMD cards might encounter this problem more, and there is some workaround.

I'm currently using the multiverse version but it has the same issue.

I have NVidia 4090

[Daikatan]

Aaaaah. Having multiverse or populous enhanced might also break d3d mode completely (as they are not compatible). I was talking assuming you have fresh install from steam.

Still, perhaps try some of stuff above if you haven't.
But yeah, playing in DirectX mode will mean going back to 1998 version of game, without all those improvements and bug fixes from multiverse afaik.

[Jimmy Hunter]

Mutliverse contains a few 3D3 elements, such as the moving sky and the more realistic Lava. Don't use 1.5 for Singleplayer. Most campaigns are broken due to 1.5 having no support for Popscript, which is the old language used to script the AI.

If you want full Hardware, you need to use DGVooDoo2, which is a wrapper for older games to emulate them as they were back on Windows 95 and 98. However this is not compatible with ANY version of Multiverse or 1.5.

Those are your options for Hardware mode in our current day and age.

[WolfHound]

Yea, so... um...

Something weird has happened.

I followed both of the videos that you @Daikatan gave the links to and I basically broke my game. So I did a steam uninstall and then a steam reinstall and now I can't run the game with multiverse BUT, the game now runs in direct hardware mode from the steam launcher.

I looked in the steamapps common folder on my SSD and all of the multiverse, patch 1.5 and DGVooDoo2 in the Pop game folder.

I wish I could give more information but frankly, I am baffled that this worked at all. Albeit, I can no longer use the multiverse features like mods and custom campaigns because every time I try to launch the game from the multiverse launcher nothing happens.

Funny thing is: I can set the res to 2560 X 1600 from the in-game graphics menu but the multiverse launcher doesn't support my laptop's native screen res. It literally has both a higher and lower res options but for some reason the multiverse devs did not include the res setting for my type of alienware laptop.

[Daikatan]

With videos above I thought you would try just one thing, then go check if that hepled, then try another one. Not everything at once. Sorry if I was not clear. But if it somehow kinda worked for you in the end... better than nothing, right?

But yeah, Jimmy Hunter said above that it will lead to multiverse stop working. So either this or that. you gotta decide what's more important for you to have. In worst case, you can manually delete all files from game folder when reinstalling when/if you would like to go back to multiverse or populous 1.5 sometime later.

Or you can keep populous working d3d mode in steam, and also have a multiverse or 1.5 install somewhere outside of steam. It's like what I do with quake 3, I use Spearmint for quake 3 in steam, and also have another quake 3 instal using q3e.

Personally I'm currently trying to play main campaign of P:tB with d3d mode, and perhaps later ill bother with multiverse myself.

Good luck with whatever you choose!

[Daikatan]

On a second thought, you can try temporarly moving dgvoodoo 2 files (the ones you've put to game folder, there are several of them) outside, and see if multiverse will work. Then, when you want, move them back.

Also pay attention to which executable you are running. As you know, there is a way to change it for steam.

[Jimmy Hunter]

Originally posted by WolfHound:

Funny thing is: I can set the res to 2560 X 1600 from the in-game graphics menu but the multiverse launcher doesn't support my laptop's native screen res. It literally has both a higher and lower res options but for some reason the multiverse devs did not include the res setting for my type of alienware laptop

Populous has all kinds of issues on anything above 1080p anyways. Mutliverse doesn't support anything above 1080 because of those problems. You'll have everything from graphical oddities to full blown crashes.

Also they didn't "specifically" not include the res settings you want. Widescreen isn't supported in a game from 1998.