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CD Player's Site Hints, Tips, Strategy and FAQs for playing Populous III online

If you are having problems playing, first make sure that the game works in single-player mode (ie. offline). If that doesn't work properly, going online can only make things worse. Check out the 'other sources of help' section for documentation to help you put that right.

If you are only having problems when online, they are likely to be one of two: excess lag or frequent crashes.

• Excess lag - Unless you have an ADSL or cable connection, you are bound to get some lag. I play on a 56k modem, which is normally fine, but I wouldn't want to go any slower than that. There are some things which you can do to minimise lag. The main thing is to reduce the load on your computer, particularly if it is a low specification machine. As specified above, close down all unnecessary programs. You may be unaware of just how much is going on in the background while you play. Pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del (all at once) will pull up a list of background programs and you can try shutting them down one at a time until something stops working. Make a note of that one, start again, leaving all such essential items alone. Leave 'Explorer' and 'Systray' alone too - switching them off will close down Windows! You may also have a program there which is needed for access to your CD-ROM drive.

  I bought a copy of 'Partition Commander' which allows you to set up multiple copies of Windows (98 SE, in my case) so I have a small partition with a fresh Windows install and no software apart from Internet Explorer, ICQ and Populous, which I find gives significantly less lag.

• Frequent crashes - The online game is quite intolerant of hardware and software incompatibilities, so be prepared for a lot of crashes and failures to connect, caused either by your machine, or one of the other player's. My failure rate used to run at about 30%. You can't do much about the other players machines, but there are some things which you can do to minimise problems from your own.

  Start with a clean boot (ie. when your machine has just been switched on). Then run your virus checker (You do have one don't you? And you have updated the data file recently, haven't you? Of course you have - foolish not to.) While you're at it, defrag your hard disk and check that you've got plenty of free space (70MB would be good.) With that out of the way, check the icons on the taskbar. If you have any programs running in the foreground (ie buttons with icon and text) close them down or disable them unless they are vital for your online connection. Child protection programs, such as Cyber Patrol and Net Nanny may cause problems, so disable them if you have the password. Similarly, right click each of the icons at the right hand end of the taskbar and disable those which you don't need. Any program using a timer should go, and SETI@Home is a particular menace, so close that. You can leave the volume control, and any software needed for the CD. (EA recommends shutting down your anti-virus software as well. I don't (because I'm paranoid) and it works ok for me, but if you get problems it might be worth trying.)

  Another possibility as a source of crashes, particularly if you are hosting, is your ISP. AOL is generally considered in the lobbies to be prone to this problem, and I sometimes wonder whether my current ISP (BT Openworld) might also be an issue. Certainly it sometimes spontaneously disconnects me, and it invariably does so after two hours online.

  Sometimes the crashes occurred just as I was leaving the lobby, so I thought that maybe it could be a problem with my modem. I got a copy of Modem Wizard and that seems to have had a dramatic impact. I'm getting far fewer crashes, it has speeded up my modem connection when surfing, and I can even host games now, which I couldn't before. The program analyses and optimises your modem settings, as well as some other neat tricks. You can get it in the UK from www.jungle.co.uk for under £12.00 (UK pounds) on special offer, as at July 2001. The program works by optimising the hardware, software and registry settings associated with your modem. I would recommend getting a copy, and have it do the job automatically, but you could of course adjust the settings manually. Here is the list of settings it recommended for my setup (56k modem, 500MHz Pentium III, Windows 98SE):

  Dial-Up Network Connections

  • Modem compression - Turn on modem compression by selecting Start > Settings > Control Panel > Modem > Properties > Connection > Advanced then ensure that 'Use error control' and 'compress data' are checked.
  • Header compression - Turn this on by going to My computer > Dial-Up networking, then left-click on your dial-up connection and select Properties > Server Types > TCP/IP Settings and then make sure that "Use IP header compression" is checked.
  • Software compression - Turn this on by going to My computer > Dial-Up networking, then left-click on your dial-up connection and select Properties > Server Types and then make sure that "Enable software compression" is checked.
  • Logon to Network - Turn this off by going to My computer > Dial-Up networking, then left-click on your dial-up connection and select Properties > Server Types and then make sure that "Log on to network" is *not* checked.
  • NETBEUI and IPX/SPX - These are networking protocols which do not affect modem speed but are important to have turned off for your dial-up connection. If they are left on, you may be giving hackers free access to everything on your computer. See www.grc.com and look at "Shields Up" for full details. Access the settings by going to My computer > Dial-Up networking, then left-click on your dial-up connection and select Properties > Server Types.

  Dial-Up Adaptor Settings

  There are three registry settings which need to be optimised. Modem Wizard set mine as follows:

  • MTU (Maximum Transfer Unit): 576 (default 1500)
  • RWIN (Receive Window): 4288 (default 8760)
  • TTL (Time to Live): 64 (default 32)

  If you are confidant that you know what you are doing, you can easily find information on the web to enable you to edit the settings direct in the registry, or you can find freeware routines to do the job for you. If you decide to mess with these though, you are a braver (wo)man than I am, and I take no responsibility whatsoever should it go horribly wrong. Oh, and backup your registry first, natch!

  Note that the above settings are those recommended by Modem Wizard for my particular setup. Yours may be different. In the CD-ROM Tech Support system, EA specifically recommends turning *off* all compression, so don't take any of this as gospel. Just find out what works for you.

  See also the other sources of help section.

  Other problems

  This is not an online problem as such, but caused me some head-scratching and I only fixed it by accident, so I'll pass it on in case it helps someone. The problem was: if I selected hardware (as opposed to software) rendering during the installation, the graphics worked fine but the text on the control panel was pixellated and unreadable. I wanted to use hardware rendering (ie. on the graphics card) to take some of the load off the cpu and hence speed things up a bit. In the end, I fixed it by installing the new DirectX drivers from Microsoft (version 8.1 instead of 7.0) for another game. You can get the latest drivers from here if you need them.

  Q: Why do people say I can't host? It's not fair!
  A: They're not being mean - it's just that when you host and they try to play with you, they get serious lag, lost connections or, at worst, their computers crash. You can understand why people would get tired of that. So why does it happen? Firstly, check out all the issues raised in the 'Getting Started' and Troubleshooting sections. If you can't run the game successfully offline, or if you can't play when someone else is hosting, you are doomed to failure if you try to host yourself. However, if it seems ok when others host, it means that there is a specific hosting problem. To host, you really need a reasonably modern computer (probably 300MHz minimum) with enough free disk space (70MB recommended) and memory (64MB) and a good connection (56k modem or better, such as ISDN, cable or ADSL). Hosting places serious demands on your computer, because the other players' computers don't communicate with each other directly - all communication goes through yours. Make sure that you have turned off all other non-essential programs to free up the maximum amount of resources. If you've checked all the above, there may be problems because of the distance from the other players (Australia would not be a good hosting country for European players, for instance) or if the telephone system of your country is not up to the highest standards as this will increase the lag, even if the ping is ok. You can look into all these things and more, and still not find an answer. In that case, you have joined that unhappy band of players who, for some unknown reason, just can't host. If it's any consolation, even some shamen can't host.
  Q: I really *can't* host! What's gone wrong?
  A: If the single-player version works fine, and you can can play online when other people host, it might be either a problem with your firewall or that you have a shared internet connection.

  If you have a firewall, it monitors all the traffic which enters and leaves your PC from the internet, and stops anything which it has not been specifically told to allow. When you play as the non-host, Populous is acting like a browser (getting and sending information), but when you host, your machine is acting as a server, responding to the data requests from other player's machines. In order for this to happen, you need to configure your firewall appropriately. Before you ask, I have no idea how to do this!

  The other possible problem is when you have shared access to a single internet connection with several PCs, on a local area network (LAN). This is a cool way to maximise access without having to have multiple connections and accounts. It can be implemented with either dial-up or cable connections. There are a number of programs which allow you to do this, but if you have Windows 98 or later, the facility is built into the operating system. In Windows 98SE it is called ICS (Internet Connection Sharing) and can be installed from the Internet Tools section of Windows Setup (Start > Settings > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs > Windows Setup). This will allow you to play Populous online, but the downside is that you won't be able to host. If you try, you will get to the game setup screen, but the other players will never arrive. The reason is that Populous has to use your local ip address. Your machine has a local address which is different from the ip address of the internet connection. For hosting to work, Populous should use the internet address, but it actually grabs the local address, which is invisible to PCs on the internet, which is why the other players can't find you. This problem has apparently been fixed in later versions of Windows, where I am told that Populous hosting works fine on a shared connection.

  Q: How do I get Populous to run on Windows XP?
  A: Joshua Kite had this problem and submitted it to a user group:

  I used to really enjoy Populous 3: The Beginning on my Windows 98SE PC. That machine died and I now have a new Dell PC with Windows XP Pro. This game will now not run but I cannot find out why or how to fix it. The XP Compatibility tag makes no difference, whether used on the install app or the game .exe. Curiously the downloadable demo works fine and 'Undiscovered Worlds' works about 90% okay. Do you have any ideas - I can't find anything on the web. I have a sneaky feeling that the game .exe is essentially 'wired' not to run on XP as it says on the box 'windows NT not supported', but since XP is a home operating system, there should be some way around this.

  After various suggestions, he came back with the solution:

  I believe this problem to be related to securom copy protection which was apparently only applied to the European release. I am using a laptop with a Toshiba combo drive(SDR2102) which uses only Windows native drivers and so I can't investigate copy protection with different drives or drivers.

  Solution:

  1. Install Populous The Beginning
  2. Download pop3euro.zip This is available from www.thewheel.freeserve.co.uk/downloads.html
  3. Apply patch as per instructions
  4. Reinstall Populous The Beginning over the top of the previous install (i.e. don't uninstall). I selected 'full' – Hey it's an old game
  5. Launch game from autoplay welcome window 'play' (other access modes don't work for me).

  
  All set. No compatibility requirements apparent.

  (Note that the pop3euro.zip is a crack designed to allow you you run Populous from a copy CD-ROM instead of the original. If you already have a genuine CD-ROM, then it would seem to be fine to use the crack to make it run, as described above. Using it to avoid buying the game would, of course, be illegal.)
  Q: None of that helps. Where do I go now?
  A: You need help! You can try emailing me, in which case I will try to help, but don't expect too much. A better idea would be to post your problem to one of the forums which contain Populous players. Asked nicely, they will often help. The best place to go is the forum at Populous Reincarnated. They have a specific section for technical problems (scroll down the page to see it) and you will very likely find the solution there.
  
  
  

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  Last updated: 17 October 2011