                         POPULOUS LANDSCAPE EDITOR
                              Version 1.0

     Do you like creating your own worlds in Populous? I know I do,
but I've found that the built-in world editor in the game to be very
tedious when it comes to creating land on a large scale. What if you
want a world that is all 5 levels high and flat? Got about an hour
to point and click, wearing out your mouse and taking all the fun 
out of it? This is why I wrote the Populous Landscape Editor.
     The file POP_EDIT.GFA is a GFA Basic 3.0 program; I don't own
the compiler for 3.0 yet, so you'll have to run it using GFABASRO.PRG,
the run-time module available on GEnie and elsewhere, or load it into
GFA Basic 3.0 if you have it. If you have the GFA Basic 3.0 compiler
and you think POP_EDIT is viable, please feel free to compile it and
upload it.

     CAVEAT:
     This program is the result of a 12-hour brainstorming session,
and is not perfect. It is entirely possible to create nonsensical
game files if you don't pay attention to your landscape construction.
A nonsensical file (i.e. a cliff from level 7 to level 2) may cause 
POPULOUS to crash.

     HOWEVER,
     * POP_EDIT will not harm your POPULOUS disk or program; no writing
       is done to the POPULOUS disk. (Always keep the write-protect
       tab on, at any rate).
     * POP_EDIT is safe for hard drives. Only .GAM files are written,
       through the fileselector box in POP_EDIT.

     POP_EDIT is a Landscape-ONLY generator. It doesn't do trees, rocks,
houses, or people. These you add after loading your .GAM file into
POPULOUS. Maybe in later versions I will add these features, or you
can do it and share your program with everyone else! The .GAM file 
generated by POP_EDIT contains landscape data ONLY and will come up 
in POPULOUS with no people, trees, etc. 

     HOW TO USE IT:
     Run the program POP_EDIT. It will first look for a file called
POPSCREN.PI1 on drive A:\. If it's there, good. If not, the program
will ask you where it is and present a Fileselector box for you to
help find it. Find it, click on it, and click on "OK". You will then
be at the main screen. (There's only one).
     At the left of the screen is a column of colored boxes with 
numbers beside them. You are only concerned with boxes 0-7; these
represent the land levels you can create (you can't use level 8;
more on this later). Ignore the rest of the boxes, they're for me.
     In the middle of the screen are two square boxes, one twice as
big as the other. The smaller of the two I will call the Draw Box.
The larger I will call the Redraw box. All of your land creation
goes on in the Draw box; the Redraw box will show you the Draw box
magnified 2X so you can observe little details. To see this at any
time, click on "REDRAW".
     Below the Draw box are six buttons labeled DRAW, FILL, PLOT,
LOAD, SAVE, and QUIT. Can you figure them out? I'll bet you can,
but let me make a few points about each.

     DRAW:
     * Draw by holding the left mouse button down; pixels will be
       plotted so long as you hold the mouse button down and move 
       the mouse.
     * Don't draw too fast or the program may skip a pixel.
     * Note that the Redraw box is not updated until you click on
       "REDRAW". This is true for all functions.

     FILL:
     * Click on "FILL", and wherever you click in the Draw box will
       be filled in with the currently selected color. By the way,
       the current drawing color is displayed in a box above the Draw
       box.
     * Be aware of what mode you're in at all times by looking 
       immediately above the Draw box; the currently selected drawing
       mode is displayed there. Many times I have gone to draw a pixel
       only to have the whole box filled in because I was still in 
       FILL mode. There is no UNDO function in this program yet!
     * After each FILL operation, the program needs to update the 
       entire landscape array in memory; this takes about 5 seconds,
       so please be patient.

     PLOT:
     * If you select PLOT mode and click in the Draw box, a single
       pixel will be drawn in the currently selected color, and no
       more pixels will be drawn until you release the mouse button.
       This is good for precision work, or if you've got the shakes.

     LOAD:
     * This will bring up a Fileselector box from which you can choose
       a previously saved POPULOUS game to load. The landscape data
       from the file will be loaded into the program and displayed.
       Feel free to edit as you see fit!

     SAVE:
     * This will bring up a Fileselector box from which you can choose
       a name to save your landscape as. Type in any name you want, 
       but be sure to include the .GAM extension, or POPULOUS will
       not recognise it. POP_EDIT will NOT put it on for you!
     * Remember: The .GAM files written by POP_EDIT will contain 
       Landscape data ONLY! No people, trees, etc. will be written
       into the new file EVEN IF YOU PREVIOUSLY LOADED A FILE THAT
       CONTAINED THEM. This is a Landscape editor only. (I hate to
       harp on that so much but I don't want you to be disappointed).

     QUIT:
     * Exits the program after checking with you to be sure.


     A FINAL BUT VERY IMPORTANT STEP:

         POP_EDIT writes the landscape data to the .GAM file ONE LEVEL
     HIGHER THAN YOU DREW IT. The reason is complicated, but the short
     explanation is that I haven't hacked out all the idiosyncracies
     of the POPULOUS .GAM-file format. I blame myself. Anyhow, if you
     load your new cool .GAM file into populous, you will see nothing
     but water at first. Don't panic! It's there, you just can't see it
     yet because the POPULOUS program doesnt recognise it yet. To get
     POPULOUS to recognise your landscape:
     * Load your .GAM into POPULOUS.
     * Click on the World icon, click on Paint Map. (It will probably
       be selected already, but make sure).
     * With the Pause icon off, FLOOD ONCE.
     * There it is! That's why POP_EDIT writes landscape data one level
       higher than you drew it. That's also why you can't draw Level 8
       in POP_EDIT; it'll save it as Level 9, and POPULOUS has only
       8 land levels.
     * Don't forget to populate your new world! It's barren at first,
       and if you try to "Play Game", you will lose immediately because
       you have no people. (Why isn't that a tie? Oh, well).


     ***** SLARTIBARTFAST'S TIPS ON PROPER LANDSCAPE DESIGN *****

     * No cliffs allowed! The program POP_EDIT will not check for 
       "altitude violations". POPULOUS may or may not crash if you
       load such a landscape; sometimes it doesn't crash,and the
       game gets decidedly weird. Oh, go ahead and try it, I know
       you will anyway. Cliffs can be avoided by paying careful 
       attention to your colors when drawing. This is the main reason
       I made the 2X Redraw box.

     * Try drawing your home state, and see what the little suckers
       do to it. Or, better yet, try the coast of Norway.


********************* ADDENDUM FOR VERSION 1.1 ***************************

     * Click on <C> to clear the grid and start over again.

     * Click on <I> to invert the landscape; level 7 becomes level 0,
       level 6 becomes level 1, and so forth. Purely for fun.

     * DRAW Mode is now supported in the big Redraw box in addition to 
       the small Draw box. Fill and Point are not supported there yet.

    ** MEGAMANA.PRG
       Run MEGAMANA.PRG; a file selector box will appear. Enter the name
       of a POPULOUS save-.GAM file, and the program will alter a few 
       bytes in the .GAM file so that when you load it into POPULOUS,
       your Mana will be VERY high. The best part is that this will NOT
       alter the file in a way that will cause POPULOUS to disqualify
       you for level advancement. So, if you're stuck on a particular
       game, just save it, run it through MEGAMANA.PRG, and reload it
       in "Conquest" mode, and kick some well-deserved butt! Runs in
       any resolution.

***********************************************************************

     If you have any comments, praise, bomb threats, etc., please
feel free to drop me a line-my Genie address is <J.LYONS-II>.
Enjoy!




                                        Peace on Earth,

                                        John C. Lyons


