So I just bought Populous the beginning yesterday.


I was going to screenshot it but it appears to be black. I suffer the same problems with many people who posted it before, and after reading for a while, someone suggested to try running the game by using popTB.exe or popTBUW.exe because all other .exe lead to "Program Crash" or video card error. So when I got the game to launch, the colors are broken & I could barely read anything, I already send a support ticket but no responses yet. Any ideas on how to fix this?

I daresay I've got the same problem. Initially, loading it gave an error "A 3D device with the required capabilities could not be found" etc.
Running the game in compatability mode for Win 95, 98 and 2000 gets the game to load, display the intro fine but then the initial menu is a crazy rainbow of what reminds me of the old CGA/EGA days.

I too took a screenshot which is mostly black but you can maybe ge the idea of what kind of colours.

Cheers!

So it's been a while.

About a couple days later I posted this, gog support replied to help me but failed so I got a replacement instead. A bit sad, really since I really want to play this game. But ah well...

If you are talking about the main menu, it always glitches out like that. That's a bug in the program and has always been there. Just click on something on the menu and it'll correct itself.

I got the exact same problem and it's not fixed by going into a submenu or something. The weird colors stays that way all the time, even when starting a game. I've tried dxwnd and also removing the explorer process but the problem doesn't go away (actually dxwnd didn't do anything, could'nt even start in window mode. I have no idea if I did something very wrong but I followed guides and everything seemed to be right).

I got a Radeon HD 6970 so it doesn't really go under the newer cards that's not supported according to gog.
(Compatibility notice: Newer AMD cards (7XXX and 8XXX series) are not supported.)

I came across the same problem since I have an AMD 7800 series card. Both the menu and in game had a rainbow of colors and I couldn't make out a thing. After looking on google I came across a (very odd) fix that worked for me. I am using windows 7 64-bit.


If you right click on the desktop and select screen resolution it will open a menu to change the screen resolution. No need to change anything, just leave the menu open(while you play) and run populous. It should take care of the rainbow color problem. Worked for me.

Tried that too and it didn't work (i got dual screen and tried to just use one screen to see if that was the problem, still got the rainbowshit going on).

I'm really mad about this since pop3 is one of my most favorite games ever made :<

If you press "scroll lock" on your keyboard it will correct the colours. Don't know why but it just does.

Doesn't work for me either.

Windows 7+ has a strange color issue. To fix it, there's an extra registry key that you can enter that often solves the issue. With the reg-key and pressing scroll lock the color problem will go away.

Using dxwnd also solves the problem, just choose the options Window>Model Style, with everything else off.

i experience the same problems, no matter how i run the game ( software mode or not )
got the AMD 7800 series card, tried having the screen resolution menu open while launching and and try deleting the atrium.dll fil, but nothing seems to work for me... the intro videos runs fine, but when i get to the game menu, it goes into rainbow retard mode... and i'm also out of ideas...

tried to take a screenshot, but it doesn't show how it truly looks like

If this is one of the newer AMD 7xxx cards, then it is NOT supported on Populous: The Beginning. Please confirm if your AMD 7800 is one of the newer ones or an older one (aka, the newer one will be AMD 7800 HD and the older one will just be AMD 7800).

yeah mine is the HD series...
but did manage to get it working, downloaded dxwnd and have it up and running now in a window format, not full screen.... but i can play it now :D

Have you tried running it with explorer.exe disabled? That fixes a lot of colour corruption issues in windows 7. just press control+alt+delete, go to processes, and close explorer.exe (then use the task manager to run populous). Once your done, just type explorer.exe into the new task bar in task manager to restore your desktop.

Hey guys.

I had the same issue, and with friend we've found a solution that worked for all of our 3 computers.

Run the game. You've got shitty colors.
Start a mission, whatever it is. You've got a shitty colors in game.
Go to the option menu in-game, not in the menu. Change the graphics option "quick default" to low or medium, but not high. The color should go back to normal. Do not try to change resolution or something else.
Once this is done you can go back to main menu, and start any game as normal.

You will have to do this every time you start the game, but it is not an hard manipulation (less than 1 minute)

Have fun. Especially if you've got 3 friend and LAN.