Map Editor or Populous Map Editor or Popstruction is an editing MDI environment application to edit maps (dat + hdr) in Populous. It was written in VB6 by "TedTycoon" and another fellow Populous programmer back in 2006. The program had many features and had a lot of effort put into it. It could edit maps fairly well and had most of the features implemented but it was still far from complete with many bugs before it was abandoned.

 

The MDI environment allowed you to edit all the aspects of the map using different tools and windows. The editor included a Mini Height Map which showed the level in a 384 x 384 pixel box similar to the one in the Symmetry Tool but with the addition to right-click dragging. Land tools were not implemented before it the project closed, the plan was to allow land tools to be used on the height map to edit the land.

As well as a height map there was a large scale map where each land block was 32 x 32 pixels. They would contain images of the objects that were on the block which you could move around and paint new objects on. Huts were spread out over multiple blocks to show where the hut would be in the game as well as showing the door / orientation. A separate dialog was used to paint objects onto the map, the dialog had all the objects on it with a tribe selection and orientation selection.

 

Another feature for objects was the Worshipping Properties dialog. This was a tool that simplified worshipping objects by combining all the objects that made up a stone head or vault of knowledge and put it all in one dialog that had simple options such as time and prize. The more complicated fields that were normally constant to the type of worshipping object were automatically done by the editor.

Special Edit was a small tool that could generate and place wildmen and trees in random locations around the map. The user can specify the quantity that will be placed and how bunched they were.

A restrictions editor was implemented similar to the one in the 'Spell Editor'. This allowed you to edit the header file such as spells / huts available, landscape style and AI scripts.

Other planned features were to have a good testing function that did the file management for you and limiting features depending if the user is creating a single player map or a multiplayer map and an advanced mode for advanced editing for adding objects such as effects and triggers.