After shipping beans for some time, Molyneux received a call from Commodore. Slightly confused but eager to see what this inquiry was all about, Molyneux obliged their invitation to visit the company's offices. Commodore presented him with the Amiga 1000 and asked him to create a software program for it – not a game. It dawned on Peter that Commodore had mistaken his bean-shipping company with a legitimate software company named Torus, but he didn't correct them. The following week, Commodore shipped him several Amigas and Peter's first programming adventure had begun.
He consumed copious amounts of cigarettes, Coca-Cola and pizza, and eventually created "The Ultimate Database" for Amiga 1000. "I was over-promising even at that time," Molyneux jested at his talk during GDC.
Later, at a local pub he met the creator of Druid II, who asked him to port his game over to the Amiga. He had officially become a game programmer, and joked that his strategy for getting a higher framerate was simple, "I just halved the screen."
And so, Molyneux stopped shipping baked beans and renamed the company Bullfrog Productions. Now, they just needed to create a game.
Populous's conception began with the future team tinkering with the game Virus. According to Molyneux, the code was "a fluffy girl's dress" kind of language, but it worked nonetheless. He also noted that because of his junky computer monitor any code he wrote needed to fit in 79 columns.
But the core gameplay of Populous was a total accident due to Molyneux's insufficient coding skills. He didn't know how to do a "wall hug", so he came up with the concept of lowering and raising the landscape with the mouse.
The royalty contract negotiated for the game was a pretty abysmal 10-percent, with the ability to rise to 12 after 1 million units had been sold. Bullfrog also wouldn't receive any money until 9 months after the game released; another typical practice of publishing contracts back then.
The team hit a small speed bump during the testing phase – they realized they hadn't finished the game yet. After adding in a small "Well done!" screen, the title was complete and they just needed to show it to the press.
The first journalist to come to Bullfrog worked for Ace Magazine and told Molyneux that Populous was, "the greatest game I've ever played." Peter responded by trying to keep him away from the game at the studio, "I thought, he can never play that game again!" The reasoning being he didn't want him to change his mind and decide that the game was actually no good. Molyneux successfully kept the journalist from playing the title by drinking him into a stupor at a local pub and the rest is history.
So, Populous and Peter's career blossomed from his "inability to program a certain feature" and fueled "by cigarettes, Coca-Cola and pizza."
