Dear Constructor Plus fans,
Before we start, we would like to thank everyone for their great feedback over the Christmas period as well as those who have continued to provide us with feedback regarding our public beta program. We are very happy to see that people are enjoying the changes being made to the game. We hope that you will enjoy the latest set of changes that should now be live for all to try on the s3public_beta build.
By the way please bear in mind that because of some of these changes with new data being added to the saves, saves made whilst playing on the public beta branch will not load in the public build as it does not have the relevant data entries. Any saves made in the public build will still load into the new beta build as well as those made on the earlier beta build.
Due to issues detected in the original s3_public beta build that have now been corrected in this build, we cannot in good conscience make the previous beta build live on the public branch as we had originally intended. If there are no serious issues detected with this latest build we will look to making it live on the default public branch next update.
The public beta build is open to everyone who owns Constructor Plus to try out and there are no time restrictions or limitations in place so feel free to stay on that build if you prefer. For those of you who do not remember or know how to access the s3public_beta branch here is a nifty set of instructions:
STEPS TO ACCESS PUBLIC BETA BRANCH
1. Right-click Constructor Plus in your Steam Library. A pop-up should appear.
2. Click “Properties”. A new window will open.
3. In the new window look at the top and you will see several tabs. Look for the tab that says “BETAS” and click on it. You will open the tab in the same window.
4. Look for a drop-down box and click on it. The drop-down should contain a new branch called s3public_beta. Click on it and your Steam client should begin downloading the new update.
5. If you wish to revert to the previous build repeat the above steps up until Step 4. In Step 4 instead of selecting s3public_beta please select “NONE – Opt out of all beta programs”. The previous build should begin downloading.
Beta Update – 14/02/20
With our latest update we wanted to start to look towards the AI and ways we could add some new and interesting functionality whilst also addressing a few other key areas. We hope that this first wave of changes provides a more interesting experience for those of you who like to play with AI competitors.
New Gameplay Option - Dog Bite Resistance
Our newest opt-in gameplay option is Dog Bite Resistance. It is no secret that our beloved pooch is quite the super dog when it comes to dealing with all manner of undesirables and other ne’er-do-wells. With many of you coming to enjoy the missions and other gameplay that Constructor Plus has to offer we felt it the right time to make more fundamental changes to the game. Of course, this change, being a gameplay option, is completely opt-in. Here is how it works:
- Click Options and then click Gameplay
- You will see a set of options and at the bottom should now be a handy Dog Bite Resistance setting.
- Tweak this within a set range of 0-5 with 0 turning off the function entirely, and 1-5 providing some amount of dog bite resistance to all characters in the game for both the player and the AI.
A more in-depth description of the function is as follows:
Dog Bite Resistance supplies a base amount of dog bites that a character in the game may receive before retreating. For those of you who remember Mob Rule, you might recall that the dogs in that game were fearsome, yet some characters would happily fight back against them. We wanted to bring back some of that functionality for Constructor Plus and in a nutshell, this is precisely the purpose of the option.
Each number of resistances from 1 to 5 will allow a character to receive that many bites before running. This number steadily decreases so if a character has recently received several bites, they will be less likely to want to engage with another vicious dog quite so soon. For this purpose, we have re-arranged the character UI ever so slightly to allow for tracking of how many bites a character has received. As stated, characters passively recover from dog bites but if you’ve a character who has had a run-in with one too many dogs you can speed up their recovery by sending them to rest inside the HQ or the Hospital.
In addition to the base amount of dog bite resistance, characters may sometimes receive a small bonus to their resistance if they are feeling particularly confident. This will trigger randomly once per engagement and cannot trigger again if a character is still recovering from his earlier bites. This change will be reflected in the UI value automatically.
With this setting enabled bear in mind that some undesirables may require additional work to deter and as such you may need to employ more policemen or make use of certain gadgets such as the burglar alarm to deter thieves, thugs, or squatting hippies if they become a problem. You may adjust this setting at any time during a game so feel free to experiment with what feels right for you.
AI Improvement – Self-Preservation
Our next key change is related to the AI’s ability to preserve its own characters during fights. To this end the AI will now build hospitals during the game and make use of them for characters injured during fights.
It is no secret that the AI never particularly cared for its people happily throwing them at you with no regard for their lives. They are now more vigilant and will try to retreat when appropriate, healing up before the next fight. As a result, Professor super tenants are now much more effective.
If you find enemy characters particularly difficult to hold down in a fight, consider using knock-back weapons such as the UZI or minigun and positioning your gangsters in such a way as to lock them down. Of course, you could always play dirty and blow up their hospitals too leaving them with only the third-rate medical equipment of ‘whatever’s lying around’ in their HQ.
We hope this change makes games played against AI competitors much more interesting and we will be looking towards more interesting changes as we move forward.
Weapons – Self Damage tweaks
It’s no secret that the shotgun is one of the best weapons in the game and because of that we often see that they are more often than not the final ‘upgrade’ for many-a-gangster. After experimentation on a few unfortunate souls, we have made a small change to weapon self-damage.
As you may notice, whenever one of your characters attacks someone they will suffer a small amount of self-damage whether through reckless action or just plain stupidity (swinging around a chainsaw like a psychopath is not good for one’s health I’m told). Unfortunately, this self-damage was being applied a little too highly for weapons that fired multiple shots within an attack such as the UZI and the minigun. Therefore, we have reduced the self-damage taken by these weapons. As a result, their already unique knockback properties coupled with this change should make them much more competitive options when stacked up against ol’ reliable.
We would also like to extend our happiest wishes to all fans for Valentine’s Day. Whether you have big plans or simply want a day of self-pampering, just know that out there somewhere Bob the Slob has yet again set his house on fire and burned down the neighbourhood. We’ve been told it was a romantic gesture of some sort went awry. Ah well.
Please find below the relevant changes included in the new public beta branch.
Constructor Plus Beta Update Changes
• New Gameplay option for both AI and Human teams in singleplayer and multiplayer: Dog Bite resistance. The number displayed will set a base amount of dog bites a character may take before fleeing. This number may sometimes be modified if a character is feeling particularly good about their chances when they first engage.
• AI may now construct Hospitals in their town.
• Characters with low energy will retreat to the hospital rather than the HQ if one is available.
• Team colours have been tweaked ever so slightly to brighten up some of the darker shades.
• Self-damage applied to Gangsters when using the Uzi and Minigun has been reduced and they should therefore be more competitive options to the shotgun.
• Thief will correctly latch onto possessed characters when attempting to steal a weapon from them.
• Characters on the way to the Arcade Funhouse's ferris wheel will no longer be sucked into a party becoming uncontrollable after it has expired.
• Adjusted layout of Police Station and Mob HQ screen to avoid text overlaps in some languages.
• Adjust layout of Character info window to show dog bite info.
• Nigel's Gambit during stage 3 will complete successfully if you destroy the enemy team's HQ.
• Nigel's Gambit mission now has a timer displayed when appropriate.
• AI Thieves will now attempt to steal weapons from Mob HQs to upgrade their gangsters.
• Fixed an issue that could occur when reloading saves with Gangsters fighting and sometimes becoming unstable that could potentially cause the game to crash.
• Increased healing rate of characters in HQ slightly to assist when no hospital is available.
Many thanks for your continued support,
System 3