Questions and feedback

[MattBoothDev]

I have a few questions for the development team and some feedback.

Firstly, how much of the original team that worked on the 90's classic are working on this? This is out of pure morbid interest as I am a software engineer and there are projects I worked on a long time ago I'd love to take another go at, so I just wondered.

Are there any methods to avoid the worker limit? I think 30 is the limit you can have at once (6 fully stocked work teams) but then after this there's a constant warning about creating new workers and a $100 fine if you keep making them, but I needed more repairman!

In all my years of playing this game I've never understood, quite fully, but I have my ideas, what the hell the thugs/yobs are saying when you open the Tenements building. Something something "thought I'm a druggie?". I've honestly no idea.

Any plans to perhaps do a making-of for the classic game of the 90s?

[Areinha]

Hi there MattBoothDev.

About the repairman, there is an gadget that lets the tenants repair their own homes, that gadget was used to have it's durability (life) spent during a time as the tenants used it to repair their own houses automatically, avoiding the use of a repairman on the estate. In Constructor Plus this gadget no longer loses durability and the tenant can use it forever to repair their own houses, avoiding the use of a repairman, but, of course, that gadget can only be set in a tenant house, meaning you'll still need the repairman for others structures such as a Police HQ, Mob HQ or even your own Gadget Factory. That way you can place your Repairman's in specific estates and let them repair specific structures instead of having one in each estate, for example an estate that have only tenants houses will free you of a Repairman.

[Constructor_Plus]

The intent is that as your town expands and repairmen are no longer able to satisfy the demand you will move on to producing repair kits at the Gadget Factory. Unlike in Constructor Classic these will not need to be replaced after being installed. If you have multiple work teams, it may be necessary to cut back on some of them so you can produce more repairmen. This is part of the need to balance things out.

As far as the team goes, most of us are present and accounted for with some absences as some moved on in the industry. We're still the small team we were all those years ago, and it probably shows in how the experience has remained familiar but different enough.

When we were designing Constructor all those years ago, we didn't really document the experience all that much. There were a lot of elements that didn't make it in, or were cut for various reasons. For example, a storage facility that could be built to store gadgets and resources. This functionality was brought back, but you now only need place sheds in the grounds of the resource/gadget factories to achieve the same result.

Honestly, the sounds were recorded so long ago by one of the guys who used to do our sound design that we couldn't even tell you what the thugs are saying, but he certainly hit the nail on the head as far as the various gibberish is concerned.

Kindest regards

System 3

[MattBoothDev]

Originally posted by Constructor_Plus:

The intent is that as your town expands and repairmen are no longer able to satisfy the demand you will move on to producing repair kits at the Gadget Factory. Unlike in Constructor Classic these will not need to be replaced after being installed. If you have multiple work teams, it may be necessary to cut back on some of them so you can produce more repairmen. This is part of the need to balance things out.

As far as the team goes, most of us are present and accounted for with some absences as some moved on in the industry. We're still the small team we were all those years ago, and it probably shows in how the experience has remained familiar but different enough.

When we were designing Constructor all those years ago, we didn't really document the experience all that much. There were a lot of elements that didn't make it in, or were cut for various reasons. For example, a storage facility that could be built to store gadgets and resources. This functionality was brought back, but you now only need place sheds in the grounds of the resource/gadget factories to achieve the same result.

Honestly, the sounds were recorded so long ago by one of the guys who used to do our sound design that we couldn't even tell you what the thugs are saying, but he certainly hit the nail on the head as far as the various gibberish is concerned.

Kindest regards

System 3

That is what I ended up doing in the end!

Can I just say that is honestly astounding that the team has remained together all these years? "They don't make 'em like they used to, eh?"

I recently grabbed myself a copy of the original PC box set for here in the UK. I had one years ago as a kid but lost it. This is when I realised you guys did the Plus version. I have the HD version and missed out on the discount, but that didn't matter at all. £20 well spent.

I've been checking some of the posts here and I had no clue about the storage in the shed and things like that, which I will now be trying out.

Constructor was my first PC game way back in 1997. My first PC, a Pentium 100MHz, 8MB RAM and an S3 Trio (I had to get another 8MB for Constructor to boot at all, unfortunately) and Constructor. I thought I was slick as hell pulling the logo bitmap off the disc and having it as my wallpaper.

Please accept my kindest regards to the team that genuinely started my off down this path of computers, games and programming :)

EDIT:

And I agree the original sound designer knocked it out of the park back in the day. A huge part of the appeal, to me, was the quintessential Britishness and 80's setting of the game. I'd heard many a row from my neighbours that sounded like the the slobs kicking the crap out of each other. Thankfully never ran into the gimp anywhere, though.

The sound of the foreman in the sound setup will forever be ingrained in my memory "Brrrrr, hello, this is Constructor, are you receiving me?"

[Je-Nas]

Originally posted by Constructor_Plus:

The intent is that as your town expands...

Can I sneak a question of my own here? I've been wanting to ask this for years now, but never got the nerve, as MAYBE is some delicate matter, but... What's up with the change in the art of the game, I mean the visual of the characters? Don't get me wrong, the actual art is fine, but the classic one is surely iconic and memorable. Was that just a decision based on taste, some problem with rendering the old style in the new graphics or, maybe, some copyright issues with the original artist or something?

[Constructor_Plus]

As it happens, the original artists (and team) worked on the HD version. There were elements of the original potato head characters that just didn't translate very well into the modern day 'look'. Not to mention, many of the assets needed remodelling anyway, which also applied to some of the buildings. The idea was to try and stay faithful to the original designs, but break out of it into something that looks a little more pleasant to the eye.

We all still hold the original style close to our hearts, of course.

Kindest regards

System 3

[Je-Nas]

Originally posted by Constructor_Plus:

As it happens, the original artists (and team) worked on the HD version. There were elements of the original potato head characters that just didn't translate very well into the modern day 'look'. Not to mention, many of the assets needed remodelling anyway, which also applied to some of the buildings. The idea was to try and stay faithful to the original designs, but break out of it into something that looks a little more pleasant to the eye.

We all still hold the original style close to our hearts, of course.

Kindest regards

System 3

Thx for the reply! :)

[Perry]

Originally posted by Constructor_Plus:

As far as the team goes, most of us are present and ...

I would like to take the opportunity to thank the original team for making such an enjoyable game back then and refreshing it now.

I have fond memories from my childhood playing the original Constructor which was one of my first PC games back then. I played it a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lot at the time and now spent the last weeks enjoying all the new content and missions.

I look forward for more Constructor in the future because I feel like an orphan by finishing all of the missions

Thank you very much!