May 18, 2018

Constructor - Spare Parts And Servicing! Update

Constructor - 💝 Bright 💝

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6vU5V1zPvA

Hello wonderful fans of Constructor. It is I, BrightPaw, with another announcement for the latest update that should be reaching your screens right… about… now!

Let me welcome you to the Spare Parts And Servicing! Update. *Welcomes*

What an almost month it has been since the last update that saw Nigel Plasterboard working with some of the best Constructors this side of Steam. Oh, and let’s not forget the heated leaderboard struggle between the wonderful Ashfall, and Dmitry – well done to the two of you for breaking the leaderboard! Yes, we've also slipped in a quick adjustment for the bank balance since yesterday so that you can continue to keep track of your money on the main screen even when it's worth at least... carry the four, subtract the square of a... a lot of money!

Well, enough stalling for time…

Firstly, thank you to everyone who provided feedback on the missions – it is wonderful to see everyone enjoying them and we’re happy to say that you’ve exceeded the expectations of the ever-unhelpful foreman, Nigel Plasterboard. This patch will add a few changes to the text based on the feedback received, as well as hopefully sealing any of the remaining methods for creating impossible to pass stages… we hope.

As always, if you have questions about the missions and require assistance please don’t hesitate to open a thread in this subforum.

We would also like to thank the Non-English fans for their patience and understanding whilst we are waiting for the final versions of the translations. It is no doubt very frustrating to not always understand something immediately, but we believe in your ability. 😊 We are hoping that the translations will reach us within the next few weeks so stay tuned for a follow-up patch.

So What's New?

In addition to the usual fixes, we have made corrections to the missions as well as a few other changes such as allowing you to set your rent using the mouse-wheel. Snappy! However, there is one change I would really like to talk about which is the automatic replacement of tenants.

Constructor is, and always has been, a game of micromanagement. Keeping track of tenants, replacing them, reassigning their production/rental payments, making sure that the Major has the right type of tree, replacing that tree because it was the wrong type of tree, are all part of the process. Therefore, we have been averse to completely automating the process in the past. However, it is a new year (well, if five months can be considered new…) which means looking back at some of the other things which can be toned down a little. We are happy to say that it is now possible to automatically replace tenants provided you have spare ones available!

But what is the catch? Surely it must degrade them in some way – there is no way you’d add this without making it worthless or annoying to use. Well, if upgrading to Deluxe Kitchens is annoying then you’ve got us! Based on feedback, we understand that later in the game things become very tedious when it comes to replacing the moaning Majors or Smelly Slobs every other year. If you missed the announcement yesterday, here is a quick demonstration of how it works!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzOGvLTRamw

We therefore feel that targeting this feature towards the mid to late game stages with the pre-requisite of a Deluxe Kitchen tones down the amount of micro-management late game, whilst also allowing some of the early game concerns such as squatting hippies to remain relevant during the time’s you might often see them.

Understandably, this may not be to everyone’s taste, but the principle is very simple: it rewards you for doing well and charging tenants through the nose to live in your up-market properties! Of course, it is important to remember that this functionality only extends so far as replacing tenants who die of old age. Therefore, if they are killed by other means they will not be replaced automatically so that some amount of decision making is still involved once things heat up.

Of course, this adds yet another use for the loveable hoodlums… the erm… Thugs! Want to disable this against a rival? Simply send your Thugs to throw a party the likes of which would make even the Hippy blush. Once the Deluxe Kitchen is ripped out it will need to be replaced before replacement will take effect once again.

Another difficulty with the auto-replacement of tenants is making sure enough information is conveyed to players so that whilst they are focused on other things, they can always know that the game has got their back. Therefore, we have created a set of new notifications which convey the following information:

When you are running low on tenants of a specific level.
When your tenant could not be replaced due to a lack of available tenants.
When a tenant becomes a Super Tenant as part of the auto-replacement.

Each notification has a handy Go-To button that takes you to the affected property, too!

Okay, What's The Plan Going Forward?

Good question!

First, a tea break. That’s a given.

After? Well, it’s not so simple. The short of it is that we have many more things that we will adding to the game throughout the year based on feedback from fans, as well as various additional quality of life improvements because, well, the quality of life can never be too high, right?

The key changes and additions still to come are:

Mission localisations
Remapping keys
Video mode improvements
Learning Missions
Even more quality of life changes
Miscellaneous UI improvements
Multiplayer saves
Constructor Plus

Once again, thank you all for your support and patience! Oh, and for those who might have missed yesterday’s announcement… here are those blasted patch notes again.

BrightPaw’s Recovered Patch Notes

New Features And Quality Of Life Additions

Added timer countdown for missions which have time limits.
Multiple instances of the same message will not spam the screen if they occur within 30 seconds of each other.
Swapped Total Rent Leaderboard to a new one that can hold much larger numbers.
Halved volume of crying sound effect that plays when one of your tenants die.
Rent increase/decrease button now accepts mouse-wheel input for quicker rent-setting.
Rent can be increased/decreased by mousing over the rent value in the data screen and using the mouse-wheel.
Tenants can now be automatically replaced at a per-home level. This functionality requires a deluxe kitchen at all times and only applies to tenants that die of old age.
Borderless video mode added – Play Constructor and stream the latest episode of your favourite series on Netflix. Netflix and build, anyone?
Achievement pop-ups can be disabled in the Message Options.
Adding -Q to launch options not only skips the introduction, but also speeds up the loading sequence where previously it would wait for the audio to finish playing.
Added a digit and removed spacers once the bank balance exceeds 9,999,999.

Missions

Corrected wrong audio for Basic Job in stage 5 and stage 6 briefing.
Implemented additional logic checks to ensure certain things cannot be done out of order to prevent impossible to pass stages in the following missions:
- Basic Job
- Salvage Operation
- Managing Expectations
- Full Circle
Mission text that was previously ambiguous such as “Carbuncles”, “Solid Brick Housing” now have bracketed identifiers. Example: ”Build Carbuncles (Tenement Blocks) of your own…”

General Fixes

Guard dogs will no longer attempt to bite policemen or tenants from other teams.
Fixed a crash which could occur due to player-controlled policemen being bitten, and the player then trying to interact with them.
Fixed an issue where council workers lured to the Arcade by the Killer Clown would leave the building and become permanently stuck.
Fixed an issue with the classic building placement method and pause mode.
Fixed an interaction between Street Parties and Police Helicopters trying to get their groove on.
Fixed a crash that would sometimes occur when loading saved games.
Fixed an issue where Supertenants stopped being triggered when more than 128 of a tenant type were already on the map.
Fixed animation when changing gangster weapon repeatedly.

Right, well, that’s a wrap. Now, where are those biscuits…

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

:lovekami_heart: System 3

May 18, 2018

Beta Branch Update: Iron Captain Mode, Autofire, Expanded Crew & lots more!

Abandon Ship - Gary Burchell

Greetings Captain!

We're busy working away on our next Major Update, which is going to be packed with loads of exciting new systems. As we implement new features we trial them on a publicly available Beta Branch for feedback and testing. This Beta Branch Update includes what we've been working on recently, and we'll talk more about what is coming soon!

To learn how to gain access to the Beta Branch, click on this link:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/551860/discussions/10/1698293255137774100/

If the version number in the bottom-right corner of the Main Menu ends in 8765 or later, you have the correct version. Some bug fixes plus new features mean your saves from previous versions will not work with this update, although those saves will work fine if you revert back to the main version of the game.

Let's take a look at what's in this latest update:

Expanded Crew Sizes, New Skills

This has been a popular request, so crew size is now dependant on the ship class and on the larger ships, goes up to 8.

-- Only the biggest vessels will support a crew of 8 --

We've also given the rest of the crew unique skills to differentiate them further:

Captain: Leader. Provides a passive bonus to whatever action the crew on your ship are doing.
Navigator: Evasive Manoeuvres. When manning the wheel, reduces the accuracy of enemy fire.
Marine: Dodge. Reduces the damage received.
Sailor: Special Repairs. Provides a bonus to extinguishing fires, repairing hull cracks and pumping water.
Gunner: Accuracy. Increases the chance of hitting when firing cannons or mortars.

The Surgeon of course already has their 'Heal' Skill.

Autofire

Another popular request: every single weapon in the game can now be toggled between manual fire and autofire!

-- Weapons set to Autofire will have a gold highlight that circles the Weapon Button. Right-Click the Weapon Button to toggle Autofire on and off --

Major Balancing

We've been undertaking some major balancing improvements to the entire game. This has been necessary due to previous updates, as well as the changes to crew sizes, and to fix / improve some existing issues. Some highlights include:

The way the AI scale in difficulty no longer has anything to do with your ship class, so it should remove / reduce the feeling of "I've got a new ship, and so did the enemy".
The AI are now more aggressive than previously.
Cannon Targeting has now been visualised with a system which is much clearer to read, and Section Damage has been re-balanced so it is less attritional. It now feels more viable a strategy to target a section and destroy it without the AI being too proactive and immediately fixing it.
Fires and Hull Cracks are more likely to appear when firing weapons that cause them. Fires and Hull Cracks will be less dangerous on Easy Mode and more dangerous on Hard Mode.

We'll continually tweak this as we develop, but from what we've played internally, this feels like a solid improvement. Let us know what you think!

-- Targeting the enemy ship with cannons will now display a red highlight to show which section you are targeting --

Iron Captain Mode

In previous updates, we added Magistrate Saves; a way of manually saving if you found a rare Captain's Log. 'Iron Captain' Mode is something you can select when creating a new game and means there are no Captain's Logs in the game.

Key Bindings Menu

You can now re-map your keys in the new Key Bindings menu!

Community Translations In-Progress!

Some amazing members of our community are busy translating the game. So far we have translations for French, German, Spanish and Italian in the pipeline, and as work continues we'll make these available via the Beta Branch system until they're completed.

We've got extensive documentation and a super-convenient tool that allows local testing of translations in-engine, so if you're interested in being part of the Community Translation Project, then check out this link here:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/551860/discussions/5/1693788384130852300/

Miscellaneous

We've fixed a load of bugs and made lots of other improvements to the game. Some worth bringing to your attention are:

Crew commands can now be given when hovering over their widgets in the bottom left (e.g. making it easier to heal when the surgeon is selected, or stabilise someone who has been incapacitated)
Monologues and single-choice event message boxes can be continued by pressing the main "Enter" key.
Escape can now be used to close the Settings UI and "Cancel" Confirmation boxes
Reduction in crew standing in the same space to improve readability when boarding.
There is a new music track in the game, which can be heard in Sub-Tropical areas. For those that own the Abandon Ship Soundtrack, you'll have already heard this.

We'd love to hear your thoughts on this latest update, so follow the instructions in the link to find out how to gain access and provide feedback:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/551860/discussions/10/1698293255137774100/

Our longer-term plans can be found here:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/551860/discussions/6/1693788202021118098/

We're really excited about what is coming as part of our next Major Update: New Weapons, some additions to Exploration Mode, plus a couple of BIG surprises too! We'll provide updates on our progress.

Thanks for all of the support and feedback :)

The Abandon Ship Crew

May 18, 2018

7 Days and up to 8 Rewards up for grabs!

Community Announcements - DNteam02

Get more out of your top-ups and what you bargained for from 19 May 0000HRS to 25 May 2359HRS (CEST)! Simply Top up 5,000 DNP on any day of May’s Spend and Snag event to get the Reward you want, but don’t miss out on x5 Magical Design Synthesis Devices when you snag all of the Rewards during this event period. Check out the map below and start picking your Rewards today!

NOTE:
- Top Up DNP Reward eligibility is accumulative from 0000HRS to 2359HRS during event period
- Thing to take note of regarding Magical Design Synthesis Devices
- Device doesn’t work on overall costumes
- Device doesn’t work on magic grade costumes
- Device doesn’t work on special seasonal costumes (e.g. Christmas Costume)
- Device only works on Helm ,Upper body, Lower body, Glove and Shoes.

Terms and Conditions:

• The Promotion will start on 19 May 0000HRS till 25 May 2359HRS.
• Rewards are given per Account basis.
• Top up of DNP must be in one transaction.
• Rewards will be given based on the account used to participate in the event.
• Each account is only entitled to receive the Top up rewards once per day.
• All rewards will be credited to all eligible characters on 30 May 2359HRS.
• Rewards are credited via Special Storage.
• Rewards that are not collected and have expired will not be reimbursed.
• All timings stated are in the CEST time zone.
• Any character that has been banned due to infringement of game abuse policies during the event or reward period will not be compensated
• Any disputes will not be entertained 1 month after the date of accreditation of event rewards.
• Terms and conditions are subjected to change without prior notice.

May 18, 2018

Robothorium Devlog: the enemies part 2

Robothorium - Troph

Hey everyone,

Welcome to our 13th devlog article about our upcoming tactical RPG, Robothorium. Today we focus on some enemies that you will encounter during your uprising.

If you want more or want to participate to our open beta, come join us on Discord
For those who don’t already know about our game Robothorium, I invite you to read our articles right here

The police

Your uprising has definitely drawn the attention of the U.H. (United Humanity). The intergovernmental organization has been created to improve international cooperation and to create and maintain international order. They are now sending you their troops to bring back order in their provinces.

Basic recruits will tend to shoot at sight and protect their partners. However, the higher graded ones will increase the defense of their allies and reduce the resistance of their opponents.

The Communications Unit

The communications unit are cyborgs connecting the field to the headquarters. They are equipped with a terminal directly grafted to their spine, ensuring their job of perfect support.

Causes significant reductions in mobility and regeneration while protecting themselves.

Agents

These Agents are hotheads employed by private sectors. Real killing machines, they are ready to eradicate any threat.
Large, well protected and well armed, they are one of the best versatile units.

They will shoot you down on sight if you try to break through the labs and the higher graded ones will increase the critical hit chance of their teammates.

That’s all for now. We will be back soon to share with you our progression on Robothorium.

Please share any questions, feedback or thoughts in the comments, we really love to hear from you.

The Goblinz Team