constructor (video game)

Sorry I see upon review that this post has gotten quite long. I apologize.

Constructor (1997) by Acclaim

Constructor is a really nice PC game from 1997. It offers action packed and difficult game play with a lot of options and hours of fun. For a long time (soon a decade..!) the chopper and I have wanted to play it multiplayer but there are several issues to solve before it is playable. Each time we found a solution we were thrilled but another problem appeared. We payed good money for this excellent game back then after playing at the local net cafe in Søborg, but since then the game has diminished and vanished from the surface of the earth. Acclaim (the producer) has gone bankrupt and no support is available. What a predicament. I weep for all the good things that have been but are not any longer “where are my BonBons?!).
Well, all is not lost! It seems that it is solved at long last and constructor is playable again!

First of all it is an old DOS based game which means compatibility problems with our newer versions of windows. Even though windows offers compatibility mode for old games it does never seem to work out. Kim solved this a couple of years ago by finding a guide/altered version would fix sound and allow it to run for windows XP. The original source has been forgotten but I would definitely like to send out my gratitude to the people involved! I love that people are willing to share their solutions and make the world a better place! Though this allowed for some gaming there was still some crashes which ruined the fun.
Some time later I chanced upon DosBox (can’t remember which other game I was trying to play) but the sound fix combined with dosbox made the game playable again.
However, Dosbox did not recognize the IPX protocol on my LAN connection so it was single player only. Definitely better than nothing!
At a LAN a year ago or so at my ex’s dormitory there was this super friendly and overall nice guy (Thank you Frederik) who have old DOS games like Death Rally and Blood and knows how to setup an IPX server with DosBox and play them in multiplayer. It was wonderful.

Death Rally

Blood

At this time we were already on LAN over the internet via hamachi (another excellent applicaton) and I though, “Hell lets try it out!”. We joined up over hamachi and initialized the dosbox IPX tunneling through hamachi and it did work! The game was shown right there in the lobby inside constructor. Oh what joy!! .
While playing we found out that sooner or later the game goes out of sync which basically means that the game splits up and you end up playing the AI and when the opponents base begins to burn and blows up you think you’ve won. Only that your opponent is also celebrating about your demise over ventrilo. That kind of ruined our fun for a while though we did not give up just yet. For a long time I persisted in searching the internet for patches but the game has indeed vanished. I did find a nice guide on the gameplay.
Our theory is that the game goes out of sync because of game breaks and pauses for the different players. If the game is not paused at both pc’s then it is bound to go wrong. The problem is not the pause button inside the game, that works for both players. Also the speed increase/decrease works. The problem seems to be with popups/help messages/quests and the like. Therefore when we took the game up at the LAN of this Easter we disabled all pauses and changed the SYSTEM.INI and it did seem to work out. No out of sync!! YAY

Now all there remains is to figure out a way to beat the chopper. I know this will prove to be the most difficult task in this story. He’s just way more a business man than I am.