Aliens: Colonial Marines AI fixed by a single letter

A

ashmelev75

[H]ard|Gawd
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Nov 29, 2007
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from the "you would not believe this shit" pile

https://www.resetera.com/threads/aliens-colonial-marines-ai-fixed-by-a-single-letter.55247/

Inside your games config file (My Document\My Games\Aliens Colonial Marines\PecanGame\Config\PecanEngine.ini) is the following line of code :

ClassRemapping=PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachXenoToTether -> PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachPawnToTeather

Im sure you'll notice the spelling mistake

ClassRemapping=PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachXenoToTether -> PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachPawnToTether
Click to expand...
 
I'm torn between actually reloading it to try it out / test it and just saying fuck it - too late gearbox. Seriously.

I think the worst part is that some random modder was the one to find this and not the company itself. I mean it's only been 5 years AMIRITE?
 
WOW........i never bought this game because of the horrible AI and lying about the graphics, but if I can find it for $5 i might give it a whirl. I am a sucker for the aliens games.

But 1 fucking letter seriously Gearbox!
 
This is actually an interesting discovery, I'd like someone to interview the devs about it to see their take.

I'm sure other high profile games have similar small bugs in them that might have impacted aspects of the game, seeing how complex game engines are these days. This was only caught because the bug was in a publicly readable ini file and not the source code of the game.
 
I tried it so far it's alright. But now game does not want to shut down. Had a fight to get steam to shut down. Once steam is closed then game closes.
 
Last edited:
Drexion said:
This is actually an interesting discovery, I'd like someone to interview the devs about it to see their take.

I'm sure other high profile games have similar small bugs in them that might have impacted aspects of the game, seeing how complex game engines are these days. This was only caught because the bug was in a publicly readable ini file and not the source code of the game.
Click to expand...

My guess here is whatever development environment they use can't cross compile against external files, so this error wasn't found.

Why the .ini changed after the fact is going to be one hell of a story. Even it was some internal act of sabotage rather then gross incompetence, either a formal code review or any decent VCS would have caught this and fixed it before deployment. This speaks to a much larger issue, and is going to by itself make me a lot more hesitant to purchase Gearbox software going forward.
 
gamerk2 said:
This speaks to a much larger issue, and is going to by itself make me a lot more hesitant to purchase Gearbox software going forward.
Click to expand...

The general quality of A:CM in the first place wasn't enough to make you stop buying Gearbox? :p
 
Brackle said:
WOW........i never bought this game because of the horrible AI and lying about the graphics, but if I can find it for $5 i might give it a whirl. I am a sucker for the aliens games.

But 1 fucking letter seriously Gearbox!
Click to expand...

I bought it for $4 years ago and thought that was a decent price for it.
 
It's on fire-sale again. Fix the .ini typo and install the Templargfx overhaul and it's not a bad diversion for the price. I had to run it in full-windowed and had occasional crashes running fullscreen.
 
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