Aliens: Colonial Marines’ Stupid AI Was Caused by a Single Typo

Megalith

Megalith

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Gearbox’s Aliens: Colonial Marines was poorly received for various reasons, one of which was weird enemy AI. Last year, one modder managed to identify the root cause: a developer made a dumb spelling error in a vital line of code in the game’s “PecanEngine.ini” file (“Tether” was spelled “Teather”). Once that useless character is deleted, the Xenomorphs reportedly act more aggressively and track the player much better.

The change is less noticeable in some situations, and it's tough to say just from playing how much of the xenomorphs' clumsiness was caused by this typo, but they certainly seem to move more efficiently once it's corrected. They waste less time getting to the player, crawl and lunge more often, and generally move in more of a beeline rather than their usual drunken stroll. I mean, they're still plenty dopey, but hey, what did you expect?
 
Well if you are interested in the game and want to buy it, the "complete" with all DLC bundle is at Fanatical for $3.
 
piscian18 said:
It astounds me that people continued to support gearbox after that scam.
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Plus the Duke 3D 20th anniversary edition lacking loads of classic content that was in the Megaton edition, and having no way to disable v-sync (it lagged big-time on my PC), the bad new voice-overs... Homeworld remastered having a broken UI and no way to play in no-UI mode... Gearbox gets so close to doing things right, but then just fucks shit up in some of the dumbest and most easily avoidable ways.
 
I've spotted plenty of spelling errors in Total War games database tables over the years. However, if the entity itself is spelled incorrectly, and every reference to that entity matches the misspelling, then it would actually function as designed. In fact, correcting the spelling at a single node would actually have an adverse effect if you don't correct every instance of the misspelling in every junction/child/parent table.

This is why I wonder if what the 'modder' saw here was a placebo or if correcting the spelling in this config line actually fixed some of the AI's behavior. And yes, I saw the GIFs in the article, but a sample size of 1 isn't enough to show there's a significant difference in AI performance.
 
That's a shame, is it sad that I also get the feeling the typo may have been on purpose cause these geniuses thought the game wasn't easy enough for the mass populace?

I haven't played it as it sounds boringly terrible, but I've been gaming since 1990 at the age of 6 and games just continue to get more stupidly easier per release.
 
LurkerLito said:
Well if you are interested in the game and want to buy it, the "complete" with all DLC bundle is at Fanatical for $3.
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I bought it. <hangs head in shame>

Actually, it's not so bad as it is made out to be and is worth $3.00. I just fixed the spelling error too. Plays like Quake4 but with Aliens.
 
Just bought it few days ago for 3 bucks, This game have issues relaunch itself after exit the game.
 
And to think they are selling the "collection" for $30 on steam. What a load of tripe.
 
rezerekted said:
I bought it. <hangs head in shame>

Actually, it's not so bad as it is made out to be and is worth $3.00. I just fixed the spelling error too. Plays like Quake4 but with Aliens.
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Yeah I thought the same. I figured it can't be that terrible for $3, and it really isn't that bad for that price. Though I wouldn't have bought this game at all if not for this story. I mainly bought it for the morbid curiosity of the spectacularly bad reviews on a supposed AAA game that was caused by a typo lol.
 
I still enjoyed the game for what it was. Even though it kinda sucked toward the end. I just wish the Mulitplayer had taken off like L4D. That would have been fun.
 
I loved AvP and wish they would revisit that part of the PC franchise. Multiplayer was crazy especially when my neighbor got DSL and I’d lug my rig over.

Fun times with aliens.
 
SPARTAN VI said:
I've spotted plenty of spelling errors in Total War games database tables over the years. However, if the entity itself is spelled incorrectly, and every reference to that entity matches the misspelling, then it would actually function as designed. In fact, correcting the spelling at a single node would actually have an adverse effect if you don't correct every instance of the misspelling in every junction/child/parent table.

This is why I wonder if what the 'modder' saw here was a placebo or if correcting the spelling in this config line actually fixed some of the AI's behavior. And yes, I saw the GIFs in the article, but a sample size of 1 isn't enough to show there's a significant difference in AI performance.
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Looking at the thread on Restera a bunch of people are talking about noticing a difference. If the AI is actually flanking and moving in way that aren't just running straight at the player or back and forth from a single spot it would be more than a placebo effect. From what I've heard about the game, the Xenos never flanked or did anything that could be called reacting to the player.
 
Yeah I was checking out before/after youtube videos and it appears the xenos are more likely to play cat & mouse with the player, versus suicidal charge directly at the player. The rationale is that the xenos weren't originally tethered properly to their environments, so they "couldn't see" the environment, so they'd charge the player by default.
 
That's an improvement, now we just need the graphics to look like they should.
 
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