One-Letter Typo To Blame For Aliens: Colonial Marines’ Bad AI

Thanks to the work of modder James Dickinson, Gearbox’s notoriously awful Aliens: Colonial Marines can now be played as something other than a form of punishment. You can imagine Dickinson’s uncovered some nutty bugs in his time poring over the game, but none hold a candle to a single-letter typo that lobotomised the Xeno AI.

Dickinson wrote about the typo in late 2017 when he first discovered it, describing it as “the biggest BUG in the game”:

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

Yep, “teather” instead of “tether”. According to Dickinson, the logic attached to this is rather important, allowing the AI to “[control] tactical position adjustment, patrolling and target zoning”.

By simply removing the “a”, the AI is transformed — it will happily flank you and “disperse [Xenos] so they aren’t so grouped”. Which, as you can imagine, makes a big difference.

[referenced url=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/2016/04/theres-a-reason-to-play-aliens-colonial-marines-again/” thumb=”https://www.kotaku.com.au/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2016/04/ACM_2016-03-25_22-21-37-3151.jpg” title=”There’s A Reason To Play Aliens: Colonial Marines Again” excerpt=”I know it’s a tad impossible, but hear me out. Let’s go back to the launch of Aliens: Colonial Marines (ACM). Remember the fury, the outrage, the disappointment. Most of all, remember what was missing.”]

If you ever wanted proof as to how big a shitshow ACM was, it doesn’t get much better than this.

A typo found in the INI file after all this time appears to be one of the major causes for terrible AI mechanics in the game. Thankfully typo’s are easy to fix! [ModDB, via ResetEra]


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