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from the shoulda-used-better-AI-to-test-the-AI dept.
A years-old, one-letter typo led to Aliens: Colonial Marines' weird AI
History may never be kind to Aliens: Colonial Marines, but the present tense isn't looking so good for the lawsuit- and complaint-ridden Gearbox game, either. This week brought to our attention one of the weirdest coding typos we've ever seen in a game—which has apparently been hidden inside of A:CM's PC version since its 2013 launch.
[...] Upon researching [the game's fan-made patch] patch, ResetERA readers noticed something in the moddb.com notes that somehow escaped the gaming community at large in October 2017: the discovery of a one-letter typo in A:CM's INI files. As moddb.com user jamesdickinson963 pointed out last year, the game's "PecanEngine.ini" file references a "tether" system in assigning AI commands to the series' infamous monsters (which I'll call "xenomorphs" for brevity's sake, even though that term isn't necessarily the right one). However, one of its two mentions of the term "tether" is misspelled as "teather."
Dickinson's post alleges that this command, when spelled correctly, "controls tactical position adjustment, patrolling, and target zoning. When a xeno is spawned, it is attached to a zone tether. This zone tells the xeno what area is its fighting space and where different exits are. In combat, a xeno will be forced to switch to a new tether (such as one behind you) so as to flank or disperse so they aren't so grouped up, etc." Thanks to how the engine parsed this typo, it never caused any crashes; instead, the engine ignored the unfamiliar term. Thus, the game's monsters never received the smarter, useful information that had been programmed from the get-go. Instead, they often ran around like in the below, infamous image. [Image]
From the comments:
I can kinda see QA missing it, since the AI is nondeterministic, it'd be hard get a bug created to say "the AI seems... bad"
![[Image]](https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/giphy.gif){kind=link}
(Score: 4, Funny) by SomeGuy on Sunday July 15 2018, @02:20AM (3 children)
That still nothing compared to the alpha quality game "Big Rigs": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rigs:_Over_the_Road_Racing [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday July 15 2018, @02:46AM
Or the perpetually "hopping" AI cars in Streets of Simcity.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 15 2018, @06:41AM
Re: the game... beautiful cover art.
It would be awful tempting to buy that if seen on the shelf...
With all this law about once you buy software, they don't have to take it back, this kind of stuff is inevitable. Turn something out dirt cheap, put all your money in promotion and generating buzz, get the cash while you can, then get the hell outta Dodge and change your name. Just meet the letter of the law and make sure at least there is a disk in the box. Beyond that, every buck you spend on your product comes directly from your profit. If no one knows you now, they will remember you... but no biggie... you change your name, rinse, lather, and repeat... from a nice foreign leisure world.
Kinda like some movies I have seen. Utter waste of perfectly good film.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Sunday July 15 2018, @07:59AM
sounds more like a tech demo than a game, but still probably more fun than Desert Bus or Custer's Revenge