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"
(Score: 5, Funny) by coolgopher on Sunday July 15 2018, @02:27AM (5 children)
But intentionally doing so would make you a full colon, nothing semi about that :P
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday July 15 2018, @02:34AM (4 children)
I think I've well and truly already taken care of that, no?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by coolgopher on Sunday July 15 2018, @03:32AM (3 children)
Ahahaha! Nah, I don't think you're an ass. I think you've got wrong opinions at times, but that is quite different. I enjoy that SN has managed to keep the early /. vibe where widely different opinions can be aired in a mostly civil manner.
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday July 15 2018, @04:44AM (2 children)
That is the goal. Civil doesn't necessarily mean polite though, it just means with words rather than violence.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by RS3 on Monday July 16 2018, @04:34AM (1 child)
Are words which personally attack as a response of disagreement considered civil?
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday July 16 2018, @05:59PM
Yes. You can tell by how a cutting remark does not require so much as a band-aid.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.