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Aliens: Colonial Marines is not a good game. It was disrupted by a troubled development, and Kotaku's official magazine categorically called the game "horrible". However, a modder has discovered a critical spelling error in game files that could be responsible.
discussions about Resetera, Colonial Marines modder jamesdickinson963 claims that a spelling mistake in one of the game's .ini files in the PC version of the game is responsible for some of the anemic decisions made by iconic alien creatures who act as the main antagonists of the game.
In the launch version of the game, which I myself tried to play a few years ago, the aliens often work like zombies. They are within shooting range, get up on their hind legs, and approach you in a strange attempt to club the player to death. It is not very dynamic, and it is not so exciting.
According to the post of jamesdickinson963, the reason for the wrong choices made by the IA is that a crucial line for the operation of the enemy AI is misspelled. Line:
ClassRemapping = PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachXenoToTether -> PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachPawnTo Teather
"Teather" here should be spelled as "tie", as it is in many lines of code in the same place in the file and the implications of the misspelling are significant.
An .ini file is a way to set properties and values in a part. Since "tether" is misspelled in the .ini file, it means the game is looking for a specific phrase in the file and can not find it. In this case, the AI parameters are supposed to load from the file, but the spelling means that nothing is being loaded.
The consequence of nothing is that the "tether zone" function of the AI alien does not work. Based on some inferences made by looking at the partial code, the initial post claims that the broken attachment has hindered the AI 's ability to flank the player and move away from other enemies. In other words, there are behaviors that would be based on AI "reading" its location in its environment that are simply not moved.
That said, I have charged and played at the opening level of ] Colonial Marines this morning, and I could not see a significant difference between the correction of & dquo; Spelling and spelling error that accompanied the game. That's not to say that there are no differences, however, because there are Meme it at.
Here is a gif file of the unedited .ini file that you would have taken out of the box:
As you can see, the creatures are approaching and staying there until my teammate d & rsquo; AI pulls them enough so that they die. There is nothing special about it, and you can see even in this short clip why this game has not been praised for its impressive portrayal of the Alien cinematic universe.
Here is a gif of the edited .ini file in which I spelled "tether" correctly:
You can see some immediate differences. The extraterrestrials do a bit of shuffle side by side to dodge bullets, they find themselves behind objects, and they even make that jump at the end. This combat encounter looks like a more dynamic and interesting lot, even if the creature crashes and squats just in the end before dying.
However, I performed this mission multiple times in a row, exiting the game completely and modifying the .ini file between each attempt, and I can not be sure the spelling difference made a huge difference in the AI fight. Although this alien mix seems to occur quite often in "fixed" AI, jumping, crawling wall and hiding behind boxes occur quite regularly and randomly in the configurations. AI original and "fixed".
It is clear that changing the spelling in the .ini file makes something but in my first level playthroughs, something does not fundamentally correct any problems with the Marines Colonial . The aliens could do more jumps, but they still do the zombie melee thing. They still clump together in a big anonymous horde to mow with your rifle. It's still a clumsy game with aliens slightly more active now.
While this may be a considerable improvement for later levels of the game, there is no time in the opening level of the game where it really looks like the secret sauce that makes this game by better magic than before.
Kotaku contacted both Sega and Gearbox, but did not receive a comment in time for publication.
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