In the config Aliens: Colonial Marines found a typo, because of which for four years the game AI buggy
The Aliens: Colonial Marines game for personal computers, released in 2013, was not well met by the public . Game critics could not understand why the promising game, which looked great in the preliminary versions, turned into a non-usable “poorly designed, buggy piece of garbage” (quote from one review).
Subsequently, publishers were even faced with lawsuits from game buyers for a very rare reason for the gaming industry. Users demanded to return the money paid, because the "game is crap."
And only four years later it became clear what the root of the problems was. November 1, 2017, one of the mod developers under the nickname jamesdickinson963 found a typoin the configuration file .INI, after correcting which, the game process improves drastically . It is enough to remove the extra letter.
Modder jamesdickinson963 calls this “the biggest gaming bug of just one letter in size.” And explains in detail what the problem is.
In the configuration file of the game (My Document \ My Games \ Aliens Colonial Marines \ PecanGame \ Config \ PecanEngine.ini) there is the following line of code:
ClassRemapping=PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachXenoToTether -> PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachPawnToTeatherKnowing that there is a typo, you can see it yourself by looking at this line.
The correct spelling is as follows:
ClassRemapping=PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachXenoToTether -> PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachPawnToTether(Teather -> Tether)
“If you correct the line in this way and start the game again, then the differences are absolutely crazy!”, Writes jamesdickinson963. The reason is as follows. The fact is that the original AttachXenoToTether function does nothing at all, but the AttachPawnToTether function does a lot to control the configuration of tactical positioning, patrolling and zoning of targets.
When Xeno spans, it binds to a specific boundary (zone tether). This zone indicates Xeno to the borders of the combat zone, to the coordinates of the different exits. During the battle, Xeno needs to be switched to a different zone for different maneuvers - in order to gather in the phalanx or, for example, to disperse and not pile up in one group. So, whatever of the above would not try to make the game, before nothing happened. And after correcting the typo, everything worked, says jamesdickinson963 .
The game did not crash because the engine simply ignored the unfamiliar term.
Edition PC Gamer gives examples of how dramatically the behavior of monsters in the game. Not only did they become noticeably more aggressive, but as if they were much better at tracking player behavior. If earlier you could retreat from xenomorph - and this put him in a dead end, but now this focus does not pass, because he will immediately begin to pursue you. In addition, xenomorphs now take much less time to prepare for an attack: they appear and sharply attack, rather than poking in different directions like zombies, as before. “The movements are more like direct movements along the shortest path, rather than the usual drunken gait,” writes PC Gamer .
Alien: Colonial Marines xenomorph gait. Shortly after the publication of this video, the first lawsuits were filed against the publisher.
On Steam, the game is still distributed with a typo in the config file, so you need to install a third-party patch or correct the typo manually.
In the history of the gaming industry, this is not the first bug due to a typo. Recently, the developers of Civilization 6 confirmed that due to a typo in one of the game data files Leaders.xml, “artificial intelligence” did not work correctly. In that case, the code by mistake was written 'YEILD' instead of 'YIELD'. Here is the relevant fragment:
<RowItem="YEILD_PRODUCTION"ListType="DefaultYieldBias"Value="25"/><RowItem="YEILD_SCIENCE"ListType="DefaultYieldBias"Value="10"/><RowItem="YEILD_CULTURE"ListType="DefaultYieldBias"Value="10"/><RowItem="YEILD_GOLD"ListType="DefaultYieldBias"Value="20"/><RowItem="YEILD_FAITH"ListType="DefaultYieldBias"Value="-25"/>All five lines have the same typo, due to which the leaders of nations irrationally distribute the resources of their people. In particular, these lines set the main priorities, which are then changed and adjusted. After correcting the typo, the difference is noticeable : less religion is generated as a whole ( faith ), but more buildings are being built and science is developing better.