Aliens Colonial Marines AI broken because of one letter. [UPDATED]

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Ok, little bit of an update on the Colonial Marines typo story:

Gearbox has posted a job opening on their website for a Programming Copy Editor [https://gearboxsoftware.bamboohr.com/jobs/view.php?id=117].

Basically, someone whose entire job is to go over the game code and find typos. Applicants are required to fill a 'rigorous questionnaire' which pretty much amounts to proving you can spell the word 'tether' correctly. No really, that's all there is.

Spoiler: screengrabs of the job opening and the questionnaire

Make of this what you will. I'm sure Gearbox thinks it's funny and self-depreciative and all, but it's really easy to construe as insulting towards its audience in a "Hey, we messed up. Fuck apologising or fixing it tho. Instead we're gonna laugh at our own incompetence" sort of way.

Spoiler: read the original here

We all know Aliens Colonial Marines was rather disappointing for most everyone. It has many flaws, like the aliens AI, which is dumb as bricks, and a far cry from the E3 demo which saw the creepy crawlies scoot through floor grates and vents and perform all kinds of flanking manouvers the AI in the final game never does outside of scripted sequences. So why bring up the broken AI in a 5 year old game?

Because a modder found out why it is broken and it's worth an epic facepalm.

It's a typo. One single superfluous letter in a single line of code.

Spoiler: Yes, I know. Go ahead.

Good news is, if you have the game on PC, you can fix it. You can simply go into the code and remove that one extra letter and the aliens AI will improve massively. It won't fix the game's myriad other problems, but AI comparable to that shown at E3 is actually in the game. It just can't work properly, unless you go in yourself to do Gearbox' job.

I mean really, how did they miss this? Did they not do any QA? Were they just incompetent at it? Or did they just say 'fuck it' and just shipped it as is?

Your thoughts?

Source 1 and fix guide [https://www.moddb.com/mods/templargfxs-acm-overhaul/news/the-biggest-bug-in-the-game-is-just-one-letter-long]
Source 2 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_SdkxbgOV0]

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Does it also improve the graphics and visuals that was shown in the previews?

Do the Aliens now come in a swarm like it was shown in the preview?

 

[Majestic_Manatee]

A single letter can make a word of difference in the right context.

Does it also improve the graphics and visuals that was shown in the previews?

Do the Aliens now come in a swarm like it was shown in the preview?

Yes, it reverts everything in game back to the promised E3 showing. It's literal magic, courtesy of Randy Pitchford!

 

[sXeth]

I mean really, how did they miss this? Did they not do any QA? Were they just incompetent at it? Or did they just say 'fuck it' and just shipped it as is?

Your thoughts?

Source 1 and fix guide [https://www.moddb.com/mods/templargfxs-acm-overhaul/news/the-biggest-bug-in-the-game-is-just-one-letter-long]
Source 2 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_SdkxbgOV0]

From what I recall, they probably skipped on QA because they were too busy siphoning funds from their licensed projects to try and get Borderlands off the ground.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Does it also improve the graphics and visuals that was shown in the previews?

Do the Aliens now come in a swarm like it was shown in the preview?

The graphics were actually improved in later updates. Not quite up to the levels of the preview, but they were a massive improvement over the release game.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Does it matter? I mean, does it really?

We said time and time again that Aliens was broken. Pitchford defended the game and said that just because we didn't like it, doesn't mean it wasn't a good game.

And if they just listened and combed through what was shipped, they might have found it and saved face.

But they didn't. The community did. And I just looked at Pitchford's twitter. He retweeted something about code, but hasn't commented on it.

All that bullshit. All that time wasted defending instead of fixing.

I can forgive a typo. I can not forgive five years of blaming the audience and acting like a monsoon that wiped away the village was just a drizzle that people keep overstating.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Does it matter? I mean, does it really?

We said time and time again that Aliens was broken. Pitchford defended the game and said that just because we didn't like it, doesn't mean it wasn't a good game.

And if they just listened and combed through what was shipped, they might have found it and saved face.

But they didn't. The community did. And I just looked at Pitchford's twitter. He retweeted something about code, but hasn't commented on it.

All that bullshit. All that time wasted defending instead of fixing.

I can forgive a typo. I can not forgive five years of blaming the audience and acting like a monsoon that wiped away the village was just a drizzle that people keep overstating.

Good thing I never cared about this game nor care about Randy Picthford's twitter posts and opinons.

And The Creative Assembly, the guys behind the Total War franchise, made Alien Isolation that was popular and did Alien right.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

Good thing I never cared about this game nor care about Randy Picthford's twitter posts and opinons.

And The Creative Assembly, the guys behind the Total War franchise, made Alien Isolation that was popular and did Alien right.

I agree it's a good thing that you never cared about this game and Pitchford.

I did care about this game. Aliens is one of my favorite franchises. I didn't spend money on it, and I'm glad I didn't.

What I'm getting to, however, is that Pitchford and his ilk are constantly passing the buck to us. Going on tours and interivews, calling us gamers entitled for expecting what was promised and that they did their jobs competently. Discounting our opinion. When, in fact, if he and his team bothered to look at his product, they would have probably figured out the same thing as jamesdickinson963.

But this game went through QA and presumably Beta testing. They saw something was wrong. They shrugged and gave us this product and then turned our displeasure on us. And since these are practices that I despise in this industry, I will speak on it whenever it shows its head.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

To me this doesn't actually make me think better of the game. It reminds me of the rumors they funneled funding and personnel from this game into Borderlands 2, and now I believe it even more. They couldn't even spell check their own code.

 

[Elijin]

Im just glad that no one misused the footage of the blind aliens to support the 'AI is bad' argument. Like, the AI was bad, but it always felt dishonest that the widely used clip was an alien walking past a stationary player when that segment of the game involved weird aliens that were attracted to sound and movement, with no actual vision.

 

[Squilookle]

Is QA even a thing anymore? I thought beta testers ARE the QA in the eyes of developers these days.

 

[FakeSympathy]

Still doesn't change the fact that they introduced human enemies, xenomorphs melting away after dying, shitty final fight, and bunch of other non-AI related problems

 

[Natemans]

This is fucking hilarious lol XD

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

QA and the beta testers should have picked up that the AI wasn't working as their spec sheet told them it should and sent it back to the coders, who might have picked it up on a more thorough inspection. That's most likely where the failure point in this little part of the saga that was Aliens: Colonial Marines lays.

Of course, that's their entire job. Although there is also the possibility that QA did pick up on the AI problem and Gearbox just didn't fix it. What with all the other suspect stuff surrounding the game, I wouldn't put it past them.

Still doesn't change the fact that they introduced human enemies, xenomorphs melting away after dying, shitty final fight, and bunch of other non-AI related problems

Like I said in my OP, this doesn't fix the the game as a whole, just one small part of it. The only upside in this story is that people on PC can get at least a little of what was promised, although no thanks to Gearbox.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Still doesn't change the fact that they introduced human enemies, xenomorphs melting away after dying, shitty final fight, and bunch of other non-AI related problems

There was a final fight? I would characterize it as one of the worst, least engaging puzzles in a game ever. All you had to do was literally push a few buttons and stay in any of the half dozen safe places while the game cycled between them. I remember that one of the challenges in-game was to complete a mission on the highest difficulty, and that internet forums regularly gave the advice that playing the final mission on Ultimate Badass was the easiest way to get it, since it was trivial to avoid the Queen and there was no actual fighting involved.

While I do agree with all the rest of your criticisms, I think that the introduction of a second enemy faction was one of the better choices. While the PMC in-game was pretty boring to fight (and much easier then the Aliens), it provided a change of pace regularly that the game needed. Having just tried out the AI fix, I can tell you that fighting the Aliens with the full AI makes those section legitimately stressful and fighting the PMCs are pretty much breather levels between the levels where the Aliens really pummel you.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

Having just tried out the AI fix, I can tell you that fighting the Aliens with the full AI makes those section legitimately stressful and fighting the PMCs are pretty much breather levels between the levels where the Aliens really pummel you.

Since you have first-hand experience with the fixed, intended AI, is the game better for it?

Reason I'm asking is that, while I haven't played Colonial Marines, I have played Alien Isolation. It's a good game and I liked it, but I do think it has flaws. But I readily forgave those flaws because for the most part it gave me that "Alien" experience. Which makes me wonder if the response to Colonial Marines would have been kinder if the AI was fully functional from the start, in a 'Yeah, the rest of the game pretty much sucked, but at least I got me some intense, frantic "Aliens" combat' way.

 

[Chimpzy_v1legacy]

A single letter can make a word of difference in the right context.

Does it also improve the graphics and visuals that was shown in the previews?

Do the Aliens now come in a swarm like it was shown in the preview?

Yes, it reverts everything in game back to the promised E3 showing. It's literal magic, courtesy of Randy Pitchford!

That was intentional, right?

The comments in the first link [https://www.moddb.com/mods/templargfxs-acm-overhaul/news/the-biggest-bug-in-the-game-is-just-one-letter-long] are funny. I wonder if this was ever brought to the developers? attention.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Since you have first-hand experience with the fixed, intended AI, is the game better for it?

Reason I'm asking is that, while I haven't played Colonial Marines, I have played Alien Isolation. It's a good game and I liked it, but I do think it has flaws. But I readily forgave those flaws because for the most part it gave me that "Alien" experience. Which makes me wonder if the response to Colonial Marines would have been kinder if the AI was fully functional from the start, in a 'Yeah, the rest of the game pretty much sucked, but at least I got me some intense, frantic "Aliens" combat' way.

I am one of the handful of people who thinks that A:CM gets a bad rep. That being said, I doubt this AI fix would have saved the game on release. The story is still crap, the graphics were terrible at release and the voice acting and animations are stuck in the twilight area between bad and decent. With the post-release patches, the graphics and animations were improves and with the AI fix the whole thing is actually playable (at least for being a 2013 game). But it would have changed little back in 2013, especially since most of the outrage was because the E3 demo promised something that the game absolutely didn't deliver and it had the misfortune of being released just as the controversy about gussied up trailers really started, making it the poster child for release downgrades until Watch_Dogs came around.