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Aliens: Colonial Marines AI fixed by a single letter
- Thread starter JigglesBunny
- Start date
Gonna be honest, I skimmed the fuck out of that and saw long strings immediately below the path to the ini and my mind instantly went to file paths.
The explanation is probably they rushed to launch with a borked build and didn't wanna pay their people for the time it'd take to find a typo.
"Whelp I guess we just suck. Oh well, no need to double check everything post launch"
Someone should bring this to the attention of Jim Sterling, it has been a while since he covered Colonial Marines.
5 years later, a single typo is fixed, raising the game from poor to mediocre.
Pitchford vindicated.
I bet that typo fix didn't resolve the fanfic story though
Pitchford vindicated.
I bet that typo fix didn't resolve the fanfic story though
Reminds me of when I accidentally break the fuck out of a build with the ol' accidental = instead of ==
I agree. The hate is silly. who ever mis-wrote that line of code had a brain fart that doomed peoples careers. its more sad than humorous.
Especially after all the damning AI complaints wouldn't they fire up a retail copy and say hmm this looks odd and investigate? Simple mistake cost them money I'm sure!!
Do people ITT understand that they don't pay programmers by the letter? It literally doesn't matter how many letters fixes the bug, what costs money is the several days to investigate the bug, understand the code, rebuild, re-run QA, redeploy, etc.
Yes it's still puzzling why Gearbox was penny pinching so hard on this game that they couldn't fix this bug, but the nature of the bug and how many letters it is is completely irrelevant.
Yes it's still puzzling why Gearbox was penny pinching so hard on this game that they couldn't fix this bug, but the nature of the bug and how many letters it is is completely irrelevant.
If it did, sad.
If it didn't, best alien movement displayed in a game for the longest time and it was intentional too :D
Essentially those versions are fucked forever and ever because no one is going to spend money to fix that one letter on a game that has zero sales potential on the platforms they're on which are also dead.
The surprising thing isn't a single typo breaking elements of the game, I think anyone who's done any level of coding knows the dread of the infamous, "find the single mistake in my code that's breaking everything," and it being in an external file means it's less likely they'd check there initially to find the mistake.
But it is very surprising that they must've known the AI wasn't working as intended and shipped it in that state, maybe they figured something broke in development they couldn't fix, but the solution is humorous/ a bit sad. I know with bug fixes you can't fix everything, so you do have to prioritize what to fix, but this seems like such an important part of the game to fix, that them not prioritizing fixing this just seems insane to me.
It also reminds me of those periods something in a game I'm working on that SHOULD BE WORKING just absolutely isn't, I recheck my code, I feel like I've done everything, only to find there was one simple external mistake I made that fixes everything. Given I don't ship my games in that state, my games aren't nearly as complex as something like Colonial Marines, but I'm also one person and they're a hired team, but yeah.
But it is very surprising that they must've known the AI wasn't working as intended and shipped it in that state, maybe they figured something broke in development they couldn't fix, but the solution is humorous/ a bit sad. I know with bug fixes you can't fix everything, so you do have to prioritize what to fix, but this seems like such an important part of the game to fix, that them not prioritizing fixing this just seems insane to me.
It also reminds me of those periods something in a game I'm working on that SHOULD BE WORKING just absolutely isn't, I recheck my code, I feel like I've done everything, only to find there was one simple external mistake I made that fixes everything. Given I don't ship my games in that state, my games aren't nearly as complex as something like Colonial Marines, but I'm also one person and they're a hired team, but yeah.
Probably under extreme crunch too, knowing how this game was released, making it even more understandable.
As a QA myself, it pisses me off when people come and post things like this is QA fault.
QA doesn't review code, nor .inis and I can assure you there's a bug logged somewhere about the poor AI in a Gearbox database
QA doesn't review code, nor .inis and I can assure you there's a bug logged somewhere about the poor AI in a Gearbox database
Thats programming, the dudes who created the algorithim were probably in their own box. Someone came to check it out and it did what they wanted. The game was probably put all together at the last minute and the people who developed it were either gone or occupied with other things so it wasn't caught.
It is a mundane mistake but a costly one, if they ran out of time to find the mistake it just makes it more tragic not that it would have saved the game completly. 5 years later this is just a funny reminder to check your code for any typos.
Yup, QA aren't programmers, they're not looking at the code of a game.
I also know several people in QA, QA finds bugs all the time and report them, but it's up to the actual teams if they choose to fix it or not. Most bugs get a marking from the QA team of how crucial they are to fix, but there's MANY examples of QA telling the teams a bug is a bigger deal, and the leads not prioritizing it to focus on other things instead. It's not feasible for a game team to fix every bug in a game, there's not the time and money for that, but some stuff they neglect they really shouldn't, and often QA DID report it, just the leads didn't prioritize it.
No. That shows a gross misunderstanding of what likely happened here.
So the consoles are using a .ini file or the equivalent behind the scenes? I could see how someone might just copy and paste parts of it from the PC build without paying any attention to it.
I wouldn't say that.
Probably had a budget and time constraint and who would expect it wouldn't be a problem with the code but a configuration file.
Even the modder took 5 years to find this even when the ini was open for all to see.
Sweet ogly mogly. How. Why. That's just hilariously terrible. How fitting that the fix took several MONTHS to propagate outside a tiny modder blog.
I'm just sad that development must've been so borked that even a (likely) error log or exception upon encountering the parsing error didn't alert the devs to this critical yet easily fixable bug. I know it's tempting to just tune out the various warnings these modern code behemoths barf out by the bucketload, but shouldn't that have been one of the first things to check? And I don't know just how strict their engine script parsing is, but shouldn't this have thrown huge amounts of critical errors in succession for using an object that was either nonexistent or uninitialized? Meaning, the dev in question would have gone through their own changelog with a fine comb, probably with half the team riding his ass for breaking the AI?
What a mess.
I'm just sad that development must've been so borked that even a (likely) error log or exception upon encountering the parsing error didn't alert the devs to this critical yet easily fixable bug. I know it's tempting to just tune out the various warnings these modern code behemoths barf out by the bucketload, but shouldn't that have been one of the first things to check? And I don't know just how strict their engine script parsing is, but shouldn't this have thrown huge amounts of critical errors in succession for using an object that was either nonexistent or uninitialized? Meaning, the dev in question would have gone through their own changelog with a fine comb, probably with half the team riding his ass for breaking the AI?
What a mess.
Yeah, I mean, it's a funny story and all but is there any proof that it actually "fixes" the AI issues? I'd love to see a comparison.
Fix is a strong word. It might make it a little better but let's not get carried away, the game still has many problems that this doesn't fix and is still a kick in the balls to all Aliens fans.
