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Aliens: Colonial Marines AI fixed by a single letter
- Thread starter JigglesBunny
- Start date
This specific issue is the exact opposite of an obvious failure. It's not often you can have a typo in crucial file names without causing really obvious issues. If the few people who designed and implemented the content didn't catch it, nobody would have. Like, genuinely think about the process of finding this problem; how would QA find it? The AI is still functional, and it's not generally appropriate to bug something and say "make the AI better", so the QA team (or really any staffers who weren't specifically tasked with that feature) noticing a single misplaced letter on a file is really unlikely. Crazy unfortunate bug, though. At least if it caused a crash or stopped the AI from functioning outright it would have told them something was clearly wrong, and this been an obvious issue.
This is pretty standard UE functionality to allow you to bulk change a class basically everywhere it is used in script..
What this should be doing is causing all points in Unrealscript that refer to PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachXenoToTether to instead use PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachPawnToTether.
Some wild guesses based on UE experience but the fact that this remapping exists probably meant they didn't have a good handle on their Kismet scripts after trying to reinvent the Pawn and rather than go through and fix a whole bunch of scripts that are edited visually they did this as a quick fix. Then they typoed it.
Whoever was testing the game probably had no clue how the AI was supposed to behave in the first place when they gave the thumbs up.
What this should be doing is causing all points in Unrealscript that refer to PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachXenoToTether to instead use PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachPawnToTether.
Some wild guesses based on UE experience but the fact that this remapping exists probably meant they didn't have a good handle on their Kismet scripts after trying to reinvent the Pawn and rather than go through and fix a whole bunch of scripts that are edited visually they did this as a quick fix. Then they typoed it.
Whoever was testing the game probably had no clue how the AI was supposed to behave in the first place when they gave the thumbs up.
I don't know if i'm late on this but has anyone had a look at Gearbox's careers page? Because i can't stop laughing at this new position
Programming Copy Editor
Genuinely on their page
http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/careers
Programming Copy Editor
Genuinely on their page
http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/careers
holy shit. I can not fucking believe a spelling mistake totally fucked the AI in this game. This is epic. lol
I cannot fathom that Gearbox is still in business after they straight up broke the law and lied to their "employeer" Sega. Well sadly big corporations get away with everything, probably murder or some shit soon.
So interesting. On the one hand, it's laudable that their systems and services are resilient enough and decoupled enough that if something breaks things carry on (almost) as normal. However perhaps too decoupled in this instance... surely they would have some linting in their code editor/ide to highlight that was a not a function?
Nah, this is a case where you really want to fail fast. Largely to prevent exactly this sort of thing from happening.
Also this was in an external config file, something not easily error checked.
lol, amazing.
So they heard the story and joke about it, nice.
The fact that the job description is that simple really shows how reactive this was haha
EDIT:
I'm pretty sure it's a joke though, but still funny.
Lol is this for real? Not them just trying to be funny or whatever right?
It's clearly a wink at this story. They're just having a little fun with it.
Heh, I suppose they're trying to score some points over how badly they fucked up over this.
You guys speak like you've never worked with production software.
Engineers cannot spell. A typo like this is not an uncommon occurrence.
Pick your industry. If there is tech driving it, there are typos in the code. Guaranteed.
As I said its funny and sad at the same time. I have worked with code and I know how easily a typo can slip by unnoticed, that's why I fell sad about the developers. Their project was (in part) ruined by a single letter typo.
This is profoundly stupid, the amount of it caring for this to happen. I mean, what the actual fuck?
I've made my fair share of typos and I've worked on code with a ton of warnings before, but when the main feature of your program flat out doesn't work you think you'd at least look at the function call before cutting it for release. I mean maybe this was contracted out and by the time anyone looked at it they had no idea where it would be, but that's when you take a week and do a code review. This is amateur as all hell.
I've made my fair share of typos and I've worked on code with a ton of warnings before, but when the main feature of your program flat out doesn't work you think you'd at least look at the function call before cutting it for release. I mean maybe this was contracted out and by the time anyone looked at it they had no idea where it would be, but that's when you take a week and do a code review. This is amateur as all hell.
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