Aliens: Colonial Marines was criticized by a lot of gamers for its mediocre AI for the xenomorphs. We’ve seen countless of GIFs with the aliens acting really stupid, and it was one of the – many – reasons that gamers despised that Aliens game. However, what if I told you that you can significantly overhaul the AI by simply deleting one letter in your .INI configuration file?
Seems impossible, right? However, that’s exactly what modder ‘jamesdickinson963’ discovered. For some unknown reason, the AI routine for xenomorph is spelled incorrectly in the game’s configuration file and by fixing you can make the aliens behave in a more sensible and clever way.
As the modder claimed:
“Inside your games config file (My Document\My Games\Aliens Colonial Marines\PecanGame\Config\PecanEngine.ini) is the following line of code :
ClassRemapping=PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachXenoToTether -> PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachPawnToTeather
Im sure you’ll notice the spelling mistake
ClassRemapping=PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachXenoToTether -> PecanGame.PecanSeqAct_AttachPawnToTether
If you fix it to look like the above and then play the game, the difference is pretty crazy!
Why is this line important? There are two reasons :
1) AttachXenoToTether doesn’t do anything. Its basically empty or stripped
2) AttachPawnToTether does ALOT. It controls tactical position adjustment, patrolling and target zoningWhen a Xeno is spawned, it is attached to a zone tether. This zone tells the Xeno what area is its fighting space and where different exits are. In Combat, a Xeno will be forced to switch to a new tether (such as one behind you) so as to flank, or disperse so they aren’t so grouped up etc. (*disclaimer* this is inferred opinion, I cant see the actual code only bits)”
Now as you may notice, this trick was discovered back in 2017 however it completely passed under our radar. The last time we reported about the Aliens: Colonial Marines Overhaul mod was back in October 2017 and this trick was discovered in November 2017.
I’m also pretty sure that there aren’t a lot of gamers playing Aliens: Colonial Marines these days. Still, those interested in it can at least enjoy a better AI than what most of us experienced when we played it.
I also suggest using our SweetFX mod for Aliens: Colonial Marines that makes the game look a bit closer to the Alien/Aliens movies and the older Aliens vs Predator games.
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
A:CM is the reason I lost all respect for GearBox. Even DNF wasn’t entirely Gearbox’s fault as they got it way late and had to duct tape it together. But A:CM?! Horrible, horrible misuse of the IP and misrepresented. They have the benefit that they told everyone it was subject to change. But if you show folks a Ferrari they’re to receive for their money and state “May not be the same model” and they end up receiving a Geo Metro, folks might feel a bit robbed.
Finding this kinda amateur work years after just adds salt to the wound. This is what us customers get from a company misusing funds (Using SEGAs funds towards A:CM for B2) and outsourcing elements to companies without proper direction.
What kind of amateurs can miss such a mistake?!? And how many patches were released for this game? 2?3? And none adressed this?! I know its an old game now but damn how many broken games are out there that might have issues because of such a silly mistake?
It does make you wonder. It took over 4 years to catch this simple mistake.
Simple letter “A”is ruin gaming experience…smh
lol đŸ˜€
nicely done!
This is just crazy stupid. It’s not uncommon for a Developer to be lazy about making a game or lazy about patching a game properly but this goes beyond even that. Gearbox shot themselves in the foot by not catching that mistake because the game probably would have gotten somewhat better reviews if they had caught it before release and might have sold better.
Ah, the old lying b’stard!
You know you’re not doing ANY playtesting if your AI stops working and nobody on the team notices before shipping or after.
like…. how do you not notice your a.i is not behaving like you scripted it? did they do ANY quality assurance on this title?
Document My Games Aliens Colonial Marines PecanGame Config DefaultEngine) https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/dc38b493417f92b6f7e20f9683c555634254b915214992c067cb3b9b3aae501d.jpg