Aliens: Colonial Marines' Horrible AI Gets Fixed With a Single Letter

You may recall a few years ago that Aliens: Colonial Marines came out. But despite riding on a tidal wave of hype, the game just couldn't cut it, mainly due to lackluster AI, horrible glitches from a rushed production cycle and tepid gameplay.

But imagine our surprise when we found out that one of the game's chief problems ended up getting repaired thanks to one very slight repair. No, we're talking one letter.

The game went on sale last week for the rock bottom price of $3, leading some fans to give it a shot again. But it was the addition of a fan-made patch that got the most attention, providing a number of fixes to visual and gameplay issues.

Now here's the fun part. One of those fixes came with the discovery of a one-letter typo that resulted in terrible AI behavior in the game to begin with. There was supposed to be a "tether" system put in place, but the word ended up appearing as "teather." That's right, someone programmed that line of code wrong and that's surprisingly where some things went wrong with the game.

So what happened when a moddb user named jamesdickinson963 noted the problem and then addressed it? According to him, the game "controls tactical position adjustment, patrolling, and target zoning. When 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." With the misspelling, well, you get sucky AI.

Some players have noted with the fix, the game's AI now features drastically improved AI behavior, with the monsters coming at players from elevated attack positions, as well as taking advantage of hiding points and multi-monster flanks. That's not to say the graphics are any better, but still a step in the right direction.

What we're trying to figure out is how Gearbox Software missed this one mistake. Granted, it hasn't released a patch for the game since 2013, as it since moved on to projects like Battleborn and its new 1 vs. 1 shooter that it's working on at the moment. But, man...one line of code actually made a world of difference.

If you want to give the game a try, it is only $3 over at Fanatical, and you can download the patch to go right alongside it. As for you console owners...sorry, no fix for you guys just yet.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is available now for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

(Hat tip to ArsTechnica for the scoop!)