When Aliens: Colonial Marines came out in 2013 after a hideously long production, it generally provoked shudders of laughter rather than fear. Intended as a direct sequel to James Cameron’s classic Aliens, Colonial Marines at least looked the part in still photographs – but as critics and players quickly noted, the shooting action was full of glitches and bugs.

Memes and gifs featuring the xenomorphs’ less-than-threatening behavior quickly circulated, and Colonial Marines was left to shuffle off awkwardly into the mists of history.

More recently, however, there have been attempts to overhaul Colonial Marines, with modders improving its character movements and refining its graphics. In 2016, for example, we covered the work of TemplarGFX, who was working on an extensive mod that fixed the game’s particle effects, lighting, and AI.

Taking up the baton, another Moddb user, JamesDickinson963, started combing through the original code that shipped with the game five years ago. In one config file, he found the following: