What are you, Chicken?

My Steam profile doesn’t represent the most active gamer on Earth, but in my time I put some pretty serious hours into the recent XCOM games. Each mission your squad goes on gets a procedurally generated name, and that can lead to some funny results just by itself (like “Avenging Avenger”). But, if you’ve put too many hours into the game, you might notice that every once in awhile, you see a mission with “Chicken” in its name.

Now, it’s obvious that this is just a joke. Clearly an Easter Egg hidden in the code by a programmer. But Rich D picked through the UnrealScript which powers the game, finding the code responsible.

class XGMission extends Actor 
	abstract;

var string                      m_strHelp;          // The help string that displays when this mission is selected in MC
var float                       fAnimationTimer;
var bool                m_bRetaliation;
var localized array<String> m_aFirstOpName;
var localized array<String> m_aSecondOpName;
var localized array<String> m_aFirstOpWord;
var localized array<String> m_aSecondOpWord;
var localized string m_strOpAvenger;
var localized string m_strOpAshes;
var localized string m_strOpRandom;
var localized string m_strOpRandomWord;
var localized string m_strChicken;	// I just want to use "Chicken" every once in a while
var localized string m_strTitle;     // The mission's name
var localized string m_strSituation; // A string describing the narrative of the mission
var localized string m_strObjective; // A string describing the objective of the mission
var string m_strOpenExclamationMark; // A string for the open exclamation mark for Spanish language "¡"
var string m_strTip;

static function string GenerateOpName(optional bool bTutorial = false)
{
	local XGParamTag kTag;	
	local int iSelection, iTop, iBottom;
	local bool bUseChicken;
	kTag = XGParamTag(`XEXPANDCONTEXT.FindTag("XGParam"));
	bUseChicken = Rand(500) == 0;
	// Choose which random op name generator to use
	if( Rand(2) == 0 )
	{
		kTag.StrValue0 = default.m_aFirstOpName[Rand(default.m_aFirstOpName.Length)];
		kTag.StrValue1 = default.m_aSecondOpName[Rand(default.m_aSecondOpName.Length)];
		if( bUseChicken )
		{
			kTag.StrValue1 = default.m_strChicken;
		}
		return `XEXPAND.ExpandString(default.m_strOpRandom);	
	}
	else
	{
		iSelection = Rand(default.m_aFirstOpWord.Length);
		kTag.StrValue0 = default.m_aFirstOpWord[iSelection];
		iSelection = Rand(default.m_aSecondOpWord.Length);
		kTag.StrValue1 = default.m_aSecondOpWord[iSelection];
		if( bUseChicken )
		{
			kTag.StrValue0 = default.m_strChicken;
		}
		// Make sure the first and second word of the operation name are not the same
		if(kTag.StrValue1 == kTag.StrValue0 )
		{
			iTop = default.m_aSecondOpWord.Length - (iSelection+1);
			iBottom = iSelection;
			if( iTop >= iBottom )
			{
				kTag.StrValue1 = default.m_aSecondOpWord[(iSelection+1) + Rand(iTop)];
			}
			else
			{
				kTag.StrValue1 = default.m_aSecondOpWord[Rand(iBottom)];
			}
		}
		
		return `XEXPAND.ExpandString(default.m_strOpRandomWord);
	}
	
}
defaultproperties
{
}

One of the localization files sets m_strChicken equal to chicken. And then we have the key line, bUseChicken = Rand(500) == 0– 0.2% of the time, part of the mission name string will contain the word “Chicken”.

There isn’t really a WTF here, just a fun bit of code. Sometimes, you just want to use chicken.