Kenney.nl assets are pretty much synonymous with indie game development.  Starting today, March 20th, 2020, for the next 24 hour until 7PM EST the collection of assets are available for free on Itch.io as part of the 10th anniversary celebration.

Lets celebrate 10 years of free game assets! Three of our most popular premium packs are now available for free, for one day only. Thanks for your support through the years!

The asset packs are a huge collection of sprites, tiles, dialogs, fonts and more in a single file download for each asset pack.  If you miss out on the giveaway it’s not a huge deal, as Kenney.nl assets are mostly all available for free right here, if perhaps in a slightly less convenient download format.

You can learn more about the giveaway in the video below.

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Art GameDev News Sale

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Well, it’s certainly been a bit of a week, hasn’t it? My thoughts go out to all our readers during this time – I hope you’re all staying safe, and staying sane. I hope I’m able to provide at least some relief from the current troubles with some news and updates from the world of mobile gaming.

Not much ‘new’ that’s interesting is coming out at the moment, but on the flip side a lot of the older stuff you’ll know and love is now really, really cheap. More on that below.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away…

Out Now

InfiniteCorps (iOS)

The only premium game to grace our ‘Out Now’ list this week, we’ve brought up InfiniteCorps previously. It’s a decision-driven strategy/card game in the same vein as Reigns, but with a cyberpunk setting. You work for a corporation in charge of supply and logistics to the citizens of the futuristic ‘MegaTower’, where the citizens live.

Each loss resets the game with a slightly different set of cards, and you can collect the other sets as you play through the game. We haven’t had a chance to take it for a proper spin yet but we’ve been waiting for more games to try the Reigns formulate, so hopefully this lives up to its promise.

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Teamfight Tactics (iOS & Android)

As you will have seen yesterday, Teamfight Tactics is now out on Mobile. It’s the last of current ‘big’ Auto Chess titles to make the crossing, so it’ll be interesting to see how you guys get on with it. I took it for a quick spin yesterday but so far my opinion hasn’t changed – it’s decent, with good production values but apart from using Hexes over a square grid, the differences between this, Underlords and OG Auto Chess are slight.

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App Updates & News

War of the Zombie randomly got a couple of updates over the past two weeks, which we only just noticed because of something that flashed up on Steam. They’ve added a mobile rocket launcher vehicle, the ability for a 5th FOB as well as a host of other minor changes. It’s been getting a steady stream of new content since the start of January 2020, after no updates at all through 2019. Might be worth jumping back in, if you haven’t played it in a while!

The mobile version of Multiplayer Survival Horror game Dead by Daylight has been announced. You can pre-register now on either Google Play or iOS, and the full release is slated for April 16th, 2020. Not this game is only for those aged 18 or over.

As spotted by Pocket Gamer, Riot Games also released a dev diary video on Wednesday that goes into a little bit more detail on how the development of League of Legends: Wild Rift is coming along. This is going to be the ‘official’ mobile spin off of the popular PC MOBA, and will be made specifically for phones.

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It’s still going to be 5v5 PVP, and the release is scheduled for later this year.

Free & Cheap Mobile Games

So, given the current COVID-19 situation, a lot of people are currently stuck at home looking for something to do, either for themselves or now their children now that a lot of schools are starting to shut. The mobile industry has generally responded with a wide range of sales, discounts, with even some games going for free.

There’s almost too much to list out specifically, but there are plenty of highlights I can throw up. For example:

• Through the Ages is currently $4.99. This is only the second time it’s been discounted (Sept 2019) and the best price to date. This is on both iOS and Android.
• Games like One Deck Dungeon, Galaxy Trucker… even the Majesty port are all showing deals. Some are best to date, some aren’t but still pretty good. The Sorcery! games are also in this list, and there are plenty more. Reigns: Game of Thrones is $1.99, as is This War of Mine.

My advice is to go check out our Guides section, go through our ‘Best Games’ list and see if there are any that have taken your interest that you haven’t jumped into yet, see if it’s on sale. Odds are it probably is.

What I will try and keep track of in more detail though are any notable free mobile games:

Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments.

Super Rare Games has today revealed that the next indie release to receive a limited edition physical release on Switch is none other than Mechstermination Force.

Pre-orders for the new release are set to open on March 26th at 6pm GMT on Super Rare Games’ website. 4,000 copies have been printed in total, and each purchase comes with a 20-page full-colour manual, interior artwork, an exclusive sticker, and three trading cards randomly selected from a five-card set.

We enjoyed the game when we first played it on Switch last year. Feel free to read up on it in our review if you want to learn more. Here’s a snippet:

With Cuphead just around the corner, we can’t help feeling sorry for Mechstermination Force. It’s certainly less of a head-turner, but it’s a more approachable take on boss rush platforming, with less of an emphasis on twitch-based, pixel-perfect precision. It’s peppered with ingenious design and amusing writing and we thoroughly enjoyed our time with it.

Are you a fan of the game? Are you tempted to try it now that it’s coming out in physical form? Let us know with a comment.

Surprisingly, even advanced Python coders don’t know the details of the copy() method of Python lists. Time to change that!

Definition and Usage: The list.copy() method copies all list elements into a new list. The new list is the return value of the method. It’s a shallow copy—you copy only the object references to the list elements and not the objects themselves.

Here’s a short example:

>>> lst = [1, 2, 3]

>>> lst.copy()

[1, 2, 3]

In the first line, you create the list lst consisting of three integers. You then create a new list by copying all elements.

Puzzle – Try It Yourself:

Syntax: You can call this method on each list object in Python. Here’s the syntax:

list.copy()

Arguments: The method doesn’t take any argument.

Return value: The method list.clear() returns a list object by copying references to all objects in the original list.

Video:

Python List Copy Shallow

Before you can truly understand the copy() method in Python, you must understand the concept of a “shallow copy”.

In object-oriented languages such as Python, everything is an object. The list is an object and the elements in the list are objects, too. A shallow copy of the list creates a new list object—the copy—but it doesn’t create new list elements but simply copies the references to these objects.

You can see that the list below is only a shallow copy pointing to the same elements as the original list.

In Python, the list.copy() method only produces a shallow copy which has much faster runtime complexity.

Here’s an example showing exact this scenario:

>>> lst = [6, 7, [1, 2], "hello"]

>>> lst_2 = lst.copy()

>>> lst_2[2].append(42)

>>> lst[2]

[1, 2, 42]

Changing the third list element of the copied list impacts the third list element of the original list.

Python List Copy Deep

Having understood the concept of a shallow copy, it’s now easy to understand the concept of a deep copy. A shallow copy only copies the references of the list elements. A deep copy copies the list elements themselves which can lead to a highly recursive behavior because the list elements may be lists themselves that need to be copied deeply and so on.

Here’s a simple deep copy of the same list as shown previously:

In contrast to the shallow copy, the list [1, 2] is copied separately for the deep copy list. If one changes this nested list in the original list, the change would not be visible at the deep copy. (Because the nested list of the deep copy list is an independent object in memory.)

Note that in a deep copy, the string object must not be copied. Why? Because strings are immutable so you cannot change them (and, thus, there will be no dirty “side effects” seen by other copies of the list pointing to the same object in memory.

To get a deep copy in Python, use the copy module and use the deepcopy() method:

>>> import copy

>>> lst = [6, 7, [1, 2], "hello"]

>>> lst_2 = copy.deepcopy(lst)

>>> lst_2[2].append(42)

>>> lst[2]

[1, 2]

How to Copy a Python List (Alternatives)?

Say, you want to copy the list. What options are there?

Method	Description
list.copy()	Returns a shallow copy of the list.
import copy copy.deepcopy(list)	Import the copy module and uses its method to create a deep copy of list.
list[:]	Use slicing with default indices to create a shallow copy of the list.
list(x)	use the built-in list constructor list(...) to create a shallow copy of the list x.
[el for el in lst]	Use list comprehension to create a shallow copy of the original list lst.

Slicing belongs to the fastest methods (very dirty benchmark here). If you need to refresh your Python slicing skills, here’s a tutorial on the Finxter blog:

Related Articles:

• Introduction to Slicing in Python

Python List Copy Not Working

The main reason why the list.copy() method may not work for you is because you assume that it creates a deep copy when, in reality, it only creates a shallow copy of the list. To create a deep copy where the list elements themselves are copied (e.g. for multi-dimensional lists), simply import the copy module and use its method deepcopy(x) to copy list x.

>>> import copy

>>> lst = [[1, 2], 3, 4]

>>> lst_2 = copy.deepcopy(lst)

Python List Copy And Append

How to copy a list and append an element in one line of Python code?

Simply use slicing to copy the list and the list concatenation operator + to add the list of a single element [x] to the result. But there are other nice ways, too. Check out the following ways to append element x to a given list lst and return the result as a copy:

• lst[:] + [x]
• lst.copy() + [x]
• [*lst, x]

The third way to copy a list and append a new element is my personal favorite because it’s fast, easy-to-read, and concise. It uses the asterisk operator to unpack the elements of the original list into a new list.

Python List Copy By Value

Do you want to copy all elements in your list “by value”? In other words, you want not only the list object to be copied (shallow copy) but also the list elements (deep copy).

This can be done with the deepcopy() method of Python’s copy library. Here’s an example:

>>> import copy

>>> lst = [6, 7, [1, 2], "hello"]

>>> lst_2 = copy.deepcopy(lst)

>>> lst_2[2].append(42)

>>> lst[2]

[1, 2]

The element 42 was not appended to the nested list of lst.

Python List Copy With Slice

You can simply copy a list lst by using the slice operation lst[:] with default start and stop indices so that all elements are copied in the list. This creates a shallow copy of the list lst.

Related Articles:

• Introduction to Slicing in Python

Python List Copy Without First Element

To copy a list without its first element, simply use slicing list[1:]. By setting the start index to 1 all elements with index larger or equal to 1 are copied into the new list.

Here’s an example:

>>> lst = [1, 2, 3, 4]

>>> lst[1:]

[2, 3, 4]

Python List Copy Without Last Element

To copy a list without its last element, simply use slicing list[:-1]. By setting the start index to -1 (the right-most list element) all elements but the last one are copied into the new list.

Here’s an example:

>>> lst = [1, 2, 3, 4]

>>> lst[:-1]

[1, 2, 3]

Python List Copy Time Complexity

The time complexity of shallow list copying—examples are list.copy() or slicing list[:]—is linear to the number of elements in the list. For n list elements, the time complexity is O(n). Why? Because Python goes over all elements in the list and adds a copy of the object reference to the new list (copy by reference).

I wrote a quick script to evaluate that the time complexity of copying a list is, in fact, linear in the number of list elements:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

import time y = []

for i in [100000 * j for j in range(10)]: lst = list(range(i)) t0 = time.time() lst_2 = lst[:] t1 = time.time() y.append(t1-t0) plt.plot(y)

plt.xlabel("List elements (10**5)")

plt.ylabel("Time (sec)")

plt.show()

Here’s the result:

The runtime grows linearly in the number of list elements.

Python List Copy Partially

How to copy a list partially? To copy only the elements between start index (included) and stop index (excluded), use slicing like this: list[start:stop]. This results in a new list that contains only parts of the list.

Python List Copy Multi-Dimensional List

To copy a multi-dimensional list (a list of lists), you need to create a deep copy. You can accomplish this with the copy library’s deepcopy() method as follows:

>>> import copy

>>> lst = [[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6]]

>>> lst_2 = copy.deepcopy(lst)

>>> lst_2

[[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6]]

Now check if the copy is really deep by clearing the first list element in the copy:

>>> lst_2[0].clear()

>>> lst

[[1, 2, 3], [4, 5, 6]]

>>> lst_2

[[], [4, 5, 6]]

You can see that the copy was really deep because the first element of the lst was not affected by the clear() method that removed all elements for the deep copy lst_2.

Python List copy() Thread Safe

Do you have a multiple threads that access your list at the same time? Then you need to be sure that the list operations (such as copy()) are actually thread safe.

In other words: can you call the copy() operation in two threads on the same list at the same time? (And can you be sure that the result is meaningful?)

The answer is yes (if you use the cPython implementation). The reason is Python’s global interpreter lock that ensures that a thread that’s currently working on it’s code will first finish its current basic Python operation as defined by the cPython implementation. Only if it terminates with this operation will the next thread be able to access the computational resource. This is ensured with a sophisticated locking scheme by the cPython implementation.

The only thing you need to know is that each basic operation in the cPython implementation is atomic. It’s executed wholly and at once before any other thread has the chance to run on the same virtual engine. Therefore, there are no race conditions. An example for such a race condition would be the following: the first thread reads a value from the list, the second threads overwrites the value, and the first thread overwrites the value again invalidating the second thread’s operation.

All cPython operations are thread-safe. But if you combine those operations into higher-level functions, those are not generally thread safe as they consist of many (possibly interleaving) operations.

Where to Go From Here?

The list.copy() method creates a shallow copy of the list. The copy.deepcopy(list) method creates a deep copy of the list.

You’ve learned the ins and outs of this important Python list method.

If you keep struggling with those basic Python commands and you feel stuck in your learning progress, I’ve got something for you: Python One-Liners (Amazon Link).

In the book, I’ll give you a thorough overview of critical computer science topics such as machine learning, regular expression, data science, NumPy, and Python basics—all in a single line of Python code!

Get the book from Amazon!

OFFICIAL BOOK DESCRIPTION: Python One-Liners will show readers how to perform useful tasks with one line of Python code. Following a brief Python refresher, the book covers essential advanced topics like slicing, list comprehension, broadcasting, lambda functions, algorithms, regular expressions, neural networks, logistic regression and more. Each of the 50 book sections introduces a problem to solve, walks the reader through the skills necessary to solve that problem, then provides a concise one-liner Python solution with a detailed explanation.

At the end of February, this year’s Games Developers Conference – scheduled to take place this month, in March – was postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak. A statement on the GDC website said the plan was to host the annual event later on in summer.

Everything has now been sorted and in place of the original conference is a brand new three-day summer expo, taking place between 4th – 6th August, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. Here’s the full rundown:

GDC Summer’s conference program will consist of high-quality technical content, mixed with valuable roundtable discussions to foster conversation and connection.

The event will host a new series of microtalks and fireside chats, as well as a dedicated space for comprehensive career development sessions covering topics such as how to pitch your game, effective communication strategies, how to land an investor/publisher and business development strategies.

As a celebration of the game development industry, GDC Summer 2020 will roll out a new community partnership program. Organizations will have the opportunity to apply for space onsite to host meetings and gatherings alongside the main event. Qualifying organizations could include SIG meetings, non-profit board meetings, local meet-ups, hosted “office hours” by community professionals, portfolio review rooms, podcast recording and more.

This program enables GDC as an organization to reach areas of the industry previously untapped due to space restrictions. Meanwhile, sponsorship packages are designed to be easy to execute, with a shorter-than-average runway compared to other industry events.

GDC Summer will give the game development community a chance to come together in a way that hasn’t currently been possible due to COVID-19. Safety remains the GDC organizers’ paramount concern and the GDC team will continue to monitor the latest information from health officials to ensure a safe and compelling event for everyone at GDC Summer, GDC 2021 and beyond.

More details about GDC summer can be viewed via the official GDC website. And for additional information, you can subscribe to regular updates on Facebook and Twitter.