I’m glad we’ve seen some decent games come out recently – it’s been a good week for reviews for premium games, which is let me do some experimenting with news and older content to see what we can do to keep things ticking over.

In case you were wondering, the new Editor & Staff Writer for Pocket Tactics have been hired, and they’ll be starting next month. You’ll be getting some official comms from me as to what’s going to be happening so you guys are in the loop, but it won’t be till week after next at least as I’m on holiday next week. With that in mind, there also won’t be a Weekender update next week. The header image is courtesy of Book of Demon’s Steam page.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away…

New App Releases

Company of Heroes (iPad)

This is just a reminder for anyone who didn’t read our review yesterday, but Company of Heroes is now finally out on iPad. Feral did another great job adapting this classic RTS for the smaller screens, although as always with these kinds of games they can only do so much. There are plenty of actions in CoH that require a bit of finesse and these are still a little bit awkward to do on an iPad, even if the excellent new control scheme.

Also worth noting that this is just the base game’s single-player campaign and then up to 4v4 Skirmishes against the AI. There’s no multiplayer as of yet, and nothing from the game’s two expansions either. These are hopefully coming further down the line.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-rMobgLbuo?controls=0]

Book of Demons (iPad)

Another tablet-exclusive game, Book of Demons has been making a name for itself on Steam since 2018, and is now ready to conquer the hearts & minds of iOS tablet users. It mixes hack’n slash dungeon crawling with deck-building mechanics. It features procedurally generated dungeons and a seperate rogue-like mode. The Steam page mentions controller support, but we’re unsure whether this functionality has made it into the iOS version.

I’ve got Matt S on the case, so hopefully our review will be live before the end of the month. Early chatter from the web seems favourable, though.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiELWd723yE?controls=0]

Also of note:

• Microsoft’s game streaming service, Project xCloud, has finally come to iOS, although it’s a lot more restricted than the Android counterpart.
• Pokemon Home, the new service app that allows you to track your Pokemon collection across multiple games (amongst other things), is now available on. We can only find an iOS store link right now, but it’s also supposed to be on Android (and the Switch).

App Updates & News

Some pretty cool updates and announcements dropped this past week, here’s the summary:

Stardew Valley has finally updated the mobile version to 1.4, which was a huge update that added a new map, lots of new items, a new end-game mystery… even a movie theatre! You can read the full change-log here, but it contains spoilers. Saves from the PC version of the game should also now work in the mobile version.

GWENT is coming to Android! After some rumours started circulating earlier in the week, CDPR finally announced that the hit Witcher card game spin-off will be coming to the Google Play store on March 24th, 2020. Progress can be synced between iOS and PC if you use your GOG account. Pre-registration is available now, and if you sign-up you get an exclusive avatar to use in-game.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrGfn2iePDQ?controls=0]

Minecraft Earth’s Early Access build has also been updated to Version 0.12.0, and includes persistent health between Adventures as well as being able to eat meat to regain health. There’s also a new mob called the Wooly Cow. A few new Android phone models have also been green-lit to play the game. Check out the full notes here.

Perchang, creators of Warhammer Quest & Warhammer Quest 2 are back with another entry in the tactical RPG series. This time they’re ditching the Old World for the Mortal Realms with Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower. This new title is reported to have a big campaign, ten playable champions as well as weekly trials. It’s due out on iOS and Android later this year.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TtpZzc5JtQ?controls=0]

App Sales

It’s nice to see some decent sales on the table again – this year’s been a little dry so far. Here’s what we’ve found:

• Asmodee Digital are running a sale on a number (but not all) of their titles on iOS and Android. Notable ones include Twilight Struggle & Jaipur, but there are a few others as well.
• Stardew Valley is down to $4.99 on mobile to celebrate the release of the 1.4 Update.
• Knights of the Card Table, a quirky deck-building dungeon-crawler is down to $2.99 – it’s best price to date.
• We weren’t huge fans of Codex of Victory when it released back in 2017, but it’s currently down to $0.99 so who cares. Maybe it’s gotten better in recent years?

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

This tutorial makes you a master of character sets in Python. (I know, I know, it feels awesome to see your deepest desires finally come true.)

As I wrote this article, I saw a lot of different terms describing this same powerful concept such as “character class“, “character range“, or “character group“. However, the most precise term is “character set” as introduced in the official Python regex docs. So in this tutorial, I’ll use this term throughout.

Python Regex – Character Set

So, what is a character set in regular expressions?

The character set is (surprise) a set of characters: if you use a character set in a regular expression pattern, you tell the regex engine to choose one arbitrary character from the set. As you may know, a set is an unordered collection of unique elements. So each character in a character set is unique and the order doesn’t really matter (with a few minor exceptions).

Here’s an example of a character set as used in a regular expression:

>>> import re

>>> re.findall('[abcde]', 'hello world!')

['e', 'd']

You use the re.findall(pattern, string) method to match the pattern '[abcde]' in the string 'hello world!'. You can think of all characters a, b, c, d, and e as being in an OR relation: either of them would be a valid match.

The regex engine goes from the left to the right, scanning over the string ‘hello world!’ and simultaneously trying to match the (character set) pattern. Two characters from the text ‘hello world!’ are in the character set—they are valid matches and returned by the re.findall() method.

You can simplify many character sets by using the range symbol ‘-‘ that has a special meaning within square brackets: [a-z] reads “match any character from a to z”, while [0-9] reads “match any character from 0 to 9”.

Here’s the previous example, simplified:

>>> re.findall('[a-e]', 'hello world!')

['e', 'd']

You can even combine multiple character ranges in a single character set:

>>> re.findall('[a-eA-E0-4]', 'hello WORLD 42!')

['e', 'D', '4', '2']

Here, you match three ranges: lowercase characters from a to e, uppercase characters from A to E, and numbers from 0 to 4. Note that the ranges are inclusive so both start and stop symbols are included in the range.

Python Regex Negative Character Set

But what if you want to match all characters—except some? You can achieve this with a negative character set!

The negative character set works just like a character set, but with one difference: it matches all characters that are not in the character set.

Here’s an example where you match all sequences of characters that do not contain characters a, b, c, d, or e:

>>> import re

>>> re.findall('[^a-e]+', 'hello world')

['h', 'llo worl']

We use the “at-least-once quantifier +” in the example that matches at least one occurrence of the preceding regex (if you’re unsure about how it works, check out my detailed Finxter tutorial about the plus operator).

There are only two such sequences: the one-character sequence ‘h’ and the eight-character sequence ‘llo worl’. You can see that even the empty space matches the negative character set.

Summary: the negative character set matches all characters that are not enclosed in the brackets.

How to Fix “re.error: unterminated character set at position”?

Now that you know character classes, you can probably fix this error easily: it occurs if you use the opening (or closing) bracket ‘[‘ in your pattern. Maybe you want to match the character ‘[‘ in your string?

But Python assumes that you’ve just opened a character class—and you forgot to close it.

Here’s an example:

>>> re.findall('[', 'hello [world]')

Traceback (most recent call last): File "<pyshell#5>", line 1, in <module> re.findall('[', 'hello [world]') File "C:\Users\xcent\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\re.py", line 223, in findall return _compile(pattern, flags).findall(string) File "C:\Users\xcent\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\re.py", line 286, in _compile p = sre_compile.compile(pattern, flags) File "C:\Users\xcent\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\sre_compile.py", line 764, in compile p = sre_parse.parse(p, flags) File "C:\Users\xcent\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\sre_parse.py", line 930, in parse p = _parse_sub(source, pattern, flags & SRE_FLAG_VERBOSE, 0) File "C:\Users\xcent\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\sre_parse.py", line 426, in _parse_sub not nested and not items)) File "C:\Users\xcent\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\sre_parse.py", line 532, in _parse source.tell() - here)

re.error: unterminated character set at position 0

The error happens because you used the bracket character ‘[‘ as if it was a normal symbol.

So, how to fix it? Just escape the special bracket character ‘\[‘ with the single backslash:

>>> re.findall('\[', 'hello [world]')

['[']

This removes the “special” meaning of the bracket symbol.

Related Re Methods

There are seven important regular expression methods which you must master:

• The re.findall(pattern, string) method returns a list of string matches. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.search(pattern, string) method returns a match object of the first match. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.match(pattern, string) method returns a match object if the regex matches at the beginning of the string. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.fullmatch(pattern, string) method returns a match object if the regex matches the whole string. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.compile(pattern) method prepares the regular expression pattern—and returns a regex object which you can use multiple times in your code. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.split(pattern, string) method returns a list of strings by matching all occurrences of the pattern in the string and dividing the string along those. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.sub(The re.sub(pattern, repl, string, count=0, flags=0) method returns a new string where all occurrences of the pattern in the old string are replaced by repl. Read more in our blog tutorial.

These seven methods are 80% of what you need to know to get started with Python’s regular expression functionality. If you want to learn more, check out the most comprehensive Python regex tutorial in the world!

Where to Go From Here?

You’ve learned everything you need to know about the Python Regex Character Set Operator.

Summary:

If you use a character set [XYZ] in a regular expression pattern, you tell the regex engine to choose one arbitrary character from the set: X, Y, or Z.

Want to earn money while you learn Python? Average Python programmers earn more than $50 per hour. You can certainly become average, can’t you?

Join the free webinar that shows you how to become a thriving coding business owner online!

[Webinar] Become a Six-Figure Freelance Developer with Python

Join us. It’s fun!

The comes a time in every project where you have to switch from a developmental Work In Progress branch to the main branch and that time just occurred for the Godot game engine.  The WIP Vulkan (and C++14) port is now the official branch on the Godot Github.

Details from the Godot news page:

The Vulkan port is not ready yet, but we need to get it merged into the master branch as a lot of further development planned for Godot 4.0 depends on it.

We plan to rework a lot of Godot’s internals (core) to allow fixing long-standing design issues and improving performance (including GDScript performance improvements). Moreover, our long-awaited port to C++14 will also happen now that the vulkan branch is merged into master, and many other codebase-wide changes were waiting for this: code style changes, Display/OS split, renaming of 3D nodes to unify our conventions, etc.

The scope of the planned changes means that it would be impossible to do these changes in the master branch while keeping the vulkan branch separate, just as it would not be possible to do all those changes in the vulkan branch itself before merging into master: any rebase/merge would become extremely difficult due to the sheer amount of lines of code that will change.

Up until now, we’ve been very cautious with regard to what changes we allow in the vulkan branch, as well as what new PRs we merge in master, to ensure that the vulkan branch can always be rebased on top of master for a later merge. I’ve been rebasing it periodically over the past 8 months, and even though we’ve been very conservative in the scope of the changes, in later months a full rebase could easily take me a full day of work.

So we need everything in the main branch to stop limiting ourselves.

Moving the development branch from 3.2 to 4.0 has some side effects, specifically outstanding Pull Requests.  Unfortunately the simplest option seems to be the best in this case, to close those requests and hopefully “port” them to the new master branch.

While closing PRs may seem a bit abrupt, we ask all contributors to understand that this is done to help us cope with the sheer amount of proposals in parallel to having to refactor a lot of the engine’s codebase. This closing does not mean that we reject the PRs, nor that we do not seem them as worthy contributions. But by asking the authors to re-assess their own proposals and make them compatible with Godot 4.0, we will save a lot of precious development time and get ourselves some breathing air in the current overcrowded PRs.

Closed PRs will have the salvageable label, which we use to denote PRs with code that could be salvaged to make a new, updated (and possibly improved) PR, either by the original author or by a new contributor. So we will not lose code in the process, since everything will still be accessible from the closed PRs and easily identifiable thanks to the salvageable label.

If you use a major release version downloaded from Godot’s download page or from Steam, this change doesn’t actually effect you.  If you want to check out the new Vulkan master branch but don’t want to build the code yourself, you can get a nightly build here.

Learn more about this change and it’s ramifications in the video below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kpSUd-8zHs&w=853&h=480]

GameDev News Godot

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By Joe Robinson 11 Feb 2020

This tutorial makes you a master of character sets in Python. (I know, I know, it feels awesome to see your deepest desires finally come true.)

As I wrote this article, I saw a lot of different terms describing this same powerful concept such as “character class“, “character range“, or “character group“. However, the most precise term is “character set” as introduced in the official Python regex docs. So in this tutorial, I’ll use this term throughout.

Python Regex – Character Set

So, what is a character set in regular expressions?

The character set is (surprise) a set of characters: if you use a character set in a regular expression pattern, you tell the regex engine to choose one arbitrary character from the set. As you may know, a set is an unordered collection of unique elements. So each character in a character set is unique and the order doesn’t really matter (with a few minor exceptions).

Here’s an example of a character set as used in a regular expression:

>>> import re

>>> re.findall('[abcde]', 'hello world!')

['e', 'd']

You use the re.findall(pattern, string) method to match the pattern '[abcde]' in the string 'hello world!'. You can think of all characters a, b, c, d, and e as being in an OR relation: either of them would be a valid match.

The regex engine goes from the left to the right, scanning over the string ‘hello world!’ and simultaneously trying to match the (character set) pattern. Two characters from the text ‘hello world!’ are in the character set—they are valid matches and returned by the re.findall() method.

You can simplify many character sets by using the range symbol ‘-‘ that has a special meaning within square brackets: [a-z] reads “match any character from a to z”, while [0-9] reads “match any character from 0 to 9”.

Here’s the previous example, simplified:

>>> re.findall('[a-e]', 'hello world!')

['e', 'd']

You can even combine multiple character ranges in a single character set:

>>> re.findall('[a-eA-E0-4]', 'hello WORLD 42!')

['e', 'D', '4', '2']

Here, you match three ranges: lowercase characters from a to e, uppercase characters from A to E, and numbers from 0 to 4. Note that the ranges are inclusive so both start and stop symbols are included in the range.

Python Regex Negative Character Set

But what if you want to match all characters—except some? You can achieve this with a negative character set!

The negative character set works just like a character set, but with one difference: it matches all characters that are not in the character set.

Here’s an example where you match all sequences of characters that do not contain characters a, b, c, d, or e:

>>> import re

>>> re.findall('[^a-e]+', 'hello world')

['h', 'llo worl']

We use the “at-least-once quantifier +” in the example that matches at least one occurrence of the preceding regex (if you’re unsure about how it works, check out my detailed Finxter tutorial about the plus operator).

There are only two such sequences: the one-character sequence ‘h’ and the eight-character sequence ‘llo worl’. You can see that even the empty space matches the negative character set.

Summary: the negative character set matches all characters that are not enclosed in the brackets.

How to Fix “re.error: unterminated character set at position”?

Now that you know character classes, you can probably fix this error easily: it occurs if you use the opening (or closing) bracket ‘[‘ in your pattern. Maybe you want to match the character ‘[‘ in your string?

But Python assumes that you’ve just opened a character class—and you forgot to close it.

Here’s an example:

>>> re.findall('[', 'hello [world]')

Traceback (most recent call last): File "<pyshell#5>", line 1, in <module> re.findall('[', 'hello [world]') File "C:\Users\xcent\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\re.py", line 223, in findall return _compile(pattern, flags).findall(string) File "C:\Users\xcent\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\re.py", line 286, in _compile p = sre_compile.compile(pattern, flags) File "C:\Users\xcent\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\sre_compile.py", line 764, in compile p = sre_parse.parse(p, flags) File "C:\Users\xcent\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\sre_parse.py", line 930, in parse p = _parse_sub(source, pattern, flags & SRE_FLAG_VERBOSE, 0) File "C:\Users\xcent\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\sre_parse.py", line 426, in _parse_sub not nested and not items)) File "C:\Users\xcent\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\sre_parse.py", line 532, in _parse source.tell() - here)

re.error: unterminated character set at position 0

The error happens because you used the bracket character ‘[‘ as if it was a normal symbol.

So, how to fix it? Just escape the special bracket character ‘\[‘ with the single backslash:

>>> re.findall('\[', 'hello [world]')

['[']

This removes the “special” meaning of the bracket symbol.

Related Re Methods

There are seven important regular expression methods which you must master:

• The re.findall(pattern, string) method returns a list of string matches. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.search(pattern, string) method returns a match object of the first match. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.match(pattern, string) method returns a match object if the regex matches at the beginning of the string. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.fullmatch(pattern, string) method returns a match object if the regex matches the whole string. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.compile(pattern) method prepares the regular expression pattern—and returns a regex object which you can use multiple times in your code. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.split(pattern, string) method returns a list of strings by matching all occurrences of the pattern in the string and dividing the string along those. Read more in our blog tutorial.
• The re.sub(The re.sub(pattern, repl, string, count=0, flags=0) method returns a new string where all occurrences of the pattern in the old string are replaced by repl. Read more in our blog tutorial.

These seven methods are 80% of what you need to know to get started with Python’s regular expression functionality. If you want to learn more, check out the most comprehensive Python regex tutorial in the world!

Where to Go From Here?

You’ve learned everything you need to know about the Python Regex Character Set Operator.

Summary:

If you use a character set [XYZ] in a regular expression pattern, you tell the regex engine to choose one arbitrary character from the set: X, Y, or Z.

Want to earn money while you learn Python? Average Python programmers earn more than $50 per hour. You can certainly become average, can’t you?

Join the free webinar that shows you how to become a thriving coding business owner online!

[Webinar] Become a Six-Figure Freelance Developer with Python

Join us. It’s fun!

The Clockwork Pi GameShell is a build it yourself hand-held console aimed at indie game developers and retro gamers.  Late last year I cove red the unboxing and assembly while today we are going more hands-on with the device.  In the second half of the video we show step by step how to develop and deploy Godot games on the GameShell device.  This tutorial should also work for most Raspberry Pi based boards that support Godot development.

If you are following the instructions to build Godot Engine games on your GameShell you will need a build template.  The two options mentioned in the video are the Clockwork export template or the more generic frt export templates for Pi devices.  I have tested with both export templates successfully.

The only documentation on building Godot games for the GameShell is this forum thread.  The Clockwork GameShell is available on Amazon currently for $139 USD.  Check out GameShell in action in the video below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PqAZHPnVrY&w=692&h=389]

GameDev News Programming Review

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I’ve been expressing my creative muscles this week through various news stories, although I worry that perhaps I come off as being slightly unhinged? The bright-side is you won’t have to put up with me for much longer. The new team will be in place by the start of March, and then the ‘proper’ re-launch takes place at the end of March and they’ll be taking care of you.

Before then however, I’m probably going to have some fun.

Meanwhile, thousands of miles away…

New App Releases

There’s only one game of note that people are talking about, and that’s PictoQuest. A Nintendo Switch game that’s been ported over to mobile (we might start seeing this more often as games go to Switch first, mobile later) and it’s basically just picross with some window dressing. Reports suggest that It’s not quite as good as more involved RPG/Puzzle hybrids like Puzzle Quest, but if you’re a fan of this particular style of puzzle it does the job.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yQXey6t_0o?controls=0]

App Updates & News

Scythe is coming to iOS!

After some much needed TLC, I think it’s fair to say Asmodee Digital’s adaptation of Scythe is one of their better digital board game properties, and probably generally the best way to play Scythe. It’s been out of Early Access since September 2018, and there hasn’t been a peep from either the developer nor Asmodee themselves… until now!

Thanks to the eagle eyed patrons of Stately Play, we’ve spotted that AD are taking sign-ups for an iOS beta for Scythe Digital Edition. Yay!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oE4EHZTVo74?controls=0]

They’ve also got a new patch for Terraforming Mars in beta as well, which is set to rework multiplayer.

GWENT Update 5.1

GWENT has just received another sizeable update on iOS (and PC), with a look at re-balancing a bunch of existing cards. The focus is on Skellige and Syndicate factions but there’s been a wide range of changes, including:

• Less rank loss at the start of a new season.
• The mobile version has new tool-tips for cards on the board
• Lots and lots of card changes and tweaking.

I’ve recently started playing The Witcher 3 on PS4 and jumped into the ‘OG’ version of the game to see what the fuss was about. I actually really enjoyed it, so I hope this comes to Android soon so I can play the fully fleshed out version.

Teamfight Tactics Closed Beta Tests

A closed beta for the mobile version of Teamfight Tactics is due to start today in select countries… and we have no idea what countries those might be. Despite an extensive blog post covering the news and some other interesting details, they don’t actually say what countries they’ll be running the test in.

The full release is still scheduled for March, however, and the rest of the post goes into detail as to what the key differences are. It’s also worth highlighting that this will be a phone-only game at launch – tablet support is coming later. Minimum requirements on iOS are expected to be iPhones 6S or later, and OS5+ with 2GB RAM on Android.

App Sales

Another slow week for sales of note, but we spotted that Tsuro: The Game of the Path is down to $3.99 (from $3.99) on both iOS and Android. It’s not the lowest price it’s ever been, but last time it was lower was April 2018 so it doesn’t go in for the cheaper prices often.

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