Chucklefish Rolls Out Its Free Double Trouble Expansion For Wargroove
Update (Thu 6th Feb, 2020 17:00 GMT): The free Wargroove: Double Trouble expansion is now live on Nintendo Switch and other platforms. You can find more details on this one in our original article below.
Original Article (Thu 9th Jan, 2020 04:05 GMT): Last October, Chucklefish officially revealed its upcoming DLC for Wargroove. In case you forgot, it’s titled Wargroove: Double Trouble and is an entirely free update with “co-op play in mind”, a new story and three new Outlaw Commanders.
Now, months on, the game’s publisher and developer has confirmed this free DLC will arrive next month, on 6th February. Above is the official release trailer and below is some added context:
After an unexpected kidnapping and some severe ransom demands, your group of rogues have no choice but to perform the biggest heist that Aurania has ever seen…
This new content will allow you to take control of the mighty Wulfar, the trouble-making twins Errol and Orla, and the maleficent Vesper. You’ll also gain access to two new units (Thieves & Riflemen), new arcade missions, a new volcano biome, updates to the custom editor, Outlaw music tracks and a number of online updates:
Competitive online Quick Play maps, including some of the community’s most competitive maps as voted for by the Groove of War team
Public and Private Multiplayer Lobbies – you can now also play custom campaigns online!
Visit the Wargroove website for more information about the balance and online changes. Will you be revisiting Wargroove to try out this free DLC when it arrives? Post a comment below.
Review: Arc of Alchemist – One Of The Worst RPGs To Hit Switch So Far
Say what you will about the overall quality of its output, but never let it be said that Compile Heart doesn’t love to make RPGs. The studio – best known for its successful Hyperdimension Neptunia series – has always been prolific, to say the least, but alas, it’s also developed a reputation for putting out many ‘filler’ RPGs that generally aren’t worth your time. Unfortunately, this latest release, Arc of Alchemist, falls in that category. There are some good ideas on display in Arc of Alchemist, but it notably fails to execute any of them in a meaningful or worthwhile way, making for a forgettable and easily skippable release.
The story takes place in a Mad Max-esque future in which the last remaining pockets of humanity struggle to survive in a barren, sandy wasteland. Quinn Bravesford – the sole wielder of a mysterious weapon called the “Lunagear” – acts as the main character, captaining a team of forgettable stereotypes that must traipse deep into the wastes in search of a fabled “Great Power” that will somehow pull back the world from the brink and put humanity on a safe path to the future. Unfortunately, that brief summary is about as deep as the narrative gets; there’s scarcely anything here in the way of effective characterization, plot twists, or generally effective storytelling.
For one thing, you begin Arc of Alchemist with your entire team already assembled and already partway into their fateful journey, and the narrative simply doesn’t bother explaining who anybody is or how they know each other. ‘In Medias Res’ plots like this can certainly work in RPGs, but some legwork has to be put in somewhere that gives the player context for the relationships at play and such effort is kept to an absolute minimum in Arc of Alchemist.
Failing the characterization on such a foundational level as this then has the snowball effect of undermining one’s investment in the rest of the plot, which is earnestly told with such a painfully angsty, weight-of-the-world tone that it’s hard not to roll one’s eyes at least once per cutscene. “How Ironic. Our souls are as dry as the desert that surrounds us,” drones Quinn in yet another scene where her quasi-suicidal inner monologue broods. Ugh. Mercifully, a little more levity is sometimes introduced in brief scenes that randomly play every time you return to base (more on that later), but it’s no exaggeration to say that the storytelling in Arc of Alchemist just doesn’t work.
While not nearly as painful to deal with as the plot, Arc of Alchemist’s gameplay, unfortunately, doesn’t do a whole lot to inspire confidence. Your whole adventure consists of moving between different Event Points to trigger cutscenes and story fights, while the bits in-between allow you to explore the admittedly small handful of simple maps. Exploration, then, mostly consists of running down a few side paths to open up a treasure chest or two, and maybe along the way there’s a simple environmental puzzle to solve with your Lunagear. Using this tool, you can do things like cast fireballs to melt ice or conjure up cubes that you can use to jump to higher places. It’s nice that the developers thought to include simple puzzles to make exploration a little more varied, but the word “puzzle” is stretching it given how straightforward these obstacles are. On occasion, the rewards for exploring can almost feel worth the effort, but on the whole, it feels like the exploration was put in just to pad out the length of an already rather short game.
As you move through each map, you’re sure to occasionally be accosted by some monsters, none of which put up meaningful resistance to your party. Combat takes the shape of a live-action hack ‘n’ slash, where you can bore through enemies using various combos and special drops from your Lunagear, such as a placeable sentinel that spits magic attacks at nearby enemies. Most enemies put up utterly pathetic resistance to your team, something which is only further underlined by how characters seem to level up after pretty much every enemy encounter.
The difficulty dramatically spikes, however, at many boss encounters, where you suddenly hit a brick wall and your team gets easily wiped. Such encounters can usually then be overcome by a bit of grinding, but the key thing here is how mindless the whole combat system turns out to be. There’s no real skill or tactics involved in battles; it’s just a simple matter of mashing attacks and occasionally dodging. Some flavour is introduced by how each weapon has its own unique attacks, but there’s otherwise very little in the way of incentive or, more bluntly, fun to be found in battling monsters.
The other half of gameplay is found in a base-building, resource management sub-game that you can access from various crystals dotted around the maps. Back at base, you can do all the housekeeping things like tweaking your team and outfitting them with new gear, but the main draw here is the fact that the base can be expanded by spending a little cash and using the resource you collect out in the field. Building and upgrading structures opens new shops and expands their effectiveness, while placing certain facilities in close proximity to each other can net you even more bonuses. Like everything else in Arc of Alchemist, this base-building gameplay proves to be rather shallow in its implementation, but it does introduce a nice break from the otherwise ho-hum roaming of the endless deserts.
Arc of Alchemist would be bad enough with its passable story and bland gameplay, but we feel that special mention needs to be made about the atrocious performance, docked or handheld. Arc of Alchemist is a visually simple game to begin with, featuring chunky models and muddy textures galore, and yet it somehow manages to deliver these middling visuals to you at a ‘nice and cinematic’ 20 FPS at the absolute best. Realistically, whether you’re simply running across the map or fighting enemies, your experience will usually be hanging somewhere in the sub-15 FPS range. Given the performance, we were amazed that we didn’t encounter any crashes or bugs during our time, but let it be known that Arc of Alchemist struggles every single step of the way and certainly deserves to be in the running for worst performing RPG on the Switch.
It bears mentioning that this English release of Arc of Alchemist comes with a few bonuses that have been included with the overall package; none of them are game-changing but they are nonetheless nice to have. The headlining feature here is that you can play as your other party members directly, and the other additions are the inclusion of some reworks to the UI and the base-building mechanics. Though you won’t probably notice the latter two features at all, other playable characters do help to pad out the replayability somewhat, although even your enjoyment of this is hindered by how you have to go all the way back to base each time you want to play as someone else. Unless you played the Japanese release when it came out last year, these additions probably won’t make much of a difference, but it’s nice to see the developers put in the extra time to make this version a little more playable, even if it doesn’t fix the game’s many other sins.
Conclusion
In sum, Arc of Alchemist is not worth your time. We’ll say it again just in case the people in the back didn’t hear: Arc of Alchemist is not worth your time. The story is barely serviceable, the gameplay is middling and uninspired at its very best, and the graphics often look like they could’ve been pulled from an early 3DS game. That would all be damning enough if it at least ran well, but Arc of Alchemist in fact runs at laughable framerates all the way through. That would be damning enough, but then the developers have the gall to ask you to pony up forty bucks (at time of writing) for this mess. The Switch library is packed to bursting with loads of fantastic RPGs that are each sure to deliver a great experience. This is definitely not one of them. Please, don’t waste your money on Arc of Alchemist.
"Honestly, it's been a bit of a hard week," J. Allen Brack said during an Activision Blizzard earnings call. "Our community has come to expect really amazing things from us, and we've heard from them that we have not achieved that bar."
Brack went on to say that Blizzard plans to support Reforged in the future with updates, while it also aims to communicate with fans about the next steps for improving the game.
"We stand behind our games and have consistently shown that we not only support them but we continue to build on them, even after launch. We're committed to doing that here as well," Brack said.
The executive is repeating what Blizzard's own Randy "Kaivax" Jordan said earlier this week. Jordan took to the company's forums to discuss Blizzard's plans for Reforged, specifying that the team is "fully committed to supporting the game [and the Warcraft 3 community] for a long time to come." This includes preparing a patch scheduled to go live later this week that will address mismatched color and shading modules, portrait animations and audio bugs, UI fixes, and more.
Many fans have noted that certain cutscenes failed to live up to what Blizzard had previously shown during BlizzCon 2018. Jordan said the lack of re-animated cutscenes was, essentially, to keep the original spirit of Warcraft 3 intact.
"[W]e did not want the in-game cutscenes to steer too far from the original game," Jordan said. "We went a little deeper into the thought process behind that at the show, but the main takeaway is that the campaigns tell one of the classic stories in Warcraft history, and we want to preserve the true spirit of Warcraft 3 and allow players to relive these unforgettable moments as they were (albeit rebuilt with new animations and the higher fidelity art)."
"[W]e want to say we're sorry to those of you who didn't have the experience you wanted, and we'd like to share our plans for what’s coming next."
Posted by: xSicKxBot - 02-07-2020, 06:09 AM - Forum: Python
- No Replies
Python Regex And Operator [Tutorial + Video]
This tutorial is all about the AND operator of Python’s re library. You may ask: what? (And rightly so.)
Sure, there’s the OR operator (example: 'iPhone|iPad'). But what’s the meaning of matching one regular expression AND another?
There are different interpretations for the AND operator in a regular expression (regex):
Ordered: Match one regex pattern after another. In other words, you first match pattern A AND then you match pattern B. Here the answer is simple: you use the pattern AB to match both.
Unordered: Match multiple patterns in a string but in no particular order (source). In this case, you’ll use a bag-of-words approach.
I’ll discuss both in the following. (You can also watch the video as you read the tutorial.)
Ordered Python Regex AND Operator
Given a string. Say, your goal is to find all substrings that match string 'iPhone', followed by string 'iPad'. You can view this as the AND operator of two regular expressions. How can you achieve this?
The straightforward AND operation of both strings is the regular expression pattern iPhoneiPad.
In the following example, you want to match pattern ‘aaa’ and pattern ‘bbb’—in this order.
>>> import re
>>> text = 'aaabaaaabbb'
>>> A = 'aaa'
>>> B = 'bbb'
>>> re.findall(A+B, text)
['aaabbb']
>>>
You use the re.findall() method. In case you don’t know it, here’s the definition from the Finxter blog article:
The re.findall(pattern, string) method finds all occurrences of the pattern in the string and returns a list of all matching substrings.
The first argument is the pattern A+B which evaluates to 'aaabbb'. There’s nothing fancy about this: each time you write a string consisting of more than one character, you essentially use the ordered AND operator.
The second argument is the text 'aaabaaaabbb' which you want to search for the pattern.
The result shows that there’s a matching substring in the text: 'aaabbb'.
Unordered Python Regex AND Operator
But what if you want to search a given text for pattern A AND pattern B—but in no particular order? In other words: if both patterns appear anywhere in the string, the whole string should be returned as a match.
Now this is a bit more complicated because any regular expression pattern is ordered from left to right. A simple solution is to use the lookahead assertion (?.*A) to check whether regex A appears anywhere in the string. (Note we assume a single line string as the .* pattern doesn’t match the newline character by default.)
Let’s first have a look at the minimal solution to check for two patterns anywhere in the string (say, patterns 'hi' AND 'you').
>>> import re
>>> pattern = '(?=.*hi)(?=.*you)'
>>> re.findall(pattern, 'hi how are yo?')
[]
>>> re.findall(pattern, 'hi how are you?')
['']
In the first example, both words do not appear. In the second example, they do.
But how does the lookahead assertion work? You must know that any other regex pattern “consumes” the matched substring. The consumed substring cannot be matched by any other part of the regex.
Think of the lookahead assertion as a non-consuming pattern match. The regex engine goes from the left to the right—searching for the pattern. At each point, it has one “current” position to check if this position is the first position of the remaining match. In other words, the regex engine tries to “consume” the next character as a (partial) match of the pattern.
The advantage of the lookahead expression is that it doesn’t consume anything. It just “looks ahead” starting from the current position whether what follows would theoretically match the lookahead pattern. If it doesn’t, the regex engine cannot move on.
A simple example of lookahead. The regular expression engine matches (“consumes”) the string partially. Then it checks whether the remaining pattern could be matched without actually matching it.
Let’s go back to the expression (?=.*hi)(?=.*you) to match strings that contain both 'hi' and 'you'. Why does it work?
The reason is that the lookahead expressions don’t consume anything. You first search for an arbitrary number of characters .*, followed by the word hi. But because the regex engine hasn’t consumed anything, it’s still at the same position at the beginning of the string. So, you can repeat the same for the word you.
Note that this method doesn’t care about the order of the two words:
>>> import re
>>> pattern = '(?=.*hi)(?=.*you)'
>>> re.findall(pattern, 'hi how are you?')
['']
>>> re.findall(pattern, 'you are how? hi!')
['']
No matter which word "hi" or "you" appears first in the text, the regex engine finds both.
You may ask: why’s the output the empty string? The reason is that the regex engine hasn’t consumed any character. It just checked the lookaheads. So the easy fix is to consume all characters as follows:
Now, the whole string is a match because after checking the lookahead with '(?=.*hi)(?=.*you)', you also consume the whole string '.*'.
Python Regex Not
How can you search a string for substrings that do NOT match a given pattern? In other words, what’s the “negative pattern” in Python regular expressions?
The answer is two-fold:
If you want to match all characters except a set of specific characters, you can use the negative character class [^...].
If you want to match all substrings except the ones that match a regex pattern, you can use the feature of negative lookahead(?!...).
Here’s an example for the negative character class:
>>> import re
>>> re.findall('[^a-m]', 'aaabbbaababmmmnoopmmaa')
['n', 'o', 'o', 'p']
And here’s an example for the negative lookahead pattern to match all “words that are not followed by words”:
The negative lookahead (?![a-z]+) doesn’t consume (match) any character. It just checks whether the pattern [a-z]+ does NOT match at a given position. The only times this happens is just before the empty space and the end of the string.
[Collection] What Are The Different Python Re Quantifiers?
The “and”, “or”, and “not” operators are not the only regular expression operators you need to understand. So what are other operators?
Next, you’ll get a quick and dirty overview of the most important regex operations and how to use them in Python. Here are the most important regex quantifiers:
Quantifier
Description
Example
.
The wild-card (‘dot’) matches any character in a string except the newline character ‘n’.
Regex ‘…’ matches all words with three characters such as ‘abc’, ‘cat’, and ‘dog’.
*
The zero-or-more asterisk matches an arbitrary number of occurrences (including zero occurrences) of the immediately preceding regex.
Regex ‘cat*’ matches the strings ‘ca’, ‘cat’, ‘catt’, ‘cattt’, and ‘catttttttt’.
?
The zero-or-one matches (as the name suggests) either zero or one occurrences of the immediately preceding regex.
Regex ‘cat?’ matches both strings ‘ca’ and ‘cat’ — but not ‘catt’, ‘cattt’, and ‘catttttttt’.
+
The at-least-one matches one or more occurrences of the immediately preceding regex.
Regex ‘cat+’ does not match the string ‘ca’ but matches all strings with at least one trailing character ‘t’ such as ‘cat’, ‘catt’, and ‘cattt’.
^
The start-of-string matches the beginning of a string.
Regex ‘^p’ matches the strings ‘python’ and ‘programming’ but not ‘lisp’ and ‘spying’ where the character ‘p’ does not occur at the start of the string.
$
The end-of-string matches the end of a string.
Regex ‘py$’ would match the strings ‘main.py’ and ‘pypy’ but not the strings ‘python’ and ‘pypi’.
A|B
The OR matches either the regex A or the regex B. Note that the intuition is quite different from the standard interpretation of the or operator that can also satisfy both conditions.
Regex ‘(hello)|(hi)’ matches strings ‘hello world’ and ‘hi python’. It wouldn’t make sense to try to match both of them at the same time.
AB
The AND matches first the regex A and second the regex B, in this sequence.
We’ve already seen it trivially in the regex ‘ca’ that matches first regex ‘c’ and second regex ‘a’.
Note that I gave the above operators some more meaningful names (in bold) so that you can immediately grasp the purpose of each regex. For example, the ‘^’ operator is usually denoted as the ‘caret’ operator. Those names are not descriptive so I came up with more kindergarten-like words such as the “start-of-string” operator.
We’ve already seen many examples but let’s dive into even more!
import re text = ''' Ha! let me see her: out, alas! he's cold: Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff; Life and these lips have long been separated: Death lies on her like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of all the field. ''' print(re.findall('.a!', text)) '''
Finds all occurrences of an arbitrary character that is
followed by the character sequence 'a!'.
['Ha!'] ''' print(re.findall('is.*and', text)) '''
Finds all occurrences of the word 'is',
followed by an arbitrary number of characters
and the word 'and'.
['is settled, and'] ''' print(re.findall('her:?', text)) '''
Finds all occurrences of the word 'her',
followed by zero or one occurrences of the colon ':'.
['her:', 'her', 'her'] ''' print(re.findall('her:+', text)) '''
Finds all occurrences of the word 'her',
followed by one or more occurrences of the colon ':'.
['her:'] ''' print(re.findall('^Ha.*', text)) '''
Finds all occurrences where the string starts with
the character sequence 'Ha', followed by an arbitrary
number of characters except for the new-line character. Can you figure out why Python doesn't find any?
[] ''' print(re.findall('n$', text)) '''
Finds all occurrences where the new-line character 'n'
occurs at the end of the string.
['n'] ''' print(re.findall('(Life|Death)', text)) '''
Finds all occurrences of either the word 'Life' or the
word 'Death'.
['Life', 'Death'] '''
In these examples, you’ve already seen the special symbol ‘n’ which denotes the new-line character in Python (and most other languages). There are many special characters, specifically designed for regular expressions. Next, we’ll discover the most important special symbols.
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.
Where to Go From Here?
You’ve learned everything you need to know about the Python Regex AND Operator.
Summary:
There are different interpretations for the AND operator in a regular expression (regex):
Ordered: Match one regex pattern after another. In other words, you first match pattern A AND then you match pattern B. Here the answer is simple: you use the pattern AB to match both.
Unordered: Match multiple patterns in a string but in no particular order. In this case, you’ll use a bag-of-words approach.
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[www.indiegala.com] Universes collide like never before as iconic characters team up for action-packed player-versus-player combat! https://youtu.be/aDPzC7oHBhE The epic clash between two storied universes returns with Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, the next era of the highly revered action-fighting game series.
TerreSculptor is a free Windows based application for creating landscapes and terrains for games and other media. Starting life in 2005 as a tool for creating maps for the Unreal Developer Kit, the tool has come a long way in the years since.
On Demenzun Media homepage, TerreSulptor is described as:
It all started back in 2005 with the HMCS HeightMap Conversion Software, as a need to convert various heightmap file formats to Epic’s proprietary Unreal Engine G16 format. As an Unreal Engine licensee, developer, and consultant, I wrote this utility for free use for Engine Licensees and Community Mappers.
2008 saw the release of HMES, an updated build of HMCS with limited editing capabilities. Both of these tools are still available for download.
In 2010, TerreSculptor was born out of the desire to create a powerful 3D application that rivaled all existing terrain heightmap software. The initial public alpha release was delivered in 2012.
Since then, TerreSculptor has continued to evolve and become more powerful and feature rich. TerreSculptor is now one of the main terrain tools available to the industry. Over it’s lifetime to-date, TerreSculptor has had more than 50,000 downloads, and like its predecessors, it remains free software for any use.
TerreSculptor is still under active development, with the recent 2.0 release happening earlier this year. In the following video we go hands-on with this powerful tool and show how quickly and easily you can create terrain for your game. As part of the video below, we showcase how you can import real world data-sets, in this case captured from the massive USGA Earth Explorer website. TerreScultpor is available as a free download here and is comprehensively documented here. If you like the software, consider supporting the developer on Patreon where you can get early release access, as well as access to sample projects and more.
Create an account or log in an already existing one and permanently add the game on your account. Alternatively you can redeem it from the Epic Launcher on the game's giveaway page.
We are welcoming everyone to join our discord server (link below). We are more active there on finding giveaways, small or large.
Apple now allows developers to distribute custom apps to schools
By AppleInsider Staff Thursday, February 06, 2020, 05:03 pm PT (08:03 pm ET)
Apple on Thursday announced an upgrade to Apple School Manager that allows developers to better serve educational institutions through the distribution of customized apps.
Announced in a post to Apple’s developer portal, the new feature enables app makers to create and privately distribute custom apps to one or more organizations through the company’s Apple School Manager platform. The capability allows developers to fulfill the needs of individual institutions, Apple says.
“You can offer a tailored look and feel, specific functionality for a process or workflow, special configuration for IT environments, security features for company data, and custom features for partners, clients, dealers, franchises, or employees,” Apple explains.
Schools can also use the feature to distribute their own apps for internal use.
Once an app is completed, devs are able to authorize downloads by target organizations in App Store Connect. Selected schools are granted access to the app through Apple Business Manger or Apple School Manager and can distribute the software via Mobile Device Management or via redemption code.
Apple notes developers will need to fill out a Paid Applications Agreement if they want to make an app available only to specific organizations. This rule applies to both paid and free apps.
Apple School Manager debuted in beta form in 2016. The website, styled after Apple’s business app distribution platform, acts as a central hub for educational administrators tasked with managing large-scale mobile device ecosystems. School Manager provides tools for creating and monitoring Managed Apple IDs, managing MDM enrollment, buying and distributing apps and e-books, building custom courses and more.
Epic Games has revealed that Harley Quinn, star of this week’s blockbuster film Birds of Prey, is set to arrive in Fortnite.
Harley will be added to the game’s Item Shop in a ‘Harley Quinn Bundle’ which is set to appear starting from today, 6th February, at 7pm ET (so that’s 4pm PT / midnight tonight in the UK). The bundle will include the Harley Quinn Outfit and Harley Hitter and Punchline Pickaxes; new Challenges will also appear that transform her from ‘Lil Monster XoXo Harley’ to ‘Always Fantabulous Harley’ (the two designs you can see above).
Epic has shared the requirements you’ll need to hit if you want to upgrade the skin:
To unlock Always Fantabulous Harley, you’ll need to complete three Challenges:
– Place top 30 in Solo, Duos, or Squads, then top 20, then top 10. – Hit weak points. – Deal damage using Pickaxes.
The Harley bundle will be available in the Item Shop from today until 17th February. At present, no other events such as limited-time game modes have been announced for this crossover.
Are you a Harley Quinn fan? Think you’ll grab this new skin from the Item Shop? Let us know in the usual place.
A screenshot of Arcade Archives SAINT DRAGON, launching on Switch today
If you’re looking for your next retro fix on Nintendo Switch, you’ll probably want to keep an eye out for the next batch of games coming our way from Hamster.
The studio has shared a list of upcoming Arcade Archives titles headed to Nintendo Switch. The list comes from a livestream hosted by Hamster on Niconico, and while some of these had already been confirmed before the show, there are a few which we hadn’t heard about previously.
Today actually sees the launch of Arcade Archives SAINT DRAGON, which was included in this week’s Nintendo Download update. No specific dates have been given for the new titles listed above, but we can expect them to appear over the next few months. Make sure to keep an eye on the eShop and our regular Download updates to catch them.