In this 2020 GDC Summer talk Blackbird Interactive’s Rory McGuire and Elliot Hudson walk through the studio’s process of designing its unique derelict spaceship slice-’em-up Hardspace: Shipbreaker.

Together they shared some of the rules and processes the team implemented to “protect” the game from idea fatigue, other company opportunities and, ultimately, themselves.

It was a fascinating talk, and now you can watch it for free on the official GDC YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page.

The Gamasutra Job Board is the most diverse, active and established board of its kind for the video game industry!

Here is just one of the many, many positions being advertised right now.

Location: Victoria, British Columbia

We are currently looking for a QA Automation Engineer with experience in the games industry.  This role requires a high level of ownership over QA processes and working closely with the development teams to provide and continually improve quality assurance activities. Your primary focus will be creating efficient automated testing infrastructure that your teams can rely on to continually raise the bar on our game quality and improve our player’s experiences. The role will be directly integrated and working side-by-side with the development teams on a daily basis.

Responsibilities

• Develop and execute test plans to ensure our mobile games are fully tested for functional and visual defects
• Develop automated tests and supporting infrastructure
• Work closely with development teams to find and address regression issues quickly
• Perform functional testing during each release cycle to validate new features
• Track and prioritize issues using a bug database
• Work closely with our player support teams to investigate reported issues
• Create, monitor and report on game quality metrics

Required skills

• 3+ years of QA functionality testing experience in the game industry.  Mobile experience is a plus.
• 1+ years experience with test automation
• Experience with high-level programming languages such as C#
• Experience with scripting languages such as Javascript or bash
• Experience with scripting automated tests using C# or Unity tools.  Other mobile tools such as Appium/Selenium or Puppeteer a plus.
• Demonstrable ability to create test plans and strategies for complex features and systems
• Familiarity with automated build and CI systems
• Experience working with issue trackers such as JIRA
• Ability to communicate clearly
• Experience with Agile software development
• Must be legally allowed to work in Canada

About Kano

Bootstrapped in 2008, we have been a profitable and growing game studio for over a decade. With hits like Free Rider HD and Mob Wars LCN (Top 100 grossing app on Facebook), and our recently announced FUBAR: Just Give’r, we hope to contribute to the world by connecting people through play.

Locally owned and headquartered in downtown Victoria, BC, we believe in giving small teams of talented people challenging problems and getting out of their way. That’s why we look for the best and brightest to join our team; people who have talent, vision, and commitment.

Check out this article If you’d like to get some insight into our hiring process, our employee manual to understand how and why we do things the way we do, and this fun little video for an intro to the team!

• 2020 Great Place to Work – Best Workplaces in Canada – Less than 100 Employees
• 2019 Great Place to Work – British Columbia
• 2019 VIATEC Employer of the Year – Finalist
• 2018 VIATEC Company of the Year (11-49 Employees) – Winner
• 2018 VIATEC Employer of the Year – Finalist
• 2017 VIATEC Company of the Year (11-49 employees) – Finalist
• 2014 VIATEC Employer of the Year – Winner
• A results-driven company with a compassionate culture
• Health, dental and vision benefits
• Uncapped profit share program
• Opportunity to work on game projects that are enjoyed by millions of players worldwide!
• Ability to make a difference. Have an idea? Talk directly with leadership about it instead of running through layers of bureaucracy
• This position is open to remote applicants. Priority will be given to those who reside in the province of BC

*Kano is an equal opportunity employer and considers qualified applicants without regard to race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, genetic information, national origin, age, disability, medical condition, religion, marital status or veteran status, or any other basis protected by law*

Interested? Apply now.

Whether you’re just starting out, looking for something new, or just seeing what’s out there, the Gamasutra Job Board is the place where game developers move ahead in their careers.

Gamasutra’s Job Board is the most diverse, most active, and most established board of its kind in the video game industry, serving companies of all sizes, from indie to triple-A.

Looking for a new job? Get started here. Are you a recruiter looking for talent? Post jobs here.

Swedish indie game developer, Bertil Hörberg – best known for his action platform series Gunman Clive and in more recent times Mechstermination Force – has officially announced a new “classic” style beat ’em up game launching on Nintendo Switch on 17th September.

Introducing Super Punch Patrol. Hörberg says it’s a “small game, developed mostly as a solo project during quarantine”. It’ll set players back $4.99 / € 4.99 (or your regional equivalent) and the file size is around 130 MB. The visuals, as you can see, draw inspiration from Gunman Clive, the music has been composed by Bertil’s brother, Arne Hörberg, and the sound design was done by Vile Hartman.

As shown in the trailer, there’ll be three characters to play as, two-player local co-op and even unlockable costumes. The game runs at 60 fps, displays at 1080p docked, and 720p in handheld mode. Here’s the back story:

In the year 202X crime and violence dominate the streets of Gravy City. The evil crime syndicate E.C.S. rules the city and controls most of the government and police force; only a handful officers remain unbent by corruption.

Police Chief Anders Punch decides to take desperate measures to clean up the streets. Together with his most trusted officers, Nils and Selma Snyting, he sets out to defeat the E.C.S. with only their fists.

Will you be taking to the streets later this month? Leave a comment down below.

To sort and return a Python list in a single line of code, use the sorted(list) method that returns a new list of sorted elements. It copies only the references to the original elements so the returned list is not a deep but a shallow copy.

Let’s dive into the challenge to learn about more details and alternatives. Everything is not always simple. By studying the different methods that solves this, you’ll become a better coder!

Problem: Given a list of comparable objects such as integers or floats. Is there a way to sort the list and return the sorted list in a single line of Python code?

Example: Say, you’ve got the following list.

a = [4, 2, 1, 3]

You want to sort this list and return the result in a single line. If you use the list.sort() method, the return value is None:

print(a.sort())

# None

The return value of the list.sort() method is None, but many coders expect it to be the sorted list. So they’re surprised finding out that their variables contain the None type rather than a sorted list.

However, returning None makes perfect sense for the list.sort() method. Why? Because you call the method on a list object and it modifies this exact list object. It doesn’t create a new list—there won’t be a new list object in memory.

So, how to sort and return a list in a single line of Python code? As a rule of thumb, there are always multiple ways to accomplish the same thing in Python. Let’s dive into the different ways to accomplish this!

Here’s a quick overview of the methods addressed in this article:

Exercise: Change the list to be sorted by adding negative floats. Does it still work?

You’ll now learn more about each of the methods.

Method 1: sorted()

The easiest way to accomplish this task is to call Python’s built-in sorted() function that takes an iterable and returns a new list with sorted elements.

a = [4, 2, 1, 3] # Method 1: sorted()

print(sorted(a))

The sorted() function generates a new sorted list that is put into the print() function that prints the sorted list to the shell. The output is the sorted list:

[1, 2, 3, 4]

This method is the most Pythonic one. But are there alternatives?

Method 2: list.sort() + Ternary Operator

The sorted() method leaves the original list unchanged. But what if you want to sort the original list and get this original list as an output that you can assign to a variable?

The answer is simple: use a combination of the list.sort() method and the ternary operator!

a = [4, 2, 1, 3] # Method 2: list.sort() + ternary

print(a if a.sort() else a)

# [1, 2, 3, 4]

You need to understand two concepts: (1) list.sort() and (2) the ternary operator:

1. The list.sort() method sorts the list elements in place in an ascending manner. To customize the default sorting behavior, use the optional key argument by passing a function that returns a comparable value for each element in the list.
2. The ternary operator x if c else y consists of three operands x, c, and y. It returns x if the Boolean expression c evaluates to True. Otherwise, if the expression c evaluates to False, the ternary operator returns the alternative y.

The beautiful thing is that the one-liner print(a if a.sort() else a) modifies the original list and returns it right away. How does it do this?

Explanation: First, the a.sort() method is called to check which “branch” of the ternary operator should be visited. The return value of a.sort() will always be None. The None value is automatically converted to the Boolean False. Thus, the ternary operator always returns the list object referred to by variable a.

Note that the only purpose of the ternary operator is to make sure to call the a.sort() method before returning the value a—to make sure it is sorted!

If you print the original list to the shell, you’ll see that it is now sorted:

>>> print(a)

[1, 2, 3, 4]

Method 3: Combining Multiple Statements in a Single Line with Semicolon

An alternative is chaining the statements with a semicolon ; to one-linerize a Python code snippet. This strategy works with flat Python programs without, possible nested, blocks:

a = [4, 2, 1, 3] # Method 3: semicolon

a.sort(); print(a)

# [1, 2, 3, 4]

If you need to sort a Python list and print its return value to the shell—for example because you run this command from the command line or terminal—you can use this excellent strategy.

You can learn more about how to one-linerize any Python program in my following video:

Python One-Liners Book

Python programmers will improve their computer science skills with these useful one-liners.

Python One-Liners will teach you how to read and write “one-liners”: concise statements of useful functionality packed into a single line of code. You’ll learn how to systematically unpack and understand any line of Python code, and write eloquent, powerfully compressed Python like an expert.

The book’s five chapters cover tips and tricks, regular expressions, machine learning, core data science topics, and useful algorithms. Detailed explanations of one-liners introduce key computer science concepts and boost your coding and analytical skills. You’ll learn about advanced Python features such as list comprehension, slicing, lambda functions, regular expressions, map and reduce functions, and slice assignments. You’ll also learn how to:

•  Leverage data structures to solve real-world problems, like using Boolean indexing to find cities with above-average pollution
•  Use NumPy basics such as array, shape, axis, type, broadcasting, advanced indexing, slicing, sorting, searching, aggregating, and statistics
•  Calculate basic statistics of multidimensional data arrays and the K-Means algorithms for unsupervised learning
•  Create more advanced regular expressions using grouping and named groups, negative lookaheads, escaped characters, whitespaces, character sets (and negative characters sets), and greedy/nongreedy operators
•  Understand a wide range of computer science topics, including anagrams, palindromes, supersets, permutations, factorials, prime numbers, Fibonacci numbers, obfuscation, searching, and algorithmic sorting

By the end of the book, you’ll know how to write Python at its most refined, and create concise, beautiful pieces of “Python art” in merely a single line.

Get your Python One-Liners Now!!

At the Kamla Nehru Public School (KNPS) in Punjab’s Chak Hakim village, the teachers all tend to wear sports shoes. “Forget about fancy footwear,” says Charu Chhabra, the vice principal, with a chuckle. “When you have a principal who likes to run everywhere, you have to keep up too.” She is talking about Paramjeet Kaur Dhillon, who has led the sprawling institution with about 1,600 students since its founding in April 2007, when it had just six rooms and a strength of 68. Dhillon’s zeal to keep pace with the changing times is infectious, say her colleagues, and it is what has allowed them to swiftly respond to the pandemic. Together, they designed and rolled out a remote learning program as early as April, well before schools in urban settings had even grasped the new reality.

For the moment, the principal’s famous speedy gait is limited to her home, but she stops by in the various virtual classrooms every day. Her students—who come from 65 farming villages around the city of Phagwara in Punjab—log in over smartphones, tablets, and laptops with recently upgraded internet data plans. Classes typically last for six hours and they are so engaging, says Satinder Kaur, mother of a Grade 6 student, that her son actually misses studying on weekends and holidays. Over e-mail and instant messaging, schools from Delhi and Pune have asked the first movers in online teaching to share their secrets.

Dhillon herself had never seen a desktop until the late 1980s when she was teaching physics at the MGN School in Jalandhar. Members of the staff who wished to operate the fascinating machine were asked to attend lessons after class hours, and Dhillon signed up promptly. For weeks, she would pack extra tiffin boxes for her two small children and set out on a moped to learn the fundamentals of computing. All evening and the next morning, algorithms and binary codes would run through her head. “I dreamed about computers,” she recalls. “I was always eager to update myself so that I could teach my students too.”

Little surprise then that information technology has been front and center of the curriculum at KNPS. Dhillon is often heard saying she does not want students to feel let down, as if she “only given them half a loaf”. As such, they evaluate themselves not only against peers in India but also the world. The school offers kindergarten to Grade 12 education and its students belong mostly to modest households. Several are first-generation learners. Their parents, while not highly literate, raise money abroad by working in factories or driving cabs. It lets them afford electronic devices and schooling for their offspring. “They want their children to have the things which they could not access growing up,” says the principal.

Fluency in the English language and technology are particularly valued by parents in this milieu. An attempt in 2014 to go from bags-to-laptops flopped as many did not have laptops. “We had tried so at least we knew how you fail,” Dhillon remembers. “Nothing can be made mandatory in a village school.” Through a partnership in 2015, KNPS became a Microsoft Showcase school. That is when a softer approach to integrated digital learning with the curriculum began in the form of bring-your-own-devices or BYOD. Some parents had apprehensions about introducing their wards to the Internet early on, but they came around after reassurances. Children shared devices and familiarized themselves with Microsoft’s learning tools such as OneNote for taking notes, Kahoot! for game-based learning, and Sway for making presentations.

Update (Wed 2nd Sep, 2020 01:35 BST): An update on Ubisoft’s news page has officially confirmed Gods & Monsters is now known as Immortals Fenyx Rising.

This open-world action-adventure will be part of the next Ubisoft Forward broadcast taking place on 10th September.

The main show kicks-off at 12:00 PM PDT, when you can see what’s in store for games like Watch Dogs: Legion, Hyper Scape, and Rainbow Six Siege, as well as a much-anticipated update on our new IP, Immortals Fenyx Rising, formerly known as Gods & Monsters, and more yet-to-be revealed surprises. If you still can’t get enough, stick around after the main show to see deep dives into two unreleased titles, exclusive to this edition of Ubisoft Forward.

You’ll be able to tune into the show on ubisoft.com/Forward, YouTube, and Twitch, social media, and hear all the Switch related updates here on Nintendo Life.

Original article (Mon 31st Aug, 2020 07:30 BST): The name of Ubisoft’s upcoming open-world action-adventure game – formerly known as Gods & Monsters – may have been revealed ahead of schedule.

According to a discovery on the Taiwan Digital Game Rating Committee (by Gematsu), the comittee recently classified “Immortals Fenyx Rising” for Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC and it’s believed to be the new title for Gods & Monsters.

Industry analyst Daniel Ahmad has also chimed in:

If this does end up being the name – we’re expecting to hear more about the game at the next Ubisoft Forward broadcast this September. According to Ubisoft’s store pages, this title is apparently launching in 2020 – fingers crossed.

What do you think of this name compared to Gods & Monsters? Are you looking forward to this game? Tell us below.