If the rumours are true, Nintendo likely won’t be putting out a Nintendo Direct presentation in the immediate future. That’s not to say announcements won’t continue to drop, or game-specific Direct videos won’t appear online over the summer, but a full-fat blow-out of a presentation doesn’t appear to be on the cards in the near-term – certainly not of the type we’d normally see in the first half of June, anyway.

The reasons for this are various and entirely understandable. Disruption to the video game industry over the past few months has led to companies across the spectrum adapting and experimenting with new ways of delivering news and debuting games. Nintendo has been a leader in this field for some time; the first of the big three to abandon a stage presentation at E3 in favour of a broadcast that it could control and edit for maximum impact.

And we have to say, dropping big announcements out of the blue has proved an effective, exciting strategy. March’s Nintendo Direct Mini was shadow-dropped without warning, and then there was Paper Mario: The Origami King, which sprung up on our Twitter timeline with such nonchalance that it took a moment to rack our brains and make sure we hadn’t blanked on a previous announcement (hey, we’re all suffering from a touch of lockdown fogginess, no?).

There’s little doubt that random drops of previously unannounced titles can certainly spice up a quiet Thursday afternoon. Yet, there’s still a palpable desire for a real, honest-to-goodness, 45-60 minute ‘proper’ Nintendo Direct. Not an an Indie World Showcase or an Animal Crossing Direct or a Smash fighter deep-dive Direct or Pokémon DLC Direct; a real one, if you will.

It’s not like there aren’t other things to think about in the world right now, but with other platform holders lifting the lid on their plans for the rest of the year, we thought it a good time to look to the future and consider the burning questions we’d most love to see answered by Nintendo over the summer, whether via a bumper Nintendo Direct or a sneaky tweet.

Question 1: How is No More Heroes 3 / Bayonetta 3 / Bravely Default 2 coming along?

First up, an update on the big games–Nintendo-published or otherwise–that we know are coming would be a good start. We’re talking titles like No More Heroes 3, Bayonetta 3 and Bravely Default II.

PlatinumGames’ sequel is a particular mystery in that selection – a game we’ve seen nothing of beyond its initial tease way back in December 2017. Director Hideki Kamiya has insisted multiple times that everything is progressing smoothly behind the scenes, to the point that questions about it are irritating him. Kamiya irritated? Fancy that.

You could easily bundle the following game in with those above, but we feel it deserves special attention…

Question 2: Got a sitrep on Metroid Prime 4?

How many years has it been now? Our perception of time is a bit skewed after the past couple of months, but it is now a whopping three years since Metroid Prime 4‘s initial reveal teaser at E3 2017 and nearly 18 months since Shinya Takahashi announced that all development work to that point had been scrapped and the project would be restarted by series veterans Retro Studios.

The game is still a long way off, but given its history we’d love a little development update. Two years, three years off – we don’t really mind when it arrives, but acknowledgement that Samus is alive and well would perk us up immeasurably.

Question 3: What’s planned for Super Mario Bros.’ 35th anniversary?

Bit of a leading question, this. The rumoured remasters of several Mario games got us dreaming of a ‘Super Mario All-Stars 2‘, and it seems highly likely that a host of 3D favourites will be coming to Switch sooner rather than later. Whatever Nintendo is cooking up, we’re eager to find out more. It can’t just be a collection of Uniqlo t-shirts, right?

Question 4: What’s next for Nintendo Switch Online?

We’ve been getting a slow drip feed of NES and SNES titles added to the online subscription service over the last few months, but Nintendo has stated its intention to continue adding value to the service and we’re wondering what’s coming next. A new exclusive game a la Tetris 99, perhaps? If not Nintendo 64 games, then how about Game Boy or Game Boy Advance titles? Something else entirely?

There’s no time like the present for a new Tetris 99-alike to take the world by storm.

Question 5: When can we stop calling it ‘Breath of the Wild 2’?

We say that we’re not fussed about game-specific Directs, but a Breath of the Wild 2 deep-dive would be most welcome. Or even a shallow-dive, come to think of it.

We’ve watched and dissected that reveal trailer from a year ago over and over, and we’d like to be able to stop calling this direct sequel ‘Breath of the Wild 2’ now. How about The Legend of Zelda: Dungeon Divers? The Legend of Zelda: Calamity’s Return? The Legend of Link: A Zelda to the Past…

Okay, they’re all rubbish. Give us a proper title, Nintendo, and let’s banish ‘BOTW2’ to the depths where it belongs.

Question 6: What can we look forward to in the second half of 2020?

This is probably the most pressing question on many a Nintendo fan’s mind (and likely a few other people besides). It would be an immense understatement to say that 2020 has been a bit of a rotter so far, and that’s one of the reasons so many of us are looking to our favourite creators to provide a little respite and distraction from the challenges of the last few months.

To be fair, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has been a meditative part of our daily routine for many weeks now, but we would welcome something to get excited about in the second half of the year. We understand that Nintendo has projects bubbling away, and that the COVID-19 pandemic has inevitably affected release plans, but a drop of intel on games likely to arrive before Holiday 2020 would lift our spirits no-end.

It needn’t be ‘Super Mario Odyssey 2‘, or the rumoured Pikmin that’s been MIA for years, or an ‘F-ZERO FOR SWITCH’ megaton (although we’d snap up any or all of the above). A little Rhythm Heaven or WarioWare compilation on Switch would be just the ticket. Heck, we’d gladly take a couple of Wii U ports (there are still a fair few to pick from) – just something for Switch owners to pin on their mirrors and think about over the summer months, as opposed to staring into the abyss and having only titles on other platforms to get excited about.

Go on Nintendo, throw us a bone, hmm?

We have other questions, of course, but these are the ones causing the most head-scratching for us at the moment. What would you most like Nintendo to spill the beans about this summer? Let us know your burning questions below.

When words are not enough, only action can bring about change. Taking a stand against systemic racism, injustice, and prejudice is everyone’s responsibility and it begins with education and engagement. Here is a list of suggested organizations that we encourage you to visit and donate to.

We at Bungie are making a commitment to stand up on behalf of our Black community; including our players, developers, fans, and neighbors. Racial injustice surrounds us, and we need to help create positive change.

Bungie is making financial contributions to these organizations and matching the donations made by any of the people on our team. This will not be our only contribution to the fight for justice in our country, and globally. We have a platform, and we plan to use it.

Black Lives Matter.

Dancing Piglins, Workstation changes, and fixes oh my!  We draw ever closer to the Nether Update and so far I have to say the first thing I want to do is find some dancing piglins!

We’ve included some experimental changes to graphics rendering in this snapshot, which might reveal some issues on a small number of older graphics cards.

If do you find any new graphical bugs then please report them to the bug tracker with the make and model of your graphics card as well as which operating system you are using.

• Piglins now sometimes dance in celebration of a completed hunt

• Villager workstation logic changes
• Bells can be hung from the underside of more blocks
• When a villager that was traded with is struck by lightning, the witch it converts to will no longer despawn
• Players can no longer mount another entity when the crouch key is held down

VILLAGER WORKSTATION LOGIC

• Villagers no longer try to work at the same workstation
• The most experienced nearby villager for the profession corresponding to the workstation you add will get the workstation
• Villagers now have to walk to and reach the workstation before they can acquire the profession/work there
• Villagers can no longer claim workstations/professions during raids or night time.
• Villagers will check and make sure their workstation is valid at all times of day as long as they are within 16 blocks of their workstation.

• Added shader support for accessing depth buffer
• Renderer now uses per-pixel blending layers for some transparent elements
• Slightly changed datapack loading to prevent custom datapacks from crashing
• Cached repeated block type lookups and collisions during pathfinding for increased performance
• Minor optimizations in collision detection
• Top-level element in predicate file can now be array (all contents will be ANDed)

DATAPACK LOADING

• If datapack reload fails, changes will not be applied and the game will continue using previous data
• If existing datapacks prevent world from loading, the game will give option to load world in safe mode, which loads only vanilla datapack
• Changes to datapack list are stored only after successful reload
• Added –safeMode option to server to load only with vanilla datapack
• Game will now detect critical datapack issues, like missing required tags and prevent world from being loaded

• MC-667 – Lily pads can be placed intersecting entities
• MC-4065 – Messages/commands sent while in a bed won’t be remembered in sent history
• MC-112131 – Intersecting dungeons: spawner replaced by cobblestone
• MC-118594 – Removal of Log4J2Plugins.dat causing a slowdown of 3 secs on startup while it has to rescan all classes
• MC-120805 – Pig rotation is wrong when you see a player riding them with carrot on a stick
• MC-124812 – Endermen holding a block can despawn
• MC-125006 – Stronghold and dungeon generate over each other
• MC-134755 – All short mobs drown just below the surface of water
• MC-143443 – Redstone dust block states don’t update properly if the wire is broken by a piston
• MC-148893 – Fox spawners do not render the fox inside of the block
• MC-150806 – Multiple villagers are attached to the same profession block
• MC-153787 – Zombie Reinforcements can spawn on glass
• MC-156161 – Some chest loot is randomized across the same seed, unlike before 1.14
• MC-156866 – Villagers level from Apprentice to Journeyman with less experience than shown by XP bar
• MC-157303 – Villagers wake up and seek a new “home” (bed) while living in a 2 high house
• MC-157436 – Player position is constantly reset when clicking with a sword or a trident onto the ground in creative mode
• MC-162340 – World border is rendered behind transparent blocks
• MC-162665 – Food does not drop from a campfire when it is put out with a shovel/water bottle
• MC-163910 – Hand animation sometimes plays for a second time with high ping
• MC-164233 – “Skilled” villagers without job site do not get precedence over unemployed villagers
• MC-165549 – Arm swing animation is still played when drinking an item
• MC-166135 – Bees inside a nest/hive don’t grow up or get their breeding timer reset
• MC-167039 – Right-clicking on a spawner with the same mob spawn egg as in spawner plays hand animation
• MC-169891 – Zombie Reinforcements can spawn in regardless if light level is higher than 9 in nether (hard difficulty)
• MC-171515 – Semi-transparent items don’t render properly in front of semi-transparent blocks
• MC-171553 – Basalt can generate inside Nether fortresses
• MC-172079 – The /clear command output doesn’t count items in the inventory crafting grid
• MC-172142 – Items are invisible while being picked up
• MC-172197 – Nylium is not dropping netherrack when it is broken by pickaxe
• MC-172272 – /clear removes all items from crafting grid regardless of item type
• MC-172479 – Hoglins immediately attack invisible players
• MC-172980 – Light does not propagate across chunk borders properly
• MC-173032 – Fossils can overwrite the stronghold end portal
• MC-173063 – Redstone wire doesn’t update connections going up or down when being placed by commands
• MC-173197 – Zombified Piglin does not hold its arms upwards like a zombie
• MC-173404 – Desync when mounting an entity while sneaking
• MC-173552 – Nether Fossil support islands are sometimes cut off at chunk borders
• MC-174307 – Nether fossil stops basalt pillar
• MC-174325 – Mushrooms or Nether fungi can replace the stem of large nether fungi (trees)
• MC-174692 – Shroomlights, wart blocks and vines can overwrite the stem of large Nether fungi
• MC-174932 – Right-to-left text appears left-to-right after game start until language is changed
• MC-175553 – Piglins don’t drop their inventories when converted to zombified piglins
• MC-176020 – If a player is riding a strider, other players can not see the animation of the strider
• MC-176051 – Glowstone in the offhand sets spawn point and charges respawn anchor at the same time
• MC-176147 – Basalt randomly gets cut off
• MC-176628 – Frost Walker protects player from fire
• MC-177150 – Ticking entity java.lang.IllegalStateException: Tag minecraft:fire used before it was bound
• MC-177265 – Piglin and Zombified Piglin right arm/leg/loincloth textures are identical to the left ones
• MC-177626 – Spruce generation is broken
• MC-177870 – Soul campfire doesn’t deal twice the amount of damage as normal campfire
• MC-177888 – Blackstone can’t be used to repair stone tools and weapons using an anvil
• MC-177962 – Giant fungi can replace waterlogged blocks when growing
• MC-177970 – Player can occasionally be forced into crawling in one block tall spaces
• MC-178003 – Fossils can generate inside of desert temples
• MC-178441 – Endermen don’t avoid the wither’s skull projectiles
• MC-179020 – Jigsaw blocks do not disappear post-gen when structure is spawned using the ‘Generate’ action from an initial jigsaw
• MC-179890 – Fire stops ticking forever if gamerule doFireTick is set to false once
• MC-179909 – 2×2 trees sometimes fail to grow, but if they grow, they always grow on the surface
• MC-180098 – Farmer villagers’ farming behavior is broken
• MC-180771 – Observer not updating when tree grows leaves in front of it
• MC-180877 – Fire does not spread from netherack to other blocks
• MC-181108 – Right-to-left text is displayed left-to-right at all times
• MC-181464 – When a piglin picks up a shield the gear equip sound is infinitely spammed
• MC-181529 – Ctrl + Pick Block no longer copies skull / head NBT data properly
• MC-181555 – When replacing a snow layer with a grass block, podzol or mycelium, the block has the “snowy=true” blockstate
• MC-182666 – Parity issue: Piglins do not have a dancing animation when celebrating their victory
• MC-182888 – Compasses and clocks work like normal in villager trading GUI
• MC-182919 – Horse armour stops rendering if you equip the horse with a saddle by right-clicking
• MC-182967 – Throwing ender pearl whilst mounted doesn’t teleport you
• MC-183275 – Basalt pillars end above the lava in Java Edition but inside of the lava in Bedrock Edition
• MC-183374 – Text on signs stops rendering while still in view
• MC-183496 – Enchantment glint doesn’t render in boat interior
• MC-183718 – Stronghold end portal can be overwritten by ocean ruins
• MC-183808 – “Bee Our Guest” advancement does not trigger when harvesting honey from bee nests
• MC-183860 – Zombie villager converted from villager gets PersistenceRequired depending on whether attacking zombie had it
• MC-184482 – End Gateways don’t generate after defeating the ender dragon
• MC-184609 – Text renders in the wrong order
• MC-184619 – Piglins riding on other entities float
• MC-184629 – Piglins riding on hoglins or other piglins automatically dismount them
• MC-184730 – [Crash] “java.lang.NullPointerException: mouseClicked event handler” – Some Superflat presets crash immediately when trying to generate them
• MC-184740 – Structures generated in previous versions are not recognised as valid structures, causing mobs not to spawn
• MC-184778 – Redstone dust can be toggled between cross and dot in adventure mode
• MC-184936 – Old Minecraft logo in the end poem/credits
• MC-185156 – Worldgen settings are not validated and can cause crashes

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: Malmö, Sweden; applicants residing in European countries welcome

Tired of the constraints of Unity, Unreal and other big engines? Want to be in control and get down into the nitty gritty of engine coding? Come join us at Frictional Games, one of the few companies that still makes their own tech, and get all up in our HPL engine!

Frictional Games is an indie studio best known for Amnesia: The Dark Descent and SOMA. Amnesia: Rebirth is coming out in autumn 2020.

Title: Engine Programmer
Focus: Engine and tools
Type: Full-time, permanent
Last day to apply: 17th of June

What will you work on?

We are looking for an engine programmer. In this position you will have a major part in forming the engine used by our current and upcoming projects. You will also work closely with other members of the tech team and help artists, scripters and designers do their job more efficiently.

While you will be working with all parts of the engine, your main focus will be:

• AI
• GUI
• Gameplay tools
• Scripting backend
• Sound
• Physics

Your day to day tasks will include:

• Designing and developing new features for our engine that will work on PC and console.
• Helping write user-friendly UI for the technology you and others develop.
• Benchmark and optimize performance of the engine and its tools.

What are we looking for?

You have to be a EU/EEA resident to apply.

The person we’re looking for is creative, driven and self-sufficient.

Here are some essential skills we require:

• Well-versed in C++ or similar
• Knowledge in AngelScript, Python, Lua, or similar
• You have worked directly on an engine or tools for a game/hobby project
• Good linear algebra knowledge
• Knowledge in working with a GUI system
• Fluency in English

These will be considered a plus:

• Love for tech and messing with the low level parts of the engine
• Knowledge in OpenGL, Vulkan, or DirectX
• Strong low-level programming skills
• Passion for UX design
• Worked with data oriented design and decoupling
• Experience with third party engines likes PhysX, Wwise, FMod or similar
• Keeps up to date with the latest developments in game tech
• You live in Sweden

Requirements if you are applying for the position remotely and not for the Malmö office:

• A Windows PC that runs AAA games that came out the last few years on high quality.
• A fast and stable internet connection.

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.

If the search phrase “Python Join List Range” brought you here, you’re having most likely one of the following problems:

1. You don’t know how to concatenate two range() iterables, or
2. You want to use .join() to create a string from a range() iterable—but it doesn’t work.

In any case, by reading this article, I hope that you’ll not only answer your question, you’re also become a slightly better (Python) coder by understanding important nuances in the Python programming language.

But let’s first play with some code and get an overview of the two solutions, shall we?

Exercise: Can you accomplish both objectives in a single line of Python code?

Concatenate Two range() Iterables

Problem: How to create a new list by concatenating two range() iterables?

Example: You want to concatenate the following two range() iterables

range(1,5) + range(5,10)

Your expected result is:

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

Developing the Solution: The result of the range(start, stop, step) function is an iterable “range” object:

>>> range(10)

range(0, 10)

>>> type(range(10))

<class 'range'>

Unfortunately, you cannot simply concatenate two range objects because this would cause a TypeError—the + operator is not defined on two range objects:

>>> range(1, 5) + range(5, 10)

Traceback (most recent call last): File "<pyshell#2>", line 1, in <module> range(1, 5) + range(5, 10)

TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'range' and 'range'

Thus, the easiest way to concatenate two range objects is to do the following.

• Convert both range objects to lists using the list(range(...)) function calls.
• Use the list concatenation operator + on the resulting objects.

l = list(range(1, 5)) + list(range(5, 10))

print(l)

# [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

There are other ways to concatenate lists—and a more efficient one is to use the itertools.chain() function.

from itertools import chain

l = chain(range(1, 5), range(5, 10))

print(list(l))

# [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9]

This has the advantage that you work purely on iterables rather than lists. There’s no need to waste computational cycles to create a list object if you need it only to concatenate it to another list object. By avoiding the superfluous list creation, you win in performance (at the costs of adding another library to your code).

You can see how the first version creates multiple list objects in memory in the interactive memory visualizer:

Exercise: How many list objects are there in memory after the code terminates?

Use .join() to Create a String From a range() Iterable

Problem: Given a range object—which is an iterable of integers—how to join all integers into a new string variable?

Example: You have the following range object:

range(10)

You want the following string:

'0123456789'

Solution: To convert a range object to a string, use the string.join() method and pass the generator expression str(x) for x in range(...) to convert each integer to a string value first. This is necessary as the join function expects an iterable of strings and not integers. If you miss this second step, Python will throw a TypeError:

print(''.join(range(10))) '''

Traceback (most recent call last): File "C:\Users\xcent\Desktop\code.py", line 2, in <module> print(''.join(range(10)))

TypeError: sequence item 0: expected str instance, int found '''

So, the correct way is to convert each element to a string using the generator expression str(x) for x in range(...) inside the join(...) argument list. Here’s the correct code that joins together all integers in a range object in the most Pyhtonic way:

print(''.join(str(x) for x in range(10))) '0123456789'

You can use different delimiter strings if you need to:

print('-'.join(str(x) for x in range(10))) '0-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9'

Related articles:

• Python Lists [Ultimate Guide]
• Python Join [Ultimate Guide]
• Python Generator Expressions and List Comprehension

Where to Go From Here?

Enough theory, let’s get some practice!

To become successful in coding, you need to get out there and solve real problems for real people. That’s how you can become a six-figure earner easily. And that’s how you polish the skills you really need in practice. After all, what’s the use of learning theory that nobody ever needs?

Practice projects is how you sharpen your saw in coding!

Do you want to become a code master by focusing on practical code projects that actually earn you money and solve problems for people?

Then become a Python freelance developer! It’s the best way of approaching the task of improving your Python skills—even if you are a complete beginner.

Join my free webinar “How to Build Your High-Income Skill Python” and watch how I grew my coding business online and how you can, too—from the comfort of your own home.

Join the free webinar now!

There are plenty of serious football games out there these days, and actually, there are plenty of football games trying to do the opposite, too, but none seem to go quite as far in the opposite direction as Behold the Kickmen: Ultimate Football Edition.

According to its official description, Behold the Kickmen is “a football game made by someone who has no understanding of, or interest in” the sport. Players start at the very bottom of the Big Boring Football Spreadsheet, ‘doing goals’ to make their way up to the big time.

In truth, the arcade-style football itself looks pretty entertaining – especially considering the game’s designer couldn’t care less about the sport. If you haven’t already, make sure to check out the trailer above.

BEHOLD THE KICKMEN started as a silly Twitter joke, and evolved like a beautiful flower into the year’s least-exciting and mostly-incorrect Football Simulation. It’s football, as seen through the eyes of someone with no understanding of, or interest in, the Laws of Football.

Start at the bottom of the Big Boring British Football Spreadsheet system and grind your way up, gruelling match after gruelling match, to become the best at the football that anyone’s ever seen, and win the World Cup for your mantelpiece.

FEATURES: Kicking, Passing, Tackling, Squad Management and Doing Goals over and over. There’s even a full Story mode, crammed with overblown melodrama and inane decisions to be made.

It’s launching on Switch very soon indeed – on the 18th June, in fact – so you’ll be able to check it out yourself then. It’s received ‘very positive’ user reviews on Steam since it first launched there back in 2017.

If you’re after some lighthearted footie action, this could well be a winner. Let us know if you’ll be giving this one a go with a comment below.