Audiocasts/Shows and Videos About Python and UNIX

• Python Bytes: #199 Big news for a very small Python runtime

• Talk Python to Me: #282 pre-commit framework

  Git hook scripts are useful for identifying simple issues before committing your code. Hooks run on every commit to automatically point out issues in code such as trailing whitespace and debug statements.

• Bad Voltage 3×13: The Winter Of Our Content

• [Older] Unearthing the History of Unix: Warner Losh

• OpenBSD for 1.5 Years: Confessions of a Linux Heretic

Games: Helheim Hassle, Python Games, Life is Strange 2 and C-Dogs SDL

• Helheim Hassle is a seriously funny adventure puzzle-platforming mix

  What could take the crown for the funniest Linux game this year, Helheim Hassle released earlier in August and it's a genuine delight to play through. Note: key provided by the developer after the release. Created by Perfectly Paranormal, the same developers who made Manual Samuel, with Helheim Hassle taking place in some weird shared universe they created. You are Bjørn, a pacifist viking who runs away from battle surrounded by those who thirst for a good fight but you end up dying and go to Valhalla.

• Add throwing mechanics to your Python game

  My previous article was meant to be the final article in this series, and it encouraged you to go program your own additions to this game. Many of you did! I got emails asking for help with a common mechanic that I hadn't yet covered: combat. After all, jumping to avoid baddies is one thing, but sometimes it's awfully satisfying to just make them go away. It's common in video games to throw something at your enemies, whether it's a ball of fire, an arrow, a bolt of lightning, or whatever else fits the game. Unlike anything you have programmed for your platformer game in this series so far, throwable items have a time to live. Once you throw an object, it's expected to travel some distance and then disappear. If it's an arrow or something like that, it may disappear when it passes the edge of the screen. If it's a fireball or a bolt of lightning, it might fizzle out after some amount of time. That means each time a throwable item is spawned, a unique measure of its lifespan must also be spawned. To introduce this concept, this article demonstrates how to throw only one item at a time. (In other words, only one throwable item may exist at a time.) On the one hand, this is a game limitation, but on the other hand, it is a game mechanic in itself. Your player won't be able to throw 50 fireballs at once, since you only allow one at a time, so it becomes a challenge for your player to time when they release a fireball to try to hit an enemy. And behind the scenes, this also keeps your code simple. If you want to enable more throwable items at once, challenge yourself after you finish this tutorial by building on the knowledge you gain.

• The first Life is Strange 2 episode is now permanently free

  Have you been on the fence about picking up Life is Strange 2? Well, now you have a much better chance to take a look at it. DONTNOD Entertainment have now made the entire first episode permanently free to grab. "After a tragic incident, brothers Sean and Daniel Diaz run away from home. Fearing the police, and dealing with Daniel's newly manifested telekinetic power – the power to move objects with your mind – the boys decide to travel to their father's hometown of Puerto Lobos in Mexico for safety." youtube video thumbnail

• C-Dogs SDL, the classic run and gun game has a new release

  C-Dogs SDL is something of a classic. A free and open source overhead run-and-gun game that continues being updated and a fresh release is out now. What is it? C-Dogs is the followup to Cyberdogs, a classic from back in 1994 that ended up being really popular. Originally created by Ronny Wester as a freeware DOS game back in 1997, it was later open sourced and now it continues on with it using SDL for more modern platform support. The new C-Dogs SDL 0.9.0 release is a major upgrade, which brings with it a complete Doom campaign filled with secret levels, ammo/health pickups and persistent guns.

Java 15 Reaches General Availability

Oracle has announced that Java 15 is now generally available. The announcement was made in the opening keynote of Oracle Developer Live, an online version of the usual CodeOne and OpenWorld conferences. This is the first release of 'official' Oracle Java following the language’s 25th anniversary in May. Also: Oracle open-sources Java machine learning library