Welcome to Box Art Brawl, the weekly battle between box art variants to find out which lucky region got the best artwork with their retro games. Ready for a change of pace this week? That’s right, we’re getting an attitude, sticking it to the man and throwing out the rule book that’s governed the previous thirty-one brawls. Yes, we’re opening Box Art Brawl up to retro games that didn’t originally launch on Nintendo systems. More on that in a moment.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves! First a recap of last week’s bout between three groups of Ghosts ‘n Goblins across NES and Famicom. Japan managed to mop up 20% of the vote while Europe bagged 32%, but North America was the clear winner. It’s probably down to the plural spectres in its title compared to the singular European Ghost ‘n Goblins. Congratulations to NA, commiserations to the rest.

So then! As you can see, our inaugural non-Nintendo entry brings Mario’s erstwhile platforming rival to the brawl. With the hedgehog currently cleaning up in cinemas around the globe and with Sonic the Hedgehog 2 getting re-released on Switch, he seemed like the perfect choice to take us into the next phase of the series.

Don’t worry, we’re not going all SEGA Life on you! Our new rule is that eligible games must have appeared on a Nintendo platform at some point. So, 1991’s Sonic the Hedgehog is safe territory seeing as Sonic’s 16-bit debut has graced virtually every known platform since the millennium. 2006’s Sonic the Hedgehog, on the other hand, would not be valid. In any way, ever.

Enough talk. Gotta go fast, and all that.

Japan

Before we begin, let’s take a moment to digest these words of wisdom:

Don’t just sit there and waste your precious time. When you want to do something, do it right away. Do it when you can. It’s the only way to live a life without regrets.

Words to live by indeed, and it wasn’t until looking closely at the front cover of Japanese Sonic 1 that we realised the small print at the bottom wasn’t legalese or technical info. Nope, it’s a philosophy that focuses less on going fast and more on seizing the day; not letting opportunities slip through your fingers. It’s a shame the cute little guy was forced to switch gears and turn bratty, but we’ve always preferred silent Sonic. Suppose we’re what you might call… wait for it… Sonic Boom-ers.

Eh?! EH?! Thanks very much, we’re here all week – don’t forget to tip your waitress.

Ahem. Back to the cover, it may have been cheeky for SEGA to claim he was ‘THE MOST FAMOUS HEDGEHOG IN THE WORLD’, but even before his popularity hit the stratosphere, we weren’t exactly overrun with other well-known ‘hogs. As for the rest of the cover, it’s colourful, ’90s and charming. It arguably lacks focus, but it’s hard to divorce nostalgia and familiarity from iconic covers like this. It’s Sonic!

North America

Ah, here we see where the rebellious personality started to develop. While proportionally he’s still very much the recognisable blue hedgehog from the Japanese cover, the North American version for the Genesis adds more ‘tude’ with his raised eyebrow and slightly tapered ear tips. His entire body is more aggressively shaded and he’s got a glint in his eye. Gone is the odd inspirational message, replaced with a simple logo and the shiny gold SEGA Seal of Quality.

Again, it’s a classic and we love the faded art of Green Hill Zone in the background, although the black border has always felt a bit empty. Just us?

Europe

The European version is the one we played as kids, but even if we remove our nostalgia hats for a moment, we personally still think this one is best. The Japanese key art sits slightly off-centre with the background evoking the shapes and energy of the Japanese version, but it also throws in a couple of Sonic’s animal buddies fleeing from Robotnik on the left. It’s subtle, though, and you could easily miss it just by glancing at the game on a store shelf. The star of the game is never in question, but the abstract shapes of the Japanese version is made more interesting here. There’s a bit more context for the eye to explore, though it stops well short of trees and loops.

At the risk of irritating North American readers, the shiny PAL Mega Drive logo is so much sexier than the Genesis equivalent. It looks like it should adorn a beautiful car grille or something. Put it on the Out Run Ferrari in place of the prancing horse! The standard black-grey grid lines occupy the bottom of the box but don’t overwhelm the main image up the sides like the North American variant.

It’s tough! We’re obviously biased, but the list of things we like about this one is simply longer than the others. It’s not up to us, though, is it!

Three quite different yet equally iconic covers to pick from, then. Give your favourite one a click below and then hit the ‘Vote’ button to register your vote. You haven’t got to go fast, although we encourage you not to waste your precious time. It’s the only way to live a life without regrets, you know.

It’s okay, you can slow down now. That’s all for this week, but we’ll be back for another Box Art Brawl; same time, same place.

Important GDC 2020 Update https://t.co/EoReMGtZJJ

— Official_GDC (@Official_GDC) February 29, 2020

Just like me an hour ago, you’re probably sitting in front of your regular expression code, puzzled by a strange error message:

re.error: multiple repeat at position x

How does it arise? Where does it come from? And, most importantly, how can you get rid of it?

This article gives you answers to all of those questions. Alternatively, you can also watch my short explainer video that shows you real quick how to resolve this error:

How Does the Multiple Repeat Error Arise in Python Re?

Python’s regex library re throws the multiple repeat error when you try to stack two regex quantifiers on top of each other. For example, the regex 'a++' will cause the multiple repeat error. You can get rid of this error by avoiding to stack quantifiers on top of each other.

Here’s an example:

>>> import re

>>> re.findall('a++', 'aaaa')

Traceback (most recent call last): File "<pyshell#29>", line 1, in <module> re.findall('a++', 'aaaa') File "C:\Users\xcent\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\lib\re.py", line 223, in findall ...

re.error: multiple repeat at position 2

I have shortened the error message to focus on the relevant parts. In the code, you first import the regex library re. You then use the re.findall(pattern, string) function (see this blog tutorial) to find the pattern 'a++' in the string 'aaaa'.

However, this doesn’t make a lot of sense: what’s the meaning of the pattern a++ anyway?

[Tips] What’s the Source of the Multiple Repeat Error and How to Avoid It?

The error happens if you use the Python regex package re. There are many different reasons for it but all of them have the same source: you stack quantifiers on top of each other.

If you don’t know what a quantifier is, scroll down and read the following subsection where I show you exactly what it is.

Here’s a list of reasons for the error message. Maybe your reason is among them?

• You use the regex pattern 'X++' for any regex expression X. To avoid this error, get rid of one quantifier.
• You use the regex pattern 'X+*' for any regex expression X. To avoid this error, get rid of one quantifier.
• You use the regex pattern 'X**' for any regex expression X. To avoid this error, get rid of one quantifier.
• You use the regex pattern 'X{m,n}*' for any regex expression X and number of repetitions m and n. To avoid this error, get rid of one quantifier.
• You try to match a number of characters '+' and use a second quantifier on top of it such as '+?'. In this case, you should escape the first quantifier symbol '\+'.
• You try to match a number of characters '*' and use a second quantifier on top of it such as '*+'. Avoid this error by escaping the first quantifier symbol '\*'.

Oftentimes, the error appears if you don’t properly escape the special quantifier metacharacters in your regex pattern.

Here’s a StackOverflow post that shows some code where this happened:

...

term = 'lg incite" OR author:"http++www.dealitem.com" OR "for sale'

p = re.compile(term, re.IGNORECASE) ...

I edited the given code snippet to show the important part. The code fails because of a multiple repeat error. Can you see why?

The reason is that the regex 'lg incite" OR author:"http++www.dealitem.com" OR "for sale' contains two plus quantifiers stacked on top of each other in the substring 'http++'. Get rid of those and the code will run again!

Python Regex Quantifiers

The word “quantifier” originates from latin: it’s meaning is quantus = how much / how often.

This is precisely what a regular expression quantifier means: you tell the regex engine how often you want to match a given pattern.

If you think you don’t define any quantifier, you do it implicitly: no quantifier means to match the regular expression exactly once.

So what are the regex quantifiers in Python?

Note that in this tutorial, I assume you have at least a remote idea of what regular expressions actually are. If you haven’t, no problem, check out my detailed regex tutorial on this blog.

You see in the table that the quantifiers ?, *, +, {m}, and {m,n} define how often you repeat the matching of regex A.

Let’s have a look at some examples—one for each quantifier:

>>> import re

>>> re.findall('a?', 'aaaa')

['a', 'a', 'a', 'a', '']

>>> re.findall('a*', 'aaaa')

['aaaa', '']

>>> re.findall('a+', 'aaaa')

['aaaa']

>>> re.findall('a{3}', 'aaaa')

['aaa']

>>> re.findall('a{1,2}', 'aaaa')

['aa', 'aa']

In each line, you try a different quantifier on the same text 'aaaa'. And, interestingly, each line leads to a different output:

• The zero-or-one regex 'a?' matches four times one 'a'. Note that it doesn’t match zero characters if it can avoid doing so.
• The zero-or-more regex 'a*' matches once four 'a's and consumes them. At the end of the string, it can still match the empty string.
• The one-or-more regex 'a+' matches once four 'a's. In contrast to the previous quantifier, it cannot match an empty string.
• The repeating regex 'a{3}' matches up to three 'a's in a single run. It can do so only once.
• The repeating regex 'a{1,2}' matches one or two 'a's. It tries to match as many as possible.

You’ve learned the basic quantifiers of Python regular expressions.

Where to Go From Here?

To summarize, you’ve learned that the multiple repeat error appears whenever you try to stack multiple quantifiers on top of each other. Avoid this and the error message will disappear.

If you want to boost your Python regex skills to the next level, check out my free in-depth regex superpower tutorial (20,000+) words. Or just bookmark the article for later read.

This week at Bungie, Trials is back on the menu.

It’s been an exciting week. You all came together and donated your stockpiles of Fractaline to the ongoing effort to build the new Lighthouse and usher in the return of Trials of Osiris next Season. As soon as the final stage was complete, you were invited to survey the completion of the project and light the beacon. We saw your signal as our cue to release this developer insight video confirming what many have been speculating for a while now.

Subclass Changes

With the return of Trials and a new Season on the way, we’re planning to shake things up with some changes to your Guardian abilities. The Dev team has the details, so I’ll let them do the talking.

Dev Team: Hey, Guardians. Trials is coming back, and the Combat Systems team has been hard at work preparing Destiny 2 for its arrival. We’ve made a number of big changes to the abilities sandbox, and instead of simply dropping them all in the patch notes, we wanted to take this opportunity to offer some transparency for our decision-making process.

Before we begin, we want to give a big shout out to the data scientists here at Bungie. They provide us with mountains of valuable data to sift through—from the win rates of each subclass in each Crucible game mode to the kills-per-minute of each weapon on each platform in each PvE activity. This data allows us to make sure we’re making informed decisions when balancing the game. It allows us to separate the perceived power of abilities, weapons, and armor, from their true, objective power. But The data doesn’t always tell the whole story, and we believe strongly that perceived power and community sentiment are just as important as cold, hard data. Even as Trials returns, we’re committed to maintaining a fun and fair sandbox for both PvP and PvE, and we considered data for all game modes when making adjustments.

Warlock Melee

Warlocks have long been at a disadvantage in melee fights because it takes them slightly longer than Titans and Hunters to recover from making a melee attack. So, next Season, we’re extending the Warlock’s basic melee range by one meter to a total of 5.5 meters. Warlocks will still melee slightly slower than the other classes, but they’ll now have a one-meter advantage. If you can use this window to land the first melee attack in a slap fight, you’ll likely emerge victorious. We feel this is a more interesting solution to melee disparity than homogenizing all of the melee attacks, and we’ll be studying the data as it rolls in to make sure it’s balanced.

Titan Barricades

A Titan’s barricade is incredibly powerful in Trials because you can use it to safely resurrect your fallen teammates. Next Season, we’re creating counters to the barricade while also raising its health from 500hp to 600hp. Barricades will now take extra damage from Special-ammo weapons, anti-barrier weapons, and certain Heavy weapons. This change makes barricades sturdier while giving opposing players the option to use their Special ammo to bring down the barricade more quickly.

The following weapons now do 30% extra damage to Barricades:

• Sniper Rifles
• Grenade Launchers
• Linear Fusion Rifles
• Machine Guns
• Trace Rifles
• Anti-Barrier Weapons

The following weapons now do 60% extra damage to Barricades:

• Shotguns
• Fusion Rifles

You’ll see yellow damage numbers when hitting a barricade with a counter weapon, which always feels good.

One-Shot Abilities

With the introduction of the Hunter’s Weighted Knife in Season of Dawn, each class now has a neutral-game ability that can kill PvP opponents in one hit. We’ve taken a pass at all of the one-shot abilities to tune their risk/reward factor. We’ll warn you that some these changes look extreme on paper, but we made a point to make sure these abilities retained their overall feel.

For the Titan’s three Shoulder Charge abilities, we reduced the auto-targeting angle by 50%. That might sound like a lot, but acrobatic Titans could previously auto-target to make an instant 90-degree turn. We also adjusted the lunge distance to 5.5m for both targeted and untargeted lunges. Targeted lunges were previously 6m, while untargeted lunges were previously 4.5m. These changes make for a more consistent experience while lunging.

For the Hunter’s Weighted Knife, we’ve reduced its tracking significantly and created new tracking tech that will make the knife more faithful to its initial throw trajectory.

As for the Warlock’s Handheld Supernova, we’ve made a number of changes to bring this ability in line with the other one-shot abilities. While part of HHSN’s strength lies in its pairing with the Contraverse Hold Exotic gauntlets (which are also being tuned this Season), our data indicated that even without Contraverse Hold, Handheld Supernova needed to be adjusted. Here are the changes:

• Increased activation time by 0.6 seconds
• Reduced hold time from 3.5 seconds to 2.5 seconds
• Reduced range by 20%
• Tightened horizontal spread of bolts by 25%
• Bolt explosion now does self-damage
• Reduced bolt explosion radius from 3m to 2.5m

In our playtesting, we’ve found that the product of these changes is an ability that is still incredibly strong but now has a risk/reward ratio commensurate with its power. (After all, this thing can vaporize multiple PvP opponents instantly.) There’s even a bit of silver lining here —the tightening of the bolts leads to more concentrated damage at range, improving its viability against Supers. To compensate for this change, other elements of the middle Voidwalker path are being buffed, including the Nova Warp Super, which now has increased damage resistance, a longer duration, and a reduced blink cost.

General Subclass Tuning

We’ve made changes to a number of subclass paths in an effort to tighten the gameplay balance. For example, Stormcaller top, Striker bottom, and Arcstrider bottom have remained dominant in PvP for multiple Seasons now, consistently beating out all other paths in both win-rate and average efficiency. These paths have also ranked among the top PvE paths in terms of kills-per-minute. We’ve adjusted these paths (and others) to bring them closer to the middle of the pack. On the other end of the spectrum, paths such as Voidwalker bottom, Nightstalker bottom, and Striker middle needed some love, so we’ve taken steps to lift them up.

In the spirit of transparency, we take no joy in nerfing the abilities, weapons, and armor that we all love to use. We wish the answer to keeping the game balanced and fresh was always to buff the underperforming elements. But such an approach leads to power creep—the slow and steady increase of the average power of everything in the game—which trivializes the incredible game modes and encounters that the other teams at Bungie work hard to create. After all, as Destiny players ourselves, we go home and play the game too, and we want the game to be as fun and as healthy as possible.

That’s it from us today. You’ll find more details about these changes and more when the patch notes drop in early March.

Oh yeah . . . and Hunter Tripmines are sticky again. Stay sharp, Guardians.

As promised, in addition to these explanations, there will be patch notes when the new Season begins. Those should give you the full illustration of how the game is changing. Until they arrive, we hope you enjoyed this preview.

Twitch Prime Rewards

Pick up a hot ride or the ability to pet a fine feathered friend. Don’t forget, there will be a new set of Twitch Prime Rewards coming up next month too!

---

STONKS ARE UP

END OF THE SEASON

With the Empyrean Foundation restored, the last Triumph to acquire the Savior Seal has been unlocked. Players completing this Seal should claim and equip it to ensure it isn’t removed when Season of Dawn ends on March 10.

Finally, the Player Support team is working on an End of Season article highlighting quests, items, and Triumphs leaving with the transition to Season of the Worthy.

STONK MARKET CLOSING SOON

The community has been questioning if they can continue donating to the Empyrean Foundation. Players will be able to donate their Polarized Fractaline until the Season ends on March 10.

UPCOMING RESOLVED ISSUES

Below is a list of issues that will be resolved when Season of the Worthy and Update 2.8.0 becomes available on March 10:

Put Your Phone Away

It’s about time for another Movie of the Week. The community is always creating cool stuff, and this is the place we highlight the coolest stuff made in video form. Everyone who earns Movie of the Week or an Honorable Mention is taking home a snazzy emblem to show off to all their friends. Let’s get to it.

Movie of the Week: Kitsune!

Honorable Mention: Star Crossed Players

Next week, we’ll share more on what to expect in Season of the Worthy. Only one more TWAB left to go before the new Season!

<3 Cozmo

Today Mojang brings another round of fixes for Beta players on Bedrock.

Remember that only those on Xbox One / Windows 10 / and Android may participate in the Beta builds.  You will not be able to join Realms or non-beta players worlds and you will not be able to open worlds opened in the Beta in earlier/current stable builds of Bedrock.

• Crashes/Performance
  
  • Fixed several crashes that could occur during gameplay
  • Fixed a crash that could sometimes occur when travelling towards -z coordinates
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when adjusting certain JSON strings in behaviour packs
  • Fixed a crash that could sometimes occur after resuming the game on Xbox One
  • Fixed a crash that could occur when using the Character Creator
  • Fixed a crash that could happen if a slime targeted something and lost sight of it

• General
  
  • Fixed an issue that prevented players from being teleported to a nearby chunk that the game thought was too far away
  • Fixed an issue that was preventing chunks from loading in correctly when traveling between dimensions (MCPE-63268)
  • Fixed an issue that prevented Strongholds from generating with libraries and portal rooms (MCPE-63713)
  • Ocean Monuments once again generate with the correct interior structures (MCPE-63523)

• Gameplay
  
  • Players will no longer be teleported underneath the main island when using an End Gateway (MCPE-63284)
  • Fixed an issue that meant Pillager Patrols could spawn in unexpected places (MCPE-58285)
  • Fixed an issue that prevented inventories from being opened after riding a mount (MCPE-63196)

• Mobs
  
  • Tweaked the Iron Golem strolling animation (MCPE-63151)
  • Fixed an issue that prevented Polar Bears, Parrots, Ocelots, and Dolphins from being leashed (MCPE-63095)

• User Interface
  
  • The “Require players to accept resource packs to join” checkbox is now visible again
  • Fixed the ‘Take a tour’ navigation arrows in the Marketplace

• Add-Ons and Scripting
  
  • Entities no longer freeze when a component group containing a navigation component is removed

Play ARK: Survival Evolved for FREE starting now through Monday at 10AM Pacific Time. You can also pickup ARK: Survival Evolved at 80% off the regular price!*

If you already have Steam installed, click here to install or play ARK: Survival Evolved. If you don’t have Steam, you can download it here.

*Discount offer ends March 9th at 10AM Pacific Time