Greetings, programs, and welcome to another links post. The weather is finally beginning to turn here which doesn't necessarily mean cold weather, but days in the low 80s, mid 70s, which is an absolute relief from summer. Just in time for Halloween as well. Last year we unfortunately got rained out - this year it looks to be clear, and I can't wait to walk with my kids (and yes, I'll be in full costume myself). Here are some links for your reading enjoyment. Stay safe out there.
Up first is a stellar post by Leon Adato, HOW TO DEVREL: The Most Un-Natural Act. In his post, he describes how he not only got people to stop by his company booth but to also partake in a challenge that involved setting up a game with monitoring. I can attest to this working because I actually saw this at a conference, was immediately drawn to it, and did the challenge.
I haven't blogged about Eleventy in quite some time, mostly because it "just works" and continues to be awesome. Alex Russel is a recent (I believe) user of Eleventy and shared a bunch of cool tips for how to get the most performance out of it. As an FYI, I found out about this article thanks to the excellent 11tybundle.dev newsletter.
Finally, an older post, but "Dont Sleep on AbortController" is the first blog post on AbortController that really clicked with me. This is a great overview by Artem and credit goes to Stefan Judis for sharing the post on Mastodon.
Last but not least, I'm not sharing a music video for once, but rather a fascinating project called WindowSwap. WindowSwap shows random videos taken from windows around the world. I can't stop watching this.
How does Python 3.14 perform under a few hand-crafted benchmarks? Does the performance of asyncio scale on the free-threaded build? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder’s Weekly articles and projects.
At the top of the show, we have a mountain of release news and Python Enhancement Proposals to cover. Then, we dig into a couple of articles covering the performance of Python 3.14. The first is a benchmarking comparison of the last several Python versions and their variations, including JIT and free-threaded mode. The second explores the changes in 3.14 that enable asyncio to scale on CPython’s free-threaded build.
We also share several other articles and projects from the Python community, including an introduction to NiceGUI, a free-threaded Python library compatibility checker, an exploration of what is “good taste” in software engineering, HTML templating with t‑strings, and a tool for testing Sphinx docs instantly in the browser.
In this video series, you’ll create project documentation from scratch using Sphinx, the de facto standard for Python. You’ll also hook your code repository up to Read the Docs to automatically build and publish your code documentation.
Topics:
00:00:00 – Introduction
00:02:28 – Python 3.12.12, 3.11.14, 3.10.19 and 3.9.24 now available
00:03:08 – Python 3.13.9 is now available
00:03:26 – Python 3.15.0 alpha 1
00:04:02 – PEP 804: An External Dependency Registry and Name Mapping Mechanism
00:04:56 – PEP 806: Mixed Sync/Async Context Managers With Precise Async Marking
00:06:34 – PEP 807: Index Support for Trusted Publishing
Lazy Imports Using wrapt – PEP 810 proposes adding explicit lazy imports to Python, but you can already achieve this with third-party libraries. This post shows you how using wrapt.
Show Links:
Python 3.14 Is Here. How Fast Is It? – A comprehensive deep-dive comparison of performance figures between Python versions and variations, including the JIT and free-threaded mode.
What Is “Good Taste” in Software Engineering? – This opinion piece discusses the difference between skill and taste when writing software. What counts as “clean code” for one person may not be the same for another.
Introducing tdom: HTML Templating With t‑strings – Python 3.14 introduces t-strings, and this article showcases tdom, a new HTML DOM toolkit that takes advantage of them to produce safer output.
In the next lab from my Tiny Systems course, you learn how type inference in ML-like languages works and write your own Hindley-Milner inference algorithm! Watch the videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUFQ… Get the #fsharp code: github.com/tpetricek/ti…
I guess I forgot to mention that I added a bit of enemy behaviorLooks like cooldowns are not actually working, I need to check on that also, looks like dead entities still process their last command instead of just stay still when they die#fsharp #dotnet #gamedev #monogame
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Guide: Microsoft Teams is about to deal a heavy blow to those who like to work from home for peace and quiet. In a new feature update rolling out December 2025, the platform will track a worker's location using the office Wi-Fi, to see whether you're actually there or not. From a boss' perspective, this would eliminate any of that confusion as to where your team actually is. But for those people who have found their own sanctuary of peaceful productivity by working from home, consider this a warning that Teams is about to tattle on you. According to the Microsoft 365 roadmap: "When users connect to their organization's Wi-Fi, Teams will automatically set their work location to reflect the building they are working in." The location of that worker will apparently update automatically upon connecting.
It's set to launch on Windows and macOS, with rollout starting at the end of this year. "This feature will be off by default," notes Microsoft. But "tenant admins will decide whether to enable it and require end-users to opt-in."
Halo Studios has created something special for the 25th anniversary of Halo next year. Halo: Campaign Evolved is a full remake of the original Combat Evolved that launched alongside Microsoft’s first Xbox console in 2001. It has a fully rebuilt campaign with 4K visuals, new weapons and vehicles, a four-player online co-op mode, and brand-new story content.
And it’s all coming to the Xbox Series X / S, PC, and — for the first time — PlayStation 5 in 2026.
I’ve been playing a prerelease demo section of The Silent Cartographer mission this week to get a feel for all the changes. It’s the same level that was used as the demo version of Halo: Combat Evolved for both Mac and PC, but this remade version opens immediately with updated cinematics, improved voice lines, and greatly overhauled visuals and animations.
It looks and feels distinctively Halo, but then I started sprinting toward a rebuilt Warthog that has an extra seat at the rear and I realized there’s a lot going on in Campaign Evolved beyond its Unreal Engine 5-powered visuals.
“We did this work on HaloAnniversary. There were certain things that we weren’t able to achieve at that time, there were certain things we weren’t able to do,” says Greg Hermann, technical director at Halo Studios. “As we were building this out, we didn’t just put a coat of paint over the original cinematics. We ended up revisiting exactly how they were blocked out, how they were sequenced, and how they were put together. We’ve done that across the board.”
Halo Studios even brought in the core voice actors of Combat Evolved to re-record their lines. It was something I noticed immediately as The Silent Cartographer mission loaded in. “This really provides a degree of fidelity that we weren’t able to do for HaloAnniversary,” says Hermann.
The iconic vistas in Halo have also been rebuilt, as well as the alien architecture and environments. It’s really designed to be the ultimate remake of the original campaign that’s both welcoming to new players and also built in a way that respects Bungie’s original creation and story.
“Whenever we make a change, the number one thing is to be true to the original game,” says Dan Gniady, lead game designer at Halo Studios. Gniady joined Halo Studios last year and previously worked on the original releases of Bungie’s Destiny and Destiny 2 titles.
Halo Studios has access to the original source assets and code for Halo, as well as the original storyboards. That’s allowed the team to remaster and remix the music alongside the cinematic change and huge visual upgrades. All of the new content in the game is created in UE5, and it’s layered on top of the systems and code used for the original game to maintain that unique Halo feel.
Campaign Evolved includes three new bonus missions. “It was really important that we preserved the original story as it is, so these missions are meant to be a prequel setup for the main chorus,” says Max Szlagor, studio design director at Halo Studios. “These new missions are going to offer some new opportunities for character interactions between Chief and Johnson.” The missions will include new environments, gameplay, characters, and enemies.
There are also new mechanics and AI behaviors. Perhaps the most obvious is the ability to sprint in the game, which makes everything from combat to moving around missions feel a lot faster. There’s even a new seat in the Warthog, affectionately referred to as the golf cart seat or bumper seat by Halo Studios’ developers. It will be ideal for co-op missions, as someone can now hang off the rear of the Warthog.
Up to four people can play this campaign together online, regardless of what platform they’re on, thanks to crossplay and shared progression across console and PC. There’s also two-player split-screen co-op local play on consoles, just like the original game. “We will make some of the spaces larger, and we also want to make sure we’re authentic to the encounters themselves,” says Szlagor. “So it’s a balancing act between that difficulty tuning and making those encounters the right size for the right space.”
Halo Studios has rebuilt every part of the original game so movement, aiming, and weapons and look and feel like a modern Halo game.
All of the weapons have been remodeled and rebuilt with higher fidelity, so the look, feel, and sound of weapons is far better than what Halo Studios achieved with the remastered versions; the plasma effects from guns will even fully light up the indoor environments. You can also aim down sights with all guns now, and there are nine additional weapons from across the Halo series available in Campaign Evolved — including the ability to pick up an Energy Sword after you’ve killed an Elite. If you’re a fan of the vehicles in Halo, you’ll even be able to hijack enemy ones, so you can pilot a fully drivable Wraith in this campaign.
If you want to amp up the difficultly, Halo Studios is leaning even more on skulls in this remake, the gameplay modifiers from Halo: The Master Chief Collection. There are dozens of skull options in Campaign Evolved, “the most we’ve ever had in a Halo game,” says Szlagor. There are so many that the developers don’t think it will even be possible to complete the game on legendary mode with all skulls turned on. “There’s a lot, so if you can do a true legendary all-skulls-on run, let us know because I’d love to see it,” says Gniady. I’m sure a hardcore Halo fan will find a way next year, though.
Halo Studios has remade entire environments in Campaign Evolved.
The one thing that’s missing from Campaign Evolved is multiplayer.The original game had local multiplayer and maps, but it launched before Xbox Live, so there was never any official online multiplayer. While the PC version added online play, Halo Studios is sticking purely to the campaign element of the original Halo game. The Halo franchise is known for its multiplayer, but this really started with Halo 2. I did ask Microsoft to comment about the lack of multiplayer, but the company refused to discuss it.
Even without multiplayer, Campaign Evolved is a blueprint for future Halo games. “For future titles, we will continue to push the boundaries of technology while ensuring the core Halo gameplay for that game can be seen, felt, heard, and evolved where needed,” says Hermann.
Halo: Campaign Evolved is coming in 2026 to the Xbox Series X / S, PC, and PS5. It’ll be a day one game with Game Pass Ultimate / PC Game Pass, and will also support Xbox Cloud Gaming and Xbox Play Anywhere.
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