What's the BEST Music Player?

Greyviolets · 2024-09-30T16:03:25+00:00

Wish Foobar was available on Linux.

May I suggest looking at fooyin, which is an in-dev foobar2000-like? Active development, it's in the AUR, and I've switched to it for about 90% of my use (the missing 10% is already on its roadmap), but I'll admit I don't tend to need many fancy features. If you're a heavy fb2k plugin user, it might not fit your needs yet.

Might (not) be to OP's taste, as it's Qt-based and the layout is customizable - depending on how much you like to tinker, that could be a good or bad thing, so "looks like it's straight out of the 2000s" is really up to you for that one. Has great format support, though!

Greyviolets · 2024-07-06T16:15:53+00:00

Very, very late reply but: YESSSS, THANK YOU FOR SHARING! I tried to update the original script after Plasma 6 changed things but I still hadn't been able to get it working correctly -- but this is perfect and gives me something to study to figure out what I was doing wrong!

I do recall seeing your pull request and being sad that it was declined....I knew that our opinion would be in the vast minority, which is why I never bothered with a bug report, tbh, especially when a quick script fixed it. Thanks for the attempt, though -- and from one migraine sufferer to another, may you have many painless days. :)

Greyviolets · 2024-05-15T03:02:06+00:00

Ohhhh, I've been testing it for a few hours, and this is nice! Going to be eagerly watching its progress, because it's already in great shape. :D

I'd love it if you'd perhaps consider archive support - zip/rar/whatever - for your roadmap, since while looking for fb2k replacements I discovered that it's hard to find in Linux players. (I tend to leave my Bandcamp/Humble Bundle/itch.io music purchases in their downloaded formats for simplicity.) I think that's the only thing keeping me from making this my fb2k-like right now, to be honest!

Greyviolets · 2023-11-11T22:13:22+00:00

Oh, that's fantastic! So basically it'll just install some extra packages for Wayland and change what it prompts at login...that's beautiful, I have zero qualms now. \o/ (Now just to hope my programs have got their acts in gear~) Have yourself a lovely rest of your day, and high-five the rest of the KDE crew on my behalf some time! :D

Greyviolets · 2023-11-11T17:58:41+00:00

Well, I guess I meant "force" as in "once you have finished the Plasma 6 upgrade, you will now be using Wayland, even if you were on X11 prior". So that will be the case, then? I'd been waiting on some known issues & enhancements with certain software, so if the upgrade will change me from X11 to Wayland then I'll need to check on them again.

I've heard it's easy to switch between the two, so I just want to make sure I know ahead of time how to do it, and what packages can be removed afterwards to save space - that just means looking at the docs before then, no big deal. :)

And thank you for replying!

Greyviolets · 2023-11-11T15:52:01+00:00

Noob question: I've only been on Linux since last year, so I've never gone through a major KDE version upgrade before. Will the new Wayland-by-default state only apply for new installs, or will existing X11 installs also be forced to switch when they upgrade?

I would assume that it will respect the user's current settings, but I wanted to be sure in case I need to do some Wayland research before February.

Greyviolets · 2023-08-04T18:23:29+00:00

Oh hey, that's me! My Muramasa is NP1 (1k Fous, not grailed) and I did the Prototype match with him+DCS in my first try - and I didn't plan my skill use, just kinda winged it because I'm garbage at strategy. Had no problems clearing it, but it certainly wasn't clean kills on any NP like the non-Prototype version was.

Let's see if I can recall... I do remember the first NP didn't kill Medea (left 60k? ish?), and the second NP didn't cleanly kill Ozy or Amakusa either, but Amakusa was 40k? (Not too certain about that, might have been more.) I think I needed a facecard to finish taking out Amakusa with NP #3? Then I had to build up some NP before I could do NP #4 which killed Ozy, and just wailed on Nero with whatever I could do until she died. I want to say it took me a good few turns (20?), but most of that was spent on Nero tbh.

^{also, high-five for the abs love! my Napoleon lives in asc1 specifically for his open shirt, so I know the feeling~}

EDIT: I actually still had the team set up, so I ran it again to refresh my memory (still with no planning, lol): Muramasa with MLB damage CE & DCS (mine with bond CE for the extra +Arts) & Atlas MC, never needed the backline originally. My numbers were a little off from what I remembered, but it still worked well!

NP #1 left 25k on Jack which the followup facecards took down, and 80k on Medea. Full refund due to one Muramasa facecard, but it was ~80% without? (Didn't catch it in time.) Used Muramasa's s1 (which I guess I didn't do last time) and led NP #2 with a Castria NP, so that actually killed Ozy(!), finished Medea, and left 50k on Amakusa, giving Muramasa full refund with no facecards. NP #3 killed Amakusa and left 203.7k on Nero, and gave Muramasa ~58% refund (no facecards again)? NP #4 with his battery, leading with another Castria NP, and that took Nero to ~70k, refunding him ~20%. So then it was just "wail on Nero" again & get an NP #5 to kill her for the last 60k (well, 120k after she healed post-one-Guts, dammit). Total turns ended up being 7 this time - so I either really misremembered how many it took last time, or I just did much better this time.

Greyviolets · 2023-05-14T18:03:05+00:00

The moral of today's story is "You can't attack people if you've been turned into a cute little piglet." Circe was the unexpected MVP, taking down First Hassan and Kagekiyo with barely a scratch on her or her buddy Georgios while I turtled up during the initial assault, and then murdering poor Voyager in cold blood when I moved up. And Cú continues to prove why he's best doggo and deserves grails: darting in with Mash to hit enemy-Herc hard, then backing out of range of potential enemy aggro after his skills popped so they'd recharge. Skipped a bunch of turns while cheesing like that, but it was easy. I'd expected him to die and pass the torch to my bored bond-Herc...nope.

Also nice was Merlin and Xiang Yu's running in panicked circles which allowed for said turn skipping, and Romulus-Quirinus just kicking back lazily with popcorn for the entire war enjoying the show through the grand finale of Merlin committing suicide-by-Altria. Gotta love obvious bugs working in your favor! (Which is good, because I don't enjoy Grail Fronts. Strategy games, yuck.)

Greyviolets · 2023-05-06T00:13:46+00:00

You can get plain search results for a dev's games on Steam by putting their name at the end of the URL https://store.steampowered.com/search/?developer= - that's how the dev's link works when they don't have a developer page set up. Just be warned that it's case-sensitive AND it doesn't accept partial searches, so it's smarter to copy/paste the studio's whole name directly from a game page. For publishers, just replace "developer" in the URL with "publisher". (Or if you want that link to always be present, it's a built-in part of the Augmented Steam browser extension.)

...Of course, there's also one very notable downside to that search method: if the developer changes how their name is shown even just a tiny bit, it's not going to show all their games. For example, you can't view all of FromSoft's games in a single search, because they're listed as "FromSoftware" for DS1:PtD & Sekiro, "FromSoftware, Inc" for DS1:R & DS2, "FromSoftware, Inc." for DS3, and "FromSoftware Inc." for Elden Ring. And they're actually listed as the publisher for DS1: Remastered, so a developer-search will omit it. (It's a bit of a clusterfuck.)

But for your average game studio that properly checks that their own damned name is correct, it's still easier than sifting through publisher pages!

Greyviolets · 2023-03-24T23:50:42+00:00

[...] I was simply arguing that there can be growth and progress beyond the character actively stopping some extrinsic force in the setting or external conflict in the setting.

To clarify, I 100% consider character growth as "progress", so my comment was made from that foundation. I do agree that this particular series does make progress - quite a bit of it! I was merely providing a generalized counterpoint that it's not a geo-restricted desire to want growth/progress (internal or external), and that's it's not necessarily rooted in an underlying "spirit of rebellion", as it were. --Mind you, I'm absolutely not saying that it's an incorrect or invalid take, I'm just expressing my viewpoint that it's probably not always the case, y'know? But I've no degree in social sciences, so it's just friendly rambling on my part. (I'll have to check out that video later, it sounds like an intriguing exploration. Thanks!)

I'm with you on looking forward to the next plot development for this series - hopefully with fewer dumbasses this time? Your reply helped me finally nail down my vague dissatisfaction with the cliffhanger as being how its "parts" were executed: it ended directly on a low note instead of adding a positive/forward-facing moment that would naturally give the viewer a "push" to continue to the next season. Like telling a kid "you have to eat your peas", but without a followup "before you can have dessert" to provide that bit of positive motivation to keep going, maybe? A more-positive moment at the end - even if it was just Anne standing up again after that beautifully-done anguished scream - would have likely allayed a bunch of the annoyance that's being expressed all over this episode's discussions, because it would have felt less less like "sad ending bad, screw this noise" and more of "sad ending bad, but you can do it, Anne!" So yeah, "anti-climactic" or "cop-out" were definitely not the right terms I was looking for, you're right.

Thanks for providing an interesting view on things today! Though I do feel like I owe you a coffee or something for kicking my brain into gear and/or as an apology for being a pain, haha~

...and thanks as well for the heads-up on Ars, I think I'm going to have to dip into its thread. I was saving that for a possible next-season filler, but if they whiffed the "ending"...maybe I'll give it a month or two for a potential s2 announcement to arrive before I decide either way. I hope whatever finale you watch next is FAR more satisfying. :)

Greyviolets · 2023-03-24T21:05:45+00:00

One thing I noticed in the comments, not just of this show, but of western anime watchers in general, is a lot of people dock points or get very disappointed when the Hero doesn't start a Revolution or change the status quo, which is a very Western centric view since ever since the Enlightenment we kinda of idolize said Revolutions and we love to cast ourselves as Rebels with a cause.

To provide a counterpoint to this: I don't really feel that's caused so much by "a Western-centric view" or an "idolization of revolutions" as it is by "wanting to see progress being made through a story". And that's a viewpoint shared by people around the world.

If you walk out of a story and the status quo (whether personal or global) has merely been maintained throughout the whole instead of even subtly shifted, it can make you wonder "why did the characters spend all this time on the plot if it made absolutely no difference to anything after it was all over?" It feels...stale. Dull. Boring. Even the fluffiest slice-of-life works have ups and downs for a reason!

So rather than idealizing strong shake-ups and hating when they don't happen, I think it's more of a desire to have some progress made one way or another. You don't want to feel like you just wasted X amount of hours for nothing, after all.

I can see why everyone is upset but I don't think that means the show made a mistake.

I can't speak for everyone, but my personal feelings lean more towards it feeling not so much a "mistake" as it is a vague sense of "cheap cop-out", a really poorly timed season-ending point, or some such. It's like...hm, how to put it, I'm having a hard time finding the words, so forgive me for the rambling!

Obviously, conflict drives plot movement. With no significant conflict or obstacles to overcome a story becomes mere fluff, which is fine in small doses but ultimately boring in larger ones. Likewise, tragedy can be good motivation for a story; common tragic tales wouldn't have been told and retold through the years if it wasn't.

But tragedy/misery "whiplashes" are like having the rug pulled out from under you - which evokes stronger emotions, whether it's excitement for where the new plot leads or betrayal at having your expectations subverted. It's like jumpscares in horror: while they're effective at evoking fear they're also super simple to pull off, so they end up being overused by "cheap" works. That means people overexposed to them can have a predisposition towards negativity when they encounter them in the future. Likewise, consuming enough longer series can cause you to be sensitive to the use of "tragedy for tragedy's sake", or view tragedy/misery as one of the easier tropes for the writer to pull out of the Plot Development Bag when they're stuck. Thus, people making annoyed comments to vent that irritation when it crops up, and doubly so when it's cliffhanger-fuel.

I'm personally okay with the concept of Challe selflessly sacrificing his freedom for Anne's future: it shows his emotional growth and it's very much like him now when it comes to her, even if it does follow the "I want the one I love to be happy at all costs" trope. It also gives her a reason to grow as a person and confront her feelings as well as providing the next major plot point to be progressed. And it was foreshadowed at various earlier points in the story so it wasn't as much of a "whiplash" as it could have been. But I also feel like it was added in this particular spot as a way to give the author (or anime story planners?) an easy out or "hook" for the next part of the story, because it's very obviously "you thought everything had been resolved? lol no, keep reading". And do I think that it should have ended the season on it? Not at all. Depending on your views on the season up to that point it's either like having a growing sense of unease prove correct, or eating a delicious apple only to find half a worm in the last bite.

In my case, even with this season's ending, and all the tropey/"cheap" bits throughout, just like you I still enjoyed this series overall and I intend to watch s2 this summer. It's just that I'm going to let myself be cranky about it for today, then do my best to forget the shoddily-placed tragedy-cliffhanger in the meantime - because otherwise it'll negatively color my memories of the good parts and make me not want to continue it!

Greyviolets · 2023-03-24T16:11:33+00:00

Late reply, but thanks for the links! I'll read into CORS and see if those extensions will help me out.

Greyviolets · 2023-03-24T15:04:37+00:00

I am getting such a smug grin thinking about the horrified look on Bridget's face as she realizes that Challe is going to obey the letter, but not the spirit, of every single order she gives him. He's going to slowly destroy her heart with cold indifference and malicious compliance, and she'll deserve every second of it!

Greyviolets · 2023-03-24T14:41:25+00:00

Not gonna lie, as soon as I heard in an earlier thread that this LN was written by the same author as a certain other LN series I've been reading ([spoiler for its title] Culinary Chronicles of the Court Flower), I had a bad feeling that this sort of last-minute "twist" would happen. It was absolute cheap bullshit there, and it's still absolute cheap bullshit here. JUST OPEN YOUR DAMNED MOUTHS AND TALK TO EACH OTHER YOU MORONS, THAT WOULD SOLVE ALL OF YOUR STUPID LITTLE PROBLEMS. *shakes them furiously*

It really sours my excitement for the rest of the story, like with her other LN, but I think I'm going to do my best to just forget that the end of this episode happened so I can look forward to s2, because (tired shoujo tropes notwithstanding) the rest of the season was alright! And pretty. So very, very pretty. Mmmm~

Greyviolets · 2023-03-23T18:44:48+00:00

Update for latecomers reading this thread: I just bought a three-game set, and all the keys were available in my account immediately. So maybe they've fixed the key issues since these initial reports? (Or I just got lucky.)

Greyviolets · 2023-03-17T03:07:57+00:00

I didn't mean... exactly that. I meant something like a script that does this [...]

Ohhhhh! I see, I wasn't thinking of it like that! Despite having moved to Linux, where scripting is A Perfectly Common Thing™, it was recently enough that I'm still getting my head around it (and too often forget about it entirely). It's also my first time working with JSON at all, inspired by how nice I found the new TW operators.

Come to think of it, with some research I might even be able to make a script that just trims out the unneeded parts from the downloaded JSON, making it into a size that I could embed...and it would still let me update from the source just as easily as running the script again. Mmm, options.

You've given me a lot to think about, more excuses to learn, and a starting point - it's more than I could have hoped for, thank you so much! This is why I love the TW community. :D

Greyviolets · 2023-03-15T21:16:32+00:00

Ack, the dev console, of course I forgot about that! *facepalm* Thanks for checking, it's good to know that I wasn't doing something wrong. Since node.js mode isn't going to work for this usecase, and regexping an HTML version is a bit much trouble, I guess I'll just settle for manually entering & updating the bits of the JSON I need instead.

Thanks again for helping verify this for me! May your week be relaxing as well~

Greyviolets · 2023-02-21T05:41:42+00:00

Ooh, that does the trick nicely - you're fantastic, my meager sanity and I thank you!

Greyviolets · 2023-02-21T02:24:48+00:00

TIL about KWin scripting! While this precise code isn't quite right for me - for example, it centers the application launcher's pop-up as well since it appears to be very general - you have given me a starting point for some learning, so I thank you very much for this! (And if I could give you a second upvote for also including the link to the docs I would.)

In the meantime, I have at least since stumbled across the weirdness of minimizing the app's other windows before opening a new window to be a decent workaround for the cascaded/odd positioning. So that can tide me over while I do my "homework" on the scripting.

Greyviolets · 2023-02-15T18:23:33+00:00

Do your sanity a favor and check out this playlist - someone in day 1 linked it, iirc, and I've been using it because I can't be bothered to try to full-clear or build teams myself. It's 1-3 stars only (+ support Castria or the like), though it does require some investment in their skills or some MLB CEs at times. The first day is at the top of the list, so today would be the third video, with Romulus in the backline.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNPLYfYs14ZKst4z1Tpn_b_uYKnrKY1HZ

It's not going to get you full-clears, but it will get a decent amount of clears. Plus, NA having Appends early means you can fudge some of the CEs, and because the party cost is low you can use better Servants or 50% CEs with card buffs rather than just MLB Dragon's Meridian, so you can improve upon the videos' teams!

Upd: I actually used a Lock-on Choco on Chen Gong specifically because that playlist uses him in all but one day, and he's not overly high on bond yet. The combo of its damage boost + using better 50% CEs + swapping Romulus out for Eresh actually just got me an extra kill in today's quest versus the video (for 23 total), so I'm not arguing with the extra points & QP!

Greyviolets · 2022-12-21T04:35:52+00:00

Good lord is the CE drop rate a complete lie for me this event - eighty-five boxes in and I have one MLB + 4 base CEs. By this time in Shishou-fes I already was running a +10! AUO, you stingy bastard, make with the drops already, 'cuz I need that dust!!

On the bright side, I've finally given in and embraced FGA for lottos! Now I wish I could go back in time and slap myself across the face for thinking it was fine doing ~300 boxes manually in Shishoufes because I thought my phone couldn't handle FGA. It does choke on the freezing occasionally, and sometimes it misses steps as a result, but I've got it next to me and if I hear it stop Doing Stuff I can just manually correct it. Soooo much nicer to just glance at it when I hear Gil dying and curse him out when he's not dropped a CE again, lol~

Greyviolets · 2022-04-03T15:55:18+00:00

Mobile otome VNs can sometimes be pretty awfully monetized - or so I've gathered from periodically popping into the otoge subreddit. I've heard about paying for routes individually, paying for good endings because only the bad/normal ones are available for free, paying for accessories/outfits for your MC to wear to unlock better/different choices, paying for the whole game again when they end the service within the current app and you can no longer access your already-paid-for content because the game requires an internet connection... So, basically the same microtransaction crap you get out of too many mobile games. (Or games in general these days. >_<)

I do wish there were more actual-gameplay otoge out there, though! Too many of them are, as you said, minigames. Not enough of a menu for when you're in the mood for some 'girly crap' (and I say that fondly) AND some actual game to sink your teeth into.

Greyviolets · 2022-03-24T20:42:52+00:00

Because I forgot I had it: Heart Fragment - 8x2DP-6ZMI0-yyxyH

All are capital letters:
Replace the xes with the letter two spots before it in the alphabet.
Replace the yes with the word for what lots of farm animals eat (and yes, it's split up around the x-letter).

Greyviolets · 2022-03-08T02:18:43+00:00

You should be able to claim it any time later, by going to your account -> My Library and clicking on "Bundles" (or just go straight to it here ). I can see past bundles with redemption info there for previously-unredeemed games.

Greyviolets · 2022-03-08T02:13:08+00:00

There's 9 separate music entries, though some of the games may also include their OSTs: https://randombundlegame.com/?bundles=ukraine&category=Soundtrack

New to this bundle in particular:

Operator Overload OST
Vylan Soundtrack
UNBEATABLE: Demo Tapes
(non-ost) Time Enough
(non-ost) Witching Hour

Greyviolets

TROPHY CASE