I’d imagine it’s a way to sift normal users that might turn into power users, so they stay in Google’s controlled environment. Or, since apparently Google can modify programs in the Play Store if they so desire, maybe it’s a way to increase the chance the user will keep using approved backdoors/tojans/spywares. Either way, I can’t recommend enough for people to use vanilla phones, and have some cheap, second hand one just for stuff you can’t use without Google Play.

Not familiar with any, but in case the sticker creation system from Signal behaves like Telegram or Whatsapp, it is fairly simple to do it, specially stactic ones. Just convert the image to be within the expected canvas size (up to 512px on Telegram; don`t remember on Whatsapp) and in a format it accepts (png and webp usually do the trick). For animated stickers, it usually is a bit more cumbersome / complicated.

Can’t give precise numbers, but at least that I can notice, despite greatly filtering what I check, there’s enough stuff to make running out of stuff to check rather unlikely. Besides, as I started using RSS feeds a lot recently, mainly for federated platforms (not just Lemmy ones), and the reader I use can hide posts marked as read, it’s being a struggle to lower the number of posts to read in comparison to the sum of posts automatically pulled during the set up of each link.

And if they’re so vociferous against gambling, I can’t help but wonder what they’re doing regarding all the gacha on their platform.

Maybe take strolls on a local park or other scenic places, and take inspiration from what you see? Alternatively, maybe make things like short comics and fanarts?

Also, not directly related to your question, but keep your older doodles and drawings. Even if future you comes to find them ugly, it would still show you how much you changed.

Doesn’t appear to have a RSS feed either, and doesn’t seem like Nitter supports it. 😔

Just checked it.

For the empty spaces in the carousel, you could use this:

And the platform_specific_tag is what appears in their links when you open their pages and that, from what I can observe, is specific to where they activate in.

For example, in Jurassic World Evolution and Electrician Simulator, the tag is the epic/ part of the link.

For Overcooked 2 and The Outer Worlds, it’s gog/.

And though it should work without the /, maybe better keep it, as the lack thereof may trigger false positives, like if Legacy of Kain for GOG is available, but you block legacy results in case you want nothing from Legacy Games, you won’t see Legacy of Kain due to its name appearing in the link.

I usually go directly to https://gaming.amazon.com/home?filter=Game so I’ll need to check the all tab too.

Maybe this?

It’s the filter that is the least dependent on div blocks’ structure that I can think, and unless Amazon changes either (or both) their links format and how they list stuff, at most I think you’d need to change the tw-block part every once in a while, as such bigger sites seem to change the divs’ names some times.

Is your drive where you install games automatically mounted by the system? In case something changed in your system, does it have the same path as Steam expects it to? And is the drive a separated storage? And though it may sound like a stupid question, I think it’s important to ask also, are you sure it’s on the storage you think it is?

From a quick look, it is on Bandcamp, for those that would rather have it DRM free (FLAC, MP3 and derivatives):
https://garoad.bandcamp.com/album/va-11-hall-a-prologue-ost-sounds-from-the-future

It’s also on ITunes (only AAC and MP3), but worth noting getting to the store page is a bit cumbersome even with the link:
https://music.apple.com/us/album/va-11-hall-a-prologue-orignal-soundtrack-sounds/1190726465

Iirc, it’s a quote from iCarly, but I remember a character that is the archetype of being dumb and brute saying in awe, after reading a book, that “it’s like a TV in your head”, or something of the sort.

But worth noting places like Lemmy and Mbin support images too.

I think that, while, yes, fragmentation hinders a system, it is also its saving grace, as it also stops a given family of systems from growing into what made the competition problematic.

Taking the Program Files folders as example, they have limited read/write permissions on Windows, so whenever possible, I try to install them onto a folder I make in the root of C:. But more and more, since at the very least Windows XP from what I could observe, Microsoft is training users into using only the users folder, and less and less programs give an option to install elsewhere, installing only on the Program Files folder instead. Meanwhile, on Linux Mint (my distro of choice), if AppImage (my to go medium of programs) isn’t working well, I can always fallback to other means, such APT directly or downloading its .deb files then extracting them, getting from flatpak, compiling it myself, building a custom AppImage, running on a VM or emulator, or in the worst possibility, I make a dual boot between Mint and some other distro.

Also, although there are many package managers, from my experience, they usually work similarly. Some changes in syntax, options and names, but nothing outlandish. It would be, I think, like someone learning a close language to his/her mother tongue. And from experience, you can even organize installations in a more standardized way, although it will take some effort from your part to figure out how, since some adaptations may be needed (java 8 and sdl ptsd intensify).

And lastly, from what I can observe, stuff in Linux more often than not share logic or even methods with a lot other stuff in the system. Dunno if it’s a bit of a bias of someone that’s using Linux for a few years already, but the fragmentation usually feels superficial to me, with distros being more tweaks of the ones they stem from, and major changes being better observable when distros are sufficiently far apart.

If they use Android, perhaps the user could swap the system for a pro-privacy distro and never turn on internet, bluetooth and GPS?

None - all are multi-platform.

Deep Down Dungeons, Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII, Quest of Dungeons and Tyrant’s Blessing are turb-based RPGs, and Tyrant’s Blessing specifically is a tactical RPG.

My recommendations:

• Anodyne (Google Play | Humble Bundle | Humble Widgets)
• Chloe Playtime (Amazon Appstore | Google Play)
• Codemancer (Itchio | Itchio)
• Dandara (Google Play)
• Deep Down Dungeons (Google Play)
• Defense Zone 2 (Amazon Appstore | Google Play)
• Downwell (Google Play)
• Final Fantasy VI (Amazon Appstore | Google Play)
• Final Fantasy VII (Google Play)
• Ittle Dew (Google Play | Humble Bundle | Humble Widgets)
• Jack Quest (Google Play)
• Lost in Dungeon (Google Play | Itchio)
• LYNE (Google Play | Humble Bundle | Humble Widgets | Itchio)
• Metal Slug (Amazon Appstore | Google Play)
• Metal Slug 2 (Amazon Appstore | Google Play)
• Metal Slug 3 (Amazon Appstore | Google Play)
• Metal Slug 4 (Google Play)
• Metal Slug X (Amazon Appstore | Google Play)
• Quest of Dungeons (Amazon Appstore | Google Play | Humble Bundle | Humble Widgets | Itchio)
• Tallowmere (Google Play | Itchio | Steam (free DLC for paid game; comes with an APK))
• The Liar Princess and The Blind Prince (Google Play)
• Tyrant’s Blessing (Google Play)
• VVVVVV (Google Play | Itchio | GitHub (though code is FOSS, assets aren’t and you get from the paid version))

Didn’t quite follow 3DS emulation development, so correct me if I’m wrong, but it would seem mostly done. Only StreetPass and multiplayer seem to be a question mark currently.

Afaik, without power being a concern, pretty much anything until the PS3 that ever got an emulator for it, no matter whichever “host system” (borrowing VM thermology) it got released for, can be emulated on modern computers and systems.

Biggest caveats I can think of would be the options available, and how to run them.

For example, I try to avoid Retroarch when possible, since, to me, too many systems in one interface are a limiting factor, but the only stand-alone emulator that can decently run (imo) the Metal Slug games, of which I love, was some old Windows build of an arcade emulator, so I have to run it within Wine. Similarly, if you wish to run Java Phone games, afaik, you need to run them on a Java Phone emulator for the PSP within PPSSPP.

And on another example, PC-98 emulation is usually accessible only through Retroarch, but it doesn’t seem to be able to mount multiple disks at the same time, and some games need that, so, from what I could find, either you need to figure out how to use DOSBox-X as a PC-98 machine, or you need to figure out how to compile Neko Project II Kai for recent systems.

Old PC games that require Windows’ hardware acceleration and/or 3D libraries may also be problematic to run due to VMs’ development for old system being rather slow. Android also seems to be finicky, with either emulators being full of ads, privacy issues, moody compatibility with proper VM softwares, or taking a comically large space in Android SDK’s in-built emulator.

And progress on emulators for newer systems such as PS Vita, PS4 and Xbox One are slow, progress for Switch appears to be halted thanks to Nintendo, and heard iOS emulation is possible but it is still elusive to me.

So, to sum up, most of the times, even if with varying results, from what I tested and from what I saw being reported, most systems can be run, but may take some case-by-case setting up and testing.

About the tool, thanks. I’ll keep it in mind.

About Heroic, it allows installing several versions of a few forks of Wine, Proton and Proton-GE included, and it’s installed on a folder specific from Heroic, instead of installing on the whole system.