Do you like music? Then Fedora may have just what you’re looking for. This article introduces different music player apps that run on Fedora. You’re covered whether you have an extensive music library, a small one, or none at all. Here are four graphical application and one terminal-based music player that will have you jamming.

Quod Libet

Quod Libet is a complete manager for your large audio library. If you have an extensive audio library that you would like not just listen to, but also manage, Quod Libet might a be a good choice for you.

Quod Libet can import music from multiple locations on your disk, and allows you to edit tags of the audio files — so everything is under your control. As a bonus, there are various plugins available for anything from a simple equalizer to a last.fm sync. You can also search and play music directly from Soundcloud.

Quod Libet works great on HiDPI screens, and is available as an RPM in Fedora or on Flathub in case you run Silverblue. Install it using Gnome Software or the command line:

$ sudo dnf install quodlibet

Audacious

If you like a simple music player that could even look like the legendary Winamp, Audacious might be a good choice for you.

Audacious probably won’t manage all your music at once, but it works great if you like to organize your music as files. You can also export and import playlists without reorganizing the music files themselves.

As a bonus, you can make it look likeWinamp. To make it look the same as on the screenshot above, go to Settings / Appearance, select Winamp Classic Interface at the top, and choose the Refugee skin right below. And Bob’s your uncle!

Audacious is available as an RPM in Fedora, and can be installed using the Gnome Software app or the following command on the terminal:

$ sudo dnf install audacious

Lollypop

Lollypop is a music player that provides great integration with GNOME. If you enjoy how GNOME looks, and would like a music player that’s nicely integrated, Lollypop could be for you.

Apart from nice visual integration with the GNOME Shell, it woks nicely on HiDPI screens, and supports a dark theme.

As a bonus, Lollypop has an integrated cover art downloader, and a so-called Party Mode (the note button at the top-right corner) that selects and plays music automatically for you. It also integrates with online services such as last.fm or libre.fm.

Available as both an RPM in Fedora or a Flathub for your Silverblue workstation, install it using the Gnome Software app or using the terminal:

$ sudo dnf install lollypop

Gradio

What if you don’t own any music, but still like to listen to it? Or you just simply love radio? Then Gradio is here for you.

Gradio is a simple radio player that allows you to search and play internet radio stations. You can find them by country, language, or simply using search. As a bonus, it’s visually integrated into GNOME Shell, works great with HiDPI screens, and has an option for a dark theme.

Gradio is available on Flathub which works with both Fedora Workstation and Silverblue. Install it using the Gnome Software app.

sox

Do you like using the terminal instead, and listening to some music while you work? You don’t have to leave the terminal thanks to sox.

sox is a very simple, terminal-based music player. All you need to do is to run a command such as:

$ play file.mp3

…and sox will play it for you. Apart from individual audio files, sox also supports playlists in the m3u format.

As a bonus, because sox is a terminal-based application, you can run it over ssh. Do you have a home server with speakers attached to it? Or do you want to play music from a different computer? Try using it together with tmux, so you can keep listening even when the session closes.

sox is available in Fedora as an RPM. Install it by running:

$ sudo dnf install sox

Photo by Malte Wingen on Unsplash.

Welcome to the Weekender, your weekly look at the best new games, sales, and updates. This week features new games and sales across five different genres of games… which means there’s something for everyone!

With Gamescom dominating the industry at large these past few days, we thought we’d have a more low-key week: check out our reviews of One More Button and Holedown if you haven’t already. Otherwise, we gave our guides to the Best Rougelikes & Best RPGs on mobile a bit of a dust off. Also, did you hear? Reigns is getting a Game of Thrones spin-off! 

Out Now

One Hour One Life for Mobile (iOS Universal and Android) – Full Review Coming Soon!

One Hour One Life for Mobile is a multiplayer survival game where you have to stave off starvation and the cold and craft what you need to survive. Time passes quickly, and the game occurs over many generations. A year happens in a minute and birth to death in one hour, so there’s no time to waste. Civilization has collapsed, and it is up to you, your descendants, and other players to rebuild it. It’s each generation’s job to make things a bit easier for those to come by crafting necessities and securing superior shelter and equipment.

The game is adapted from the original desktop version of One Hour One Life and it’s a really cool idea. I like how each generation builds on the next, not just for your particular family but for everybody playing the game in aggregate. It’s an intriguing micro/macro dichotomy.

Unfortunately, the controls are too finicky for my liking. You do a lot of swiping in one direction or another and it is easy to do the wrong thing. I found myself making multiple attempts to do basic things and needing to do a fair amount of positioning of my avatar a well. I’d wager it gets better as you get used to it, but I’d prefer that controls weren’t an acquired taste. Also, since the game is online multiplayer you can’t wander away from the app for long. If you do you’ll come back dead (from starvation or having disconnected from the game). This isn’t a huge deal if you can make time for good-sized, uninterrupted play sessions.

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Powerless (iOS Universal)

Interactive fiction meets simulation in Powerless, an “interactive doomsday simulator.” The source of the doom is the sun. A coronal mass ejection is hurtling toward earth and when it hits our atmosphere it will disable electronics the world over. It’s into this new world a host of characters awake, and you are put into their shoes to work through a variety of crisis like delivering a baby or landing a helicopter. It’s a compelling post-apocalyptic world and has an interesting variety of characters you can get to know and develop. Worth a look if you’re into the genre.

Rome: Total War (iOS Universal) (Review)

One of the greatest RTS/turn-based strategy games ever is now available on the iPhone. The app is universal, so you can play on either and share games across them, and the developer videos look great. Unfortunately, the universal part isn’t working on my account for some reason, so I’m unable to provide any impressions or comparisons to iPad. I’ll drop something into next week’s Out Now if I can get it sorted out.  

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Front Armies RTS (iOS Universal and Android) – Full Review Coming Soon!

Front Armies is a premium real-time strategy game with simple graphics and good but not great gameplay. The limitations are it’s not terribly deep and you can only play against the AI or local multiplayer. Still, it’s not a bad game and is relatively inexpensive. 

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Sales

Project Highrise (iOS Universal and Android: $2.99) (Review)

Skyscraper simulator Project Highrise puts you in charge of the growth and management of a building. You decide how to grow—office space, shops and restaurants, hotels, and more—and work to attract visitors and keep your tenants happy by offering the right mix of amenities. It came out earlier this year and is on sale for the first time.

Transistor (iOS Universal: $2.99)

Supergiant’s RPG hit, sci-fi title Transistor, is on sale for $3. You wield a weapon of extraordinary power as you fight through a futuristic city in this action RPG.

Chrono Trigger (iOS Universal & Android: $6.99)

Yet another great example from our list of best RPGs, Square Enix’s classic dungeon-crawler CHRONO TRIGGER is 30% off. 

Seen anything else you liked? Played any of the above? Let us know in the comments!

In this GDC 2018 talk, Monolith Productions’ Chris Hoge describes philosophies and features implemented in the design of both Middle-earth: Shadow of War and its predecessor, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor to give players an antagonistic relationship with their enemies.

Hoge discusses how Middle-earth: Shadow of War expanded on the the nemesis system, used to create long-term relationships between the player and procedurally created orc characters. The design intention was to create orcs that the player loved to hate, and orcs players hated to love.

He also highlights the techniques for making orcs more memorable, designing exceptional moments, and keeping the player-orc relationships going.

It’s an informative talk that’s definitely worth watching, so developers shouldn’t miss the opportunity to do so now that it’s freely available on the official GDC YouTube channel!

In addition to this presentation, the GDC Vault and its accompanying YouTube channel offers numerous other free videos, audio recordings, and slides from many of the recent Game Developers Conference events, and the service offers even more members-only content for GDC Vault subscribers.

Those who purchased All Access passes to recent events like GDC or VRDC already have full access to GDC Vault, and interested parties can apply for the individual subscription via a GDC Vault subscription page. Group subscriptions are also available: game-related schools and development studios who sign up for GDC Vault Studio Subscriptions can receive access for their entire office or company by contacting staff via the GDC Vault group subscription page. Finally, current subscribers with access issues can contact GDC Vault technical support.

Gamasutra and GDC are sibling organizations under parent UBM Americas.

Facebook announced today that it is foregoing its 30 percent share of Instant Games in-app revenue on the Android platform.

In-app purchases became available on Android devices back in May, which allowed developers to build games and integrate ads with an initial rev/share model of 70 percent going to devs and 30 percent going back to Facebook.

However on Android devices, developers also had to share 30 percent of their revenue with Google. In the end, Google took 30 percent of the total, with Facebook taking 30 percent of what was left. That left developers only 49 percent of the total revenue on games they had made.

As explained in a post to the Instant Games Developer Facebook page, the company is removing its revenue share so developers only have to pay Google on Android.

As for the revenue share, Facebook will apply a new model retroactively, allowing developers to run user-acquisition campaigns beginning August 1.

For web versions of Instant Games that are accessed on Facebook.com, Facebook will still collect a 30 percent share on in-app purchases. In the user-acquisition campaigns, developers will pay Facebook for the advertisements, ensuring Facebook can still generate revenue from its platform. 

Warhammer 40,000 returns to Xbox One with Space Hulk: Tactics, an enhanced adaption of the classic turn-based strategy board game, coming October 9, and now available for pre-order on the Microsoft Store. In Space Hulk: Tactics, Marine Terminators face off against merciless alien Genestealers in the tight confines of a space hulk, an ancient amalgamation of starships, smashed together over eons to form a deadly maze and function as a breeding ground for aliens and worse. Traps, locked doors, malfunctioning turrets, and more bar the way.

It was vitally important to us to give you equal options on both sides of the fight in Space Hulk: Tactics. For example, both Terminators and Genestealers have unique, interconnected but separate single-player campaigns that take place on the Forsaken Doom space hulk which has been floating between the stars for years. Both allow you to decide the progress of your squad or swarm, customizing their capabilities and picking their path through the hulk, choosing which missions to undertake.

This was important too for gameplay. The baseline rules of the Space Hulk board game, beloved by us and you since the original release in 1989, were kept in place. Every successful attack is lethal, Terminators keeping Genestealers at bay with their ranged weapons, often doomed if they end up in close combat. We wanted to build upon these rules and see if we could add a few wrinkles to the formula.

We did this with the card system. You start each game with a deck based on which units you have chosen to field, and what you’ve equipped them with. Some elements are unlocked in the campaign as you progress, but everything is available in your first skirmish and multiplayer games. These cards can be played for their effect or converted for unique benefits depending on your side. Terminators get more Action Points, allowing them to move further and do more, while Genestealers can get extra units to spawn onto the field.

In this way, combat is completely asymmetrical. Terminators start with five units and a variety of possible objectives, from simply escaping to activating specific consoles or destroying whole rooms with a flame weapon. The Genestealers are an endless swarm, using their cards to create radar blips that contain as many as three (or as few as zero) individual units, able to emerge whenever you like. Your strategies, tactics, and plans will have to be completely different depending on which side you choose to take on.

Jammed weapons and uncovered angles are deadly to the Terminators, but they are almost unstoppable when working as a full, cooperative squad. Units like the Librarian can use special powers to guarantee kills or make deadly area attacks, while heavy weapon bearers bring extreme firepower – which may explode if pushed too hard.

Cards gave us another opportunity to expand this and give the Genestealers their own special units, not present in the original board game. They have far different powers than the Terminators, to keep their unique identity intact as the more melee and swarm-focused of the two sides. Targeting blips of certain sizes will allow you replace their payload of normal Genestealers with one of these divergent strains – slower and hardier, or capable of passing through vents at frightening speeds, or even the mighty Broodlord which can spawn new Genestealers around it.

We’re very excited to see what players, those who have a history with Space Hulk and new fans, think of both sides when Space Hulk: Tactics arrives on Xbox One. Pre-order today to get ready to fight on October 9, 2018.