It looks like all of the Windows File Explorer, MacOS Finder, GNOME Files (nee Nautilus), and KDE Dolphin can. I suspect that that covers the overwhelming majority of users.

Don’t kink-shame.

The first case is the most-likely for most people, and the simplest to do. Most directory browsers do support numeric sorting.

In the second case, I provided a Perl program in another comment in the thread that provides a generic way to do this with one command for nearly all files of this sort.

The third case, where human-language stuff needs to be parsed, true enough, doesn’t just have a button to push.

A Perl program to convert the number of digits in the first numeric field that appears in a list of filenames.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
# numberit.pl
# Converts between number formats (number of leading zeros) in numbers in title names
# Usage: <number of digits> filelist

$digits = shift (@ARGV);

if ($digits > -1)
{
    foreach $oldName (@ARGV)
    {
        $newName = $digitValue = $oldName;

        if ($digitValue =~ m/\//) {
          $digitValue =~ m/^(.*\/[^0-9\/]*)([0-9]+)([^\/]*)$/;
          $prefix = $1;
          $postfix = $3;
          if (!defined($prefix)) {
            $prefix = "";
          }

          $digitFormatted = sprintf("%0${digits}d", $2);

        } else {
          $digitValue =~ m/^([^0-9]*)([0-9]+)([^\/]*)$/;
          $prefix = $1;
          $postfix = $3;
          if (!defined($prefix)) {
            $prefix = "";
          }

          $digitFormatted = sprintf("%0${digits}d", $2);


        }

        if ($digitValue) {
          $newName = $prefix . $digitFormatted . $postfix;
          rename($oldName, $newName);
        }
      }
}

Looks something like:

$ touch a1.mp3
$ touch a2.mp3
$ numberit.pl 3 *
$ ls
a001.mp3  a002.mp3
$ numberit.pl 2 *
$ ls
a01.mp3  a02.mp3
$

Assuming that the leading number and period is part of the filename:

1. If the directory-browsing thing supports natural sorting of numbers, you can use that; this will detect numbers within the filename and sort by them. For example, I use emacs’s dired to browse directories and play movies. It can modify the flags passed to ls, and ls supports natural sorting of numbers in filenames with the -v flag. Doing this in dired means C-u s v RET, and the directory will be displayed sorted numerically.

2. If the directory-browsing thing doesn’t support that, rename to a “0”-padded format such that a lexicographic order has the same ordering as numeric order:

    $ for f in *; do
        n="$(printf %04d ${f%%.*})"
        mv "$f" "$(echo $f|sed s/^[0-9]*/$n/)"
    done 
   

   That way,

    1. Episode_One.mp4
   

   will become

    0001. Episode_One.mp4
   

   and so forth, and so software that can only do lexicographic orderings is happy.

If the leading number and period isn’t part of the filename, then we need to parse human-language strings.

$ npm install words-to-numbers

$ for f in *; do
    w="$(echo $f|sed -r "s/^Episode_([^.]*).mp4/\1/")"
    n=$(echo $w|node -e 'wn=require("words-to-numbers"); const l=require("readline").createInterface({input:process.stdin, output:process.stdout, terminal:false}); rl.on("line", l=> {console.log(wn.wordsToNumbers(l));})')
    nf=$(printf %04d $n)
    mv "$f" "$nf. $f"
done

That’ll rename to the format mentioned above in option 2:

Episode_One.mp4

will become

0001. Episode_One.mp4

And lexicographic sorting will work.

We agreed on pro-life/pro-choice rather then having people insist on pro-life/anti-life and pro-choice/anti-choice.

Yeah, that’s also an issue. It should be easier to get to the “advanced Store search”. Most websites have some kind of “advanced search” or “more options” button or dropdown or something next to the search field. On Steam, none of that is accessible for the Store search until you’ve actually done a search, and then it’s exposed with the results. So basically, put your cursor in the “search” field, whack your enter key, and you’ll get a list of all Steam games in the Store along with all the options to do tag searches and whatnot in the right sidebar.

I wish that Steam would just unify all their damn search UIs. Like, take every criteria that they let a user search by all across their client and different parts of their website, and then make one unified UI for it and let a user search using that UI everywhere Steam permits for searches. Steam’s got the most-insanely-fragmented set of search UIs I’ve ever seen on an online service, which all have overlapping sets of functionality.

Among other things:

• Sometimes permitting searching by a Boolean value — but only for one of the values. For example, searching the Store in the Web UI lets you exclude games in your library, but not include only games in your library. This is despite the fact that for tags, there’s a tri-state (Yes, No, Ignore) checkbox (at least now they do…they didn’t used to permit for exclusion there either at one point).

• In the Store search, I can put an upper limit on the price I’m searching for, but not a lower limit.

• It’s easy to pull up a list of games by a particular developer or publisher by clicking on their name in a game’s store page, but then one can’t use the Store search criteria to filter that down, nor can one search by developer or publisher in the Store.

• Just today, I wanted to sort my games in the left-hand Library sidebar of the client by release date. The Steam client can’t do that…but you can create a shelf, another sort of search visible in the Library, sorted by Release Date.

• I can sort by User Rating in the Store, but not in my Library.

• I can sort by Release Date in the Store, but not search by it.

I want to have exactly the same set of search functionality in all locations that I can search. I want to be able to sort by all of those fields, search by all of those fields, and search for any value that a field might have.

That means:

• In the Store search.

• In the Library sidebar.

• “Virtual categories” in the Library sidebar, which are basically “saved” searches that are re-invoked to build the category in the sidebar.

• In Library “shelves”.

• When viewing lists of games available as part of a particular sale or promotion.

• When viewing lists of games from a particular developer or publisher.

• Any other places that I’ve missed.

In 2024 almost 19.000 games were released on Steam. I have yet to find a single title from 2024 worth playing.

looks at my own Steam library, adds a shelf sorted by Release Date, looks for notable games

Satisfactory was released in 2024. It was in Early Access for some time before that. You mentioned that you liked it.

Ditto for Caves of Qud and Nova Drift, games that I’ve played quite a bit — 2024 release following time in Early Access.

Dominions 6 is a pretty involved fantasy strategy game. I haven’t played 6 much, but I’ve played the series a lot in the past, and each game is a pretty direct expansion of prior games. Not sure if that’s up your alley, though. The game turns can get pretty long late-game, as there’s a lot going on.

I liked Balatro, a roguelike deckbuilder, quite a bit.

So, I’ve spent over 2 hours on Steam searching for a nice game to play. But it’s all junk, as far as I’m fed with Steam recommendations.

Steam does many things well, but its recommendations system is one thing that, in my experience, really falls flat on its face (which surprises me, because they have enough information to do what I would think would be fantastic recommendations).

For finding games on Steam, I’ve had the most luck simply sorting by user rating (which is a pretty darn good metric of what I’ll like, in my experience), and then using the tags to look for games in a genre. There has been one or two times that it’s led me astray, but in general, an Overwhelmingly Positive game is something that I’ll get a ton of fun out of, and a low-ranked game will rarely be a lot of fun.

Sometimes I’ve had luck with looking at “similar games” to a game, which are shown on that game’s store page.

But the recommendations queue is just awful, in my experience.

Stellaris, in particular, might be up your alley.

I like Stellaris quite a bit, but I should note that OP mentioned how he didn’t like spending money on DLC. Stellaris follows the typical Paradox approach of creating a lot of DLC to expand and extend the game and its gameplay as long as people are interested in buying it, and winding up with a large game that’ll cost you a lot if you want all the DLC. It may be worthwhile, but if one wants to get all the DLC, it’s gonna add a fair bit to the price.

(checks Steam)

The base game is $40. Buying every available piece of DLC (and it looks like they’re still coming out with more stuff) is another $429.

That being said, I’ve also got a lot of hours of gameplay out of Stellaris, so that does bring the cost-per-hour down quite a lot. But it depends on how much someone is going to play the thing.

Always gonna recommend Project Zomboid.

It does have a sandbox aspect, but much as I want to like the game, I always find myself dropping it and playing Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead instead, which is a similar “zombie survival” genre game, but has vastly more stuff and game mechanics. The big selling point for Project Zomboid, in my book, is the far gentler learning curve and lower barrier to entry; it’s got an adorable tutorial racoon, and doesn’t hit you with too much at once, but…

• The combat in Project Zomboid frustrates me. It’s very simple, not a lot going on, but because a zombie infection is incurable, a single mistake in timing can have catastrophic effects, so it requires no errors.

• The character builds. Project Zomboid has a lot of perks and such. Cataclysm’s got vastly more, plus mutations, bionics, all that stuff.

• I prefer the Cataclysm turn-based play to the Project Zomboid real-time play. I don’t have to wait in the real world for actions to complete, and I can stop and think about what my next move is.

• To try to illustrate the game complexity difference, take firearms as an example. Project Zomboid has six handguns, four shotguns, and four rifles. Each has one type of ammunition. There are ten weapon mods, each of which can be placed on some of those weapons. There is a firearms skill.

  Cataclysm has, to look at just one firearm class and caliber category, 41 rifle-class weapons chambered in .223 (and that’s by default, as chambering can be modified). Each of these can take something like six different classes of weapon mods (replacing the stock, sticking things on the barrel, adding secondary weapons like underbarrel grenade launchers or flamethrowers, etc), multiple fire modes. There are 18 sight mods alone, and it’s possible to have multiple sights on a weapon. Recoil is modeled. Firearms can fit in various types of back/ankle/hip holsters, and draw time and encumbrance is a factor; these also have volume and longest-dimension characteristics, so that a large revolver can’t fit in a small holdout holster. For those .223-caliber rifles alone, there are 13 types of ammunition, including handloads, tracer rounds, armor-piercing rounds, etc. There are 63 different calibers of weapons. Energy weapons, flamethrower/incendiary weapons, chemical weapons, explosive projectile weapons, flechette weapons, illumination rounds, EMP weapons. There are multiple-barrel weapons, including some with barrels in different calibers. You can load specialized ammunition in a specified order. Different types of reloading mechanisms (revolver, tube magazine, detachable magazine, belt) are modeled. Some weapons use compatible magazines, and high-capacity and drum magazines exist. Speedloaders for revolvers exist. Weapons can be installed mounted on vehicles (fired manually from a mount position, or with an automated weapons targeting system installed, set up to fire automatically). NPCs (friendly, and hostile) can be armed with them. Bore fouling is modeled. When you fire a weapon without hearing protection, you’re temporarily deafened to some degree. There are multiple stances one can take when firing those weapons. Some of the game’s martial arts forms permit use of firearms. There are firearm melee modifications, like bayonets. There are skills for different types of weapons. The game has all sorts of exotic real-world firearms (e.g. to pick a random one, the American-180, a submachine gun firing .22 rounds with a 180-round pan magazine); the game probably has more real-world firearms than any other video game out there; my current source tree says that there are 555 in total.

And that’s before getting into stuff like sandbox vehicle design and construction (land, water, air, amphibious), power generation and storage, nutrition (weight and its various effects on physical capabilities, body fat, vitamins, calcium intake), artifacts, magic (if you turn on some of the various magic or psionic mods), bionics, mutations, local weather systems, temperature (air and body; you can set up heaters and air conditioners in vehicles), vision in various spectra, monsters tracking scent/vision/noise, fires and building structural failures, brewing, the ability to recruit NPCs and create faction camps, quests, aliens, disease modeling, various types of parasites, fungal infections, various types of poisonings and envenomings, various types of lights, devices with removable batteries, internal-batteries, USB-style (UPS) charging and power that can run off static, vehicle, bionic, or power stations. Solar/wind/gasoline/diesel/jet fuel/nuclear power generation. Multi-fuel engines. Multiple-engine vehicles (or, with appropriate electronic systems, hybrid vehicles that can automatically toggle an ICE engine to charge a battery to run electric motors). Seatbelts and harnesses (and being ejected from vehicles in crashes). Folding, portable vehicles. Bike and motorcycle racks on cars. Stimulants, depressants, alcohol. Acetylene and electrical welding. Tons of types of food to cook (looks 547 recipes currently available). The thing is just huge.

I liked ksp2

If you’re saying that you liked the (unfinished, abandoned, poorly-rated) Kerbal Space Program 2, you might play the original, which is better-regarded.

On the “factory” side, maybe some colony simulators? Someone else mentioned Rimworld. That’s got a bit of DLC, but I think that even the base game has pretty good value for money. Oxygen Not Included is another colony sim that focuses more on the building/automation/physics side; I think that you’ll get a lot of hours out of that.

Dwarf Fortress is another colony sim, has a freely-available classic version or a commercial graphical build on Steam. Steep learning curve, but lots of mechanics to explore.

I like Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead, though it has a pretty punishing learning curve. Open-world roguelike. It touches on both the RPG (well, not much by way of plot, but in terms of building a character) and the factory (build buildings, faction camps with NPCs, and vehicles) side. You aren’t going to run out of gameplay complexity to explore any time soon on that. Open source and freely-available, though there’s also a commercial build on Steam.

I have not played Elin, the successor to Elona, but it might be worth a look too if you are looking for a game with both a sandbox aspect and RPG aspect.

no matter how much you “love” your AI girlfriend she will never truly love you back because she can’t think or feel, and fundamentally isn’t real.

On one hand, yeah, current generative AIs don’t have anything that approximates that as a mechanism. I would expect that to start being built in the future, though.

Of course, even then, one could always assert that any feelings in any mental model, no matter how sophisticated, aren’t “real”. I think that Dijkstra had a point as to the pointlessness of our arguments about the semantics of mechanisms of the mind, that it’s more-interesting to focus on the outcomes:

“The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.”

— Edsger Dijkstra

Will more VRAM solve the problem of not retaining context?

IIRC — I ran KoboldAI with 24GB of VRAM, so wasn’t super-constrained – there are some limits on the number of tokens that can be sent as a prompt imposed by VRAM, which I did not hit. However, there are also some imposed by the software; you can only increase the number of tokens that get fed in so far, regardless of VRAM. More VRAM does let you use larger, more “knowledgeable” models, as well as putting more layers on a given GPU.

I’m not sure whether those are purely-arbitrary, to try to keep performance reasonable, or if there are other technical issues with very large prompts.

It definitely isn’t capable of keeping the entire previous conversation (once you get one of any length) as an input to generating a new response, though.

EDIT: I think that last I looked at KoboldAI — I haven’t run it recently — the highest token count per prompt one could use was 2048, and this seems to mesh with that:

https://www.reddit.com/r/KoboldAI/comments/yo31hj/can_i_get_some_clarification_on_some_things_that/

The 2048 token limit of KoboldAI is set by pyTorch, and not system memory or vram or the model itself

So basically, each response is being generated looking at a maximum of 2048 words for knowledge about the conversation and your characters and world. Other knowledge has to come from the model, which can be trained on a ton of — for sex chatbots — erotic text and literature, but that’s unchanging; it doesn’t bring any more knowledge as regards your particular conversation or environment or characters that you’ve created.

I’ve run Kobold AI on local hardware, and it has some erotic models. From my fairly quick skim of character.ai’s syntax, I think that KoboldAI has more-powerful options for creating worlds and triggers. KoboldAI can split layers across all available GPUs and your CPU, so if you’ve got the electricity and the power supply and the room cooling and are willing to blow the requisite money on multiple GPUs, you can probably make it respond about as arbitrarily-quickly as you want.

But more-broadly, I’m not particularly impressed with what I’ve seen of sex chatbots in 2025. They have limited ability to use conversation tokens from earlier in the conversation in generating each new message, which means that as a conversation progresses, it increasingly doesn’t take into account content earlier in the conversation. It’s possible to get into loops, or forget facts about characters or the environment that were present earlier in a conversation.

Maybe someone could make some kind of system to try to summarize and condense material from earlier in the conversation or something, but…meh.

As generating pornography goes, I think that image generation is a lot more viable.

EDIT:

KoboldAI has the ability to prefix the current prompt with a given sentence if the prompt contains a prompt term that matches, which permits dumping information about a character into each prompt. For example, one could have a trigger such that “I asked Jessica to go to the store”, one could have a trigger that matches on “Jessica” and contains “Jessica is a 35-year-old policewoman”. That’d permit providing static context about the world. I think that maybe what would need to happen is to have a second automated process trying in the background to summarize and condense information from earlier in the conversation about important prompt words, and then writing new triggers attached to important prompt terms, so that each prompt is sent with a bunch of relevant information. Manually-writing static data to add context faces some fundamental limits.

I can’t imagine running a non-local sex chatbot unless you’ve got a private off-site server somewhere that you’re using. I mean, forget governments, the company operating the thing is going to be harvesting what it can. Do you really want to be sending a log of your sex chats to some company to make whatever money they can with the thing?

EDIT: Well, maybe if they had some kind of subscription service, so an alternate way to make money, and a no-log, no-profile policy.

I’d love to have and collect DRM free titles that last even after a platform is gone,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-DISC

M-DISC (Millennial Disc) is a write-once optical disc technology introduced in 2009 by Millenniata, Inc.[1] and available as DVD and Blu-ray discs.[2]

M-DISC’s design is intended to provide archival media longevity.[3][4] M-Disc claims that properly stored M-DISC DVD recordings will last up to 1000 years.[5] The M-DISC DVD looks like a standard disc, except it is almost transparent with later DVD and BD-R M-Disks having standard and inkjet printable labels.

Those will outlive you.

You can get an M-DISC-capable burner on Amazon for $35, and M-DISC media for about $3/pop, each of which will store 100GB.

GOG is probably more-suited than Steam for this, since it’s aimed around letting you download the installers, and they make a game being DRM-free a selling point and clearly indicate it in their store.

But you can just install a DRM-free Steam game — there are some games that don’t have any form of DRM on Steam, and don’t tie themselves to Steam running or anything, if you’re worried about Steam dying — and then archive and save the directory off somewhere. Might need a bit more effort if you’re on Linux and trying to save copies of Proton-using games, since there’s also a WINEPREFIX directory that needs to be saved. And then you can stuff that on whatever archival media you want.

I’ve copied Caves of Qud to my laptop, which doesn’t have Steam installed, for example. Just requires copying the directory.

Now, that’s not going to work if a game makes use of some kind of DRM, but you specified that you were looking for DRM-free titles, so should be okay on that front.

Fair enough. All that’s contingent on whether you’re up for multiple runs through a game.

So do I go back to end of now or never and change the answer? Do I go back further and leave novigrad when it was in chaos? Even further before the questline began?

If you think that you’d like to play The Witcher 3 more than once, one suggestion:

• The first pass through a game is the only time that you can play the game without foreknowledge. You can never experience that again. If you’re going to play without guidance from a wiki or anything like that, really sit in the main character’s shoes, I’d do it that time. Just don’t worry that much about getting your ideal outcome, because you can do another run. Maybe it’ll give some interesting variety, have you experience something you wouldn’t normally have done, with foreknowledge of the consequences of decisions.

• Then in subsequent runs, you’ve already experienced a number of “spoilers” from your prior runs, and you can try to use that knowledge (as well as knowledge from wikis or forums or whatever) to guide the plot to your desired outcome.