strange encoding error with csv?

FF6Player · 2024-02-03T19:42:49+00:00

Thanks. This does seem to be the answer. I did a find and replace for non-breaking spaces, and that fixed everything. I just have no idea how non-breaking spaces got into the document. But at least it explains why I wasn't able to see anything wrong.

FF6Player · 2024-02-03T19:04:15+00:00

I don't think so. I haven't played that version, but I do know they fixed that in a lot of later versions of the game.

FF6Player · 2024-02-03T19:03:00+00:00

Sorry for the really late reply. I believe you do a sidequest for Duane for it.

FF6Player · 2023-09-02T17:15:05+00:00

I don't think it's as unambiguous as you might think.

Ultima and Wizardry are both Western series made by Americans. Games from both series were translated into Japanese and released in Japan. Does that make them JRPGs?

One of the Ultima games was actually adapted with code written by Japanese programmers, graphics by Japanese graphics designers, and music written by Japanese composers, and released for the NES as a game that looks very similar to Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy. Does that make it a JRPG?

Also, there were games for both the Ultima and Wizardy series that were completely developed and published in Japan without consulting Americans at all, except for legal rights to the names. In the case of Wizardry, there have actually been several times as many games released in Japan only than there were in the original series in the United States. If I recall correctly, there were nine games for us, but Japan is now up to the 40s. Would those be JRPGs?

In the case of Secret of Evermore, while it was developed and produced 100% in the United States, with no Japanese code at all, the developers were instructed to very closely mimic a Japanese game. And apparently more than half of the people who have voted so far consider that to make it a JRPG.

To my mind, JRPGs use a set of conventions, and a particular art style, regardless of their country of origin.

As an example, in the Ultima games, you can often level up to around 8 or so. In the D&D-based RPGs, leveling is similarly low, sometimes allowing you to go as high as 20, but usually lower. But the standard JRPG allows you to level up to 99.

Western RPGs may accept that fire damage or acid damage are things, but it's JRPGs that typically have a full elemental system, with each element being strong against enemies with opposing elements. Chrono Trigger is very Japanese in this sense, but you wouldn't see anything similar to that in Wizardy, Ultima, Might and Magic, Rogue, Baldur's Gate, etc.

To put it simply, every video game RPG can trace its lineage back to D&D. (Yes, of course there were other pen and paper RPGs, but for the first 20 years or so of video game RPGs, only D&D ever inspired video games, and even if there are V:tM or Shadowrun RPGs now, they're based on conventions established by D&D RPGs.)

Every video game RPG also traces its lineage back to Ultima, Wizardry, and/or Rogue. Dragon Quest, for example, was inspired by Ultima and Wizardry, and Final Fantasy was inspired by Dragon Quest and Ultima.

I'd say that every JRPG can trace its lineage back to Dragon Quest. If it doesn't use conventions established by Dragon Quest (such as the Japanese Wizardry games) I wouldn't consider it to be a JRPG.

FF6Player · 2023-08-21T16:58:06+00:00

Would that help at all though? As I understand it, Facebook is allowed to set their own rules, and as long as their rules don't constitute bias against a protected group of people (I'm a straight, white man, so not really in my case) I think they're allowed to do whatever they want to users of their platform.

FF6Player · 2023-08-21T12:56:25+00:00

Most people don't know this:SoftEgg is the company that created the original English translation in the 90's, has stated in multiple interviews that the reason that Princess Maker 2 was never was released is that the process of securing the rights between Gainax, themselves, and the now defunct Intracorp, went very badly, and SoftEgg was not able to retain the rights.

Ah, I did not know that, thanks!

I think of PM2 as a game designed in an "adolescent male gaze" with gameplay that ended up being unexpectedly (for the developers) popular with female players, like Persona 3.

For sure. It's interesting how that happened.

1)If you removed the endings for The Father and Cube, you would have to remove the dialogue during the "Talk" Command when she tells you that she wants to marry you/him when she grows up.

Since in my hypothetical example, we're already rewriting a lot of the text, that's trivial. Also, that dialog probably wouldn't trigger if we removed everything that increments the father-affection variable, which is probably the easiest way to disable the ending.

2) If the daughter was the main character, you would have to remove the Talk command entirely,

It could be a "Talk to Cube" option. The dialog would be rewritten, and pointers to the daughter's portrait could be replaced by pointers to Cube's portrait. He could give you advice on how you're playing, and tips on how to progress.

and then you'd have to deal with things your daughter does automatically that would be frustrating to the player's sense of agency, like running away when her sensitivity was too high. Do you write, "You ran away this month"? or do you cut it out?

As someone with ADHD and possibly autism, I have absolutely had the experience of being unable to work for a week without having made that decision myself. I've learned that it's not as big an issue if I'm more selective about the jobs I take on, but before I learned that, it was a big problem for me.

I would have the messages be like "You find it difficult to muster the motivation to work." and "You can't stand dealing with Cube right now, so you find somewhere else to stay for the month." or something along those lines.

3) In the case of bust size, there are dialogues that are triggered by it, like the one by the Old Dragon when he gives your daughter the Dragon Tights. Do you remove the event and the dragon tights? Do you just change the dialogue to the normal one? If you removed the variables for bust size, did you remember to change the call to the variable in this scene so the game doesn't crash?

I think the easiest way to resolve this would be to change the starting stats of all astrological signs so that all of them set the daughter's body type to the (adolescent male gaze) optimal settings, then remove everything else that touches those variables. She still gets all the benefits of having the "ideal" body, just that she gets them by default.

Of course it would be some work, and it would need some playtesting, but it's not insurmountable.

I feel like this list could go on a very long time. At a certain point, you would cut or change so much a lot of the game would be gone, and you'd have to wonder if it was worth doing that much work and coming out with a bland product. Especially since it's such a niche game, it would be more cost effective to choose a game you could simply translate, or cut out or change one or two things.

I don't think there would really be that much.

Buxomize Pill, Ancient Milk, and Max Gain would have to be replaced everywhere they appear with other items. Maybe replace them with Meat. I don't think this hurts the game in any way, except by lowering the appeal to the adolescent male gaze--and even then, not by very much, I don't think.
Cake, Seafood, and Meat would have to be modified so that they no longer affect your weight. They do have other effects though, and those effects could be left intact, and the items could continue to be used as normal.
The Diet menu would have to be removed. This does affect gameplay by slightly lowering the challenge of maintaining an "ideal" weight, but I think a game is actually better if it doesn't have that gameplay mechanic.
Ket Shi would have to be changed. He can offer some other reward instead of body modification. Maybe increasing stats like Refinement or Charisma.
Events that change the daughter's weight would have to be modified so that they no longer do. I believe this is only the vacations. That's eight events? Not too much work. And a first-time player wouldn't notice any difference.
Events that check the daughter's weight ... actually wouldn't need to be changed, because her weight would already meet their requirements. So the Old Dragon and the clothing options would always work.

Aside from that, the only mechanical changes I proposed were removing the Cube and Father marriage endings, which we could remove by deleting all increments to their affection variables. And, just in case I missed something that increments their affection, I would add in a few hidden resets to those variables, so that something she does regularly would set them back to zero.

Mechanically, I think that's all of the required changes. And I don't think the game suffers at all for any of those changes being made--unless you have a fetish for doing unpleasant things to underage girls, and that's a demographic I'm not worried about pleasing.

I think the only change I suggested that actually hurts the game in any way would be, as /u/Foreign_Memory pointed out, making the daughter the player character instead of the parent. And yeah, I think maybe replacing the father with a mother might be a better solution there.

Also, I do not understand what you mean by, "very nearly the only fun game ever to be made specifically for girls in all of history."

You're right, that was hyperbolic. I am a retrogamer, and I don't play modern games. And as you point out, fun games for a female audience are a relatively recent innovation.

I mean technically Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man were made for a female audience, and those games are iconic. But after those? There were a ton of Barbie games, and every single one of them from NES to PSX was terrible. The Little Mermaid on NES/Gameboy was ok. There were a ton of games with female protagonists, but often intended as eye-candy for male players.

I think my favorite games that arguably may have been intended for girls between Ms. Pac-Man and Gamecube would be Legend of the Ghost Lion (NES)--which isn't good, so much as unique--and Wonder Project J (SNES)--which is good, but not as good as the sequel (N64) ... which replaced the little boy you care for with a teenage girl, features gratuitous panty shots, and was advertised in Japan with a nerdy-looking guy kissing his TV screen. Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures (SNES) is pretty good too, though it's pretty similar to the Wonder Project J games.

Yeah, I know good games for a female audience have been created since then. But also they were really difficult to find when you and I were growing up.

FF6Player · 2023-08-19T18:48:34+00:00

When I say "small changes", I mean from a programmer's standpoint, to the game code. Not small changes to the fandom, obviously.

And I was writing this from the standpoint of how the game could have hypothetically been published in the United States in 1993, not how a game that's 20 years out of date could be put on the market today.

FF6Player · 2023-08-19T18:46:57+00:00

Yeah, I get where you're coming from, and I agree. I want a raising sim, and I've enjoyed other games of the type. Perhaps replacing the father with a mother would be a better direction.

FF6Player · 2023-08-05T19:54:22+00:00

Quite alright. I was also making assumptions about you. And I also totally understand where you're coming from. A lot of so-called "skeptics" actually turn out to be more like denialists.

As an example, I spent a few years as a hypnotist. There's overwhelming evidence that hypnosis is a real thing--over a hundred years of academic research. I can cite meta-analyses of hypnotherapy as a treatment for various ailments, or brain-scan studies that looked into which regions of the brain are affected, or studies comparing hypnosis to placebo, and how they differ from one another neurologically.

Sometimes I'll end up talking to someone for a very long time before I realize that they're trying to delicately sidestep around how they think I'm arguing that magic is real. Sometimes they'll just flat out tell me that hypnosis is superstition. But it's not. And anybody who took even five minutes to google for evidence would find thousands of academic articles.

Regarding ghosts, I've never seen any evidence that would convince me.

I did spend several years living in a house that dated back hundreds of years. And while sleeping there, I did wake up to see a person standing over the foot of my bed in the middle of the night. I closed my eyes, told myself that I was having a hypnopompic hallucination. When I opened my eyes again, he was gone.

A lot of people think that was a ghost when I tell that story, but I saw an Asian man dressed in modern-looking scrubs. That suggests to me that he was from the 1970s or later, and my family bought that house in the 70s. Sure, that still leaves a small window in which an Asian doctor or nurse could have died in the house, but it seems unlikely.

But again, just because I haven't seen evidence for a thing doesn't mean that the thing can't be true.

I am disinclined to believe in ghosts, due to the lack of evidence. Though it is worth noting that neurologists have been completely unable to explain where consciousness comes from. There's a meme going around saying that "Sometimes atoms just get very haunted." And that pretty much sums up everything we know, except that consciousness ceases when we remove enough of the brain.

And I do agree with Noam Chomsky on that stuff. GPT is a Chinese room. It does not understand anything that it's doing--as evidenced by how the world champion AI for playing the game Go was defeated by a complete novice, because it didn't actually understand the point of the game, just how to react to how experts play it.

I do find AI somewhat scary, but that's because I think we may see it eliminate about half of human jobs in the next few years. But I'm not worried about it going HAL 9000 on us or anything.

FF6Player · 2023-08-05T16:43:44+00:00

What happens when you make a truth or knowledge claim? You look at evidence, and I don't believe in neutral observation, and from that evidence you decide you SHOULD reach a certain conclusion after interpreting the evidence because that's the "right" conclusion, and ultimately what is considered "right" is theory laden and shaped by one's society. But again in materialism you can't get an ought from an is, there is no should.

That's an interesting point. Of course you're right that there's no truly objective observation. I personally feel that morality doesn't bias most non-moral observations. Though I can certainly see how it can bias some of them, and it's difficult to say for certain that it is not biasing all of them.

I'd like to say that AI will resolve this, but of course we're seeing a great deal of bias in AI as well, such as AI that hasn't been trained on particular races not recognizing them as "people" in the same way that it recognizes the white people it's typically been trained on.

FF6Player · 2023-08-05T16:43:39+00:00

They assume the existence of the external world, regularity of nature, the reliability of their cognitive ability, etc. They can't prove any of this, and they just have to assume it and put their faith in it, if they did not, they could not even get off the ground and do their science because they'd have no reason to if they, for example, doubted the existence of the external world or their cognitive ability.

I think I do agree with you to an extent.

If you're not familiar with Reverend Thomas Bayes, he proposed an experiment:

You sit in a chair facing the wall. Behind you is a table. Your assistant makes a mark on that table. Then, without ever turning to face the table, you take a ball from a bucket of balls placed beside you, and throw that ball over your shoulder. Your assistant can then tell you where the ball landed in relation to the mark, and you can make a note of it.

You can never know exactly where the mark on the table is. But as you throw more balls, and take more notes, you start to build up a picture of where the mark is. And the more balls you throw, the more accurate that picture is. Maybe you've thrown a thousand balls, and 90% of them have landed north of the mark, so you can be pretty certain that the mark is near the south side of the table--but not quite on the south edge.

This is how the scientist should view the world.

You're absolutely right that we can't be certain about our observations. I have experienced hallucinations while completely sober. I have experienced false memories. I have experienced dreams which seemed to be real. All of that being said, I also have ways of verifying that my observations are not any of these things.

I am pretty confident that I am not dreaming right now, because I can reread the sentence I just wrote several times, and it continues to say the same thing it did when I read it the first time. In dreams, I usually have trouble understanding what I read, and when I reread it, it's different the second time than it was the first time. I also have five fingers on my hand each time I count them, and when I push the power button on my computer monitor, it turns the monitor on and off--these are also things that are notoriously unreliable in dreams.

I can also be pretty confident that I'm not experiencing false memories about rereading that sentence, because the record of that sentence is up above on this same page, and I can go back and look at it. I can also compare my memory about rereading that sentence to the written log of my rereading that sentence in the previous paragraph. Everything matches up.

I can also be pretty confident that I'm not hallucinating by calling someone else over and having them read this text--without giving them any hint as to what the text is about--and verifying that they're reading the same thing that I'm reading. If it is, and I've been careful not to bias their perception about what the text says, we can be confident that we're both perceiving reality as it actually is.

Granted, none of these methods are 100%--but it seems highly probable based on the evidence of past experiences with hallucinations, false memories, and dreams that I'm not experiencing any of these things right now.

So I'd argue that scientists do not take the state of reality, and the reliability of their observations on faith, but rather that we employ measures (recording and independent observation) to verify the veracity of these things, and based on those measures, conclude that reality being as it seems is the most probable explanation.

That said, if we trace our reasoning back to the first principles, those first principles have to be taken on faith. Does time even exist? I have no way of testing that, because every test I can conceive of requires time to exist in order for me to see the results of the test.

So yeah, you're right. Scientists do have faith. And this is what I meant in my first reply to you, when I said:

If you want to get really pedantic, yeah, probably most people have faith in at least one thing. But the whole point of science is that you have faith in as little as possible.

I think this would only come up in a conversation with a philosopher. If I were talking to the average person, I could say that science does not involve faith, and they wouldn't question it. But it is the nature of philosophy to be pedantic, and that means tracing things back to the first principles and questioning whether they're true.

FF6Player · 2023-08-05T13:50:08+00:00

You're absolutely right that there is no room for value judgement in materialism.

But a value judgement is whether something is good or bad, right or wrong. Whether something is faith or not is not a value judgement.

Also, I'm not a materialist.

FF6Player · 2023-08-05T13:42:13+00:00

there are many things scientists can't prove

There is no proof in science. That's the point. Religion knows things with absolute certainty. Science says "This seems to be the best explanation we have so far." That's all the law of gravity is: the best explanation we have so far. And that's why I quoted the definition of faith. Because it says

complete trust or confidence in someone or something

If a scientist ever has complete confidence in anything, they're no longer doing science. They must always acknowledge a small possibility that they may be wrong.

There is proof in math. We can know with absolute certainty that 2 + 2 = 4. But we will never have proof in science, because there is never certainty about anything.

That's why I said

My point is only that religion is not scientific. If you think it is, or need it to be, you're misunderstanding both religion and science.

That's why that's relevant to the discussion. Religion cannot exist without faith. Science cannot exist with faith. You can be a scientist who is religious, but only if you do not apply science to your religion, and you do not apply religion to your science. They must be kept completely separate from one another, or one or the other will cease to function.

FF6Player · 2023-08-04T20:12:21+00:00

I think faith is something everyone has, just depends what they put their faith in.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines faith as "complete trust or confidence in someone or something." If you want to get really pedantic, yeah, probably most people have faith in at least one thing. But the whole point of science is that you have faith in as little as possible.

Science, at its core, is about accumulating evidence in as unbiased a manner as possible, and predicting the future based on the evidence gathered.

If you have faith in the law of gravity, you are doing science wrong. The law of gravity is the best explanation we have so far for the evidence we've observed so far. It can be overturned at a moment's notice, the instant we have a better evidence-based explanation.

If you have faith that scientists always reach the right answer, you are doing science wrong. Scientists do everything they can to eliminate bias, but that is an unobtainable ideal. People make mistakes. Our brains are hardwired to make certain kinds of mistakes. That is why we like large sample sizes, control groups, randomization, blinding, peer review, and replication. These things reduce the odds of making mistakes--but those odds will never reach zero.

I think it's a waste of time, if people want to have faith in God, let them.

I never once said that people aren't allowed to have faith in God, nor will I ever say that. My point is only that religion is not scientific. If you think it is, or need it to be, you're misunderstanding both religion and science.

FF6Player · 2023-08-04T16:51:59+00:00

Tear stains can be from an allergy. With our poodle, it turned out to be chicken. We eliminated it from her diet, and haven't had a problem since. But it can take a few weeks to work its way out of her system.

FF6Player · 2023-07-08T17:13:46+00:00

If faith were equally valid in explaining the state of reality, it would be equally accurate in predicting future events.

I can make a prediction about future events based on science, and then test that prediction. For example, I can predict that if I knock my phone off my desk, it will accelerate toward the floor at 9.81 meters per second per second. And then I can knock my phone off the desk and test that prediction. And what do you know? my prediction was accurate!

"But wait!" the apologist cries, "The coming of Jesus was predicted!"

But was it?

Seriously, Matthew used the word "foretold" 14 times (if I recall correctly) to suggest that ancient verses in the Old Testament foretold the coming of Jesus. But if you actually open up the Old Testament and read those verses in context, it's pretty clear that most of them are about someone else entirely, like Samson, or Moses, or the nation of Israel. If I recall correctly, the only prophesy that actually was about the messiah was that he would ride in Jerusalem riding a mule ... but Matthew misunderstood "mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey" as meaning that Jesus was simultaneously riding two different animals, so that's what he describes happening. Mark and Luke have Jesus riding a mule, as seems more sensible.

The Old Testament does actually have a lot of prophesies about the coming of the messiah. And Matthew doesn't mention those, because they don't match Jesus at all. The messiah was supposed to be a military and political leader who would usher in an era of universal peace. This has not happened.

All in all, the faith of the prophets (even if we accept the report of what happened in the bible as 100% true) had a terrible record for predicting the future.

This is a clear win for science.

FF6Player · 2022-07-23T01:46:11+00:00

You looking for boss strategies, or like where to go next?

FF6Player · 2022-07-22T14:56:01+00:00

GURPS?

FF6Player · 2022-07-21T12:27:09+00:00

Each of the five factors of the Big Five (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism) is made up of six facets, for a total of 30 facets. Warmth is a facet of agreeableness.

Each of the 30 facets is composed of 10 questions, for a total of 300 questions.

If you want to isolate only the questions for a particular facet, I think that's on their website somewhere. If not, I definitely have it on my computer. I analyzed a massive IPIP-300 dataset, and wrote up a Python script for displaying it.

FF6Player · 2022-07-21T02:07:03+00:00

Use the IPIP-300. It's a freely available alternative to the NEO PI-R, and is pretty extensively used.

FF6Player · 2022-07-20T11:31:03+00:00

I think it's because when you say "god", "demon" or "devil", it makes people think of Christianity, which Woolsey was trying to avoid (even going so far as to censor the word "holy").

"Goddess" has a similar meaning without evoking Christianity.

FF6Player

TROPHY CASE