Friday 30 January 2015

Newlife 0.2.6 is now available

Hello everyone! Thanks for playing my game, and if you're new here then I hope you have a great time :)
Newlife 0.2.6 is now available and you can get it using the links on the right-hand side of the blog. As usual saved games & characters from earlier versions won't work with this one.

Because Newlife is a Java game, you need java installed to play it. If you don't have it already, you can get java from http://www.java.com/.

You only need one of the jar and exe versions, not both. The game is the same, but the exe will only work on windows and should tell you if you don't have Java installed instead of showing as an unrecognised file type.
Some browsers block .exe file downloads, so I recommend the jar version as the primary one.

Changelog:
  • Fixed some typos & text issues. Thanks to players Zia, Cubano, Mdy, TheHologram, tffan123 & erik198 for reporting problems they found.
  • Fixed a bug with the character creation screens where enabling/disabling of some trait checkboxes wasn't working properly when personality options were selected. Thanks to Erik198 for reporting this.
  • Changed the Look & Feel of the UI to Nimbus. I'll be interested to hear if people prefer this, and especially if it fixes the problems with the UI for Apple & Linux users.
  • Added a proper character sheet. Use the button on the week planner to open it or press 'C'. You can use 'C' and 'Esc' to close it as well as the button.
  • Standardised the sizes of the various Newlife screens to support a future improvements to the UI.
  • Added a link to the character screen from the Scene window. The shortcut key is 'C'.
  • Started gathering some stats to show in the character sheet. More may be added in later versions – let me know if there are things you want to see there.
  • You still need to buy the pill from your GP the first time you start taking it, but after that you can stop & restart taking it using the character screen while planning your week. The “go on/off the pill” actions have been removed from the GP.
  • Added a new event – this is the follow up to an existing work one.
  • When a man buys a drink for you, it now mentions that he gets one for himself too. This was getting him drunk before, but hopefully it'll be a bit clearer why your bloke suddenly has trouble walking.
  • Added a choice to let the man choose what to get when he buys you a drink – thanks to simonmoon5 for suggesting this change. His choice of drink may give clues to his personality, although the decision code is quite simple at the moment.
  • While shopping for clothes, you can now double-click items in the shopping list to buy them.



If you spot any issues, typos or bugs then please report them either here or on one of the forums I post in. Of course I'm happy to read any feedback even if you don't find a bug!
In particular, if you're a Mac or Linux user who had issues with the old UI then I'd like to hear if things are better now.

Have fun with the new version :)

34 comments:

  1. The UI looks so much better now, I'm happy now :)

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    1. Thanks! I love how your posts are always so friendly and positive. Glad you're enjoying the game :)

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  2. how do i use jar version?

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    1. If you have Java installed, you should be able to just double-click it. If you have Java and double-clicking does not work, open a command prompt (on Windows, open the Start Menu, and type "command" or look in the "Accessories" folder in your Start Menu -- on a Mac, go to the Utilities folder and open Terminal), then type "java-rmi.exe -jar newlife_0_2_6.jar".

      You may have to specify the full path to the java folder ("C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre1.JAVAVERSION\bin") and the full path to the jar file ("C:\Users\USERNAME\Downloads").

      Good luck.

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  3. Can anyone give me a hint on what the new work related scene is? I've played through the new update about ten times and I haven't found it? Is it the old man, the client or the boss?

    And I know this isn't the right place for this, but would love to see some coworkers and office parties.

    Lastly keep up the good work! Looking forward to further updates!

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    1. It is a new scene with the client.

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    2. With the client. You need to get an invite to his home. That happens if he brings you to orgasm and you don't hide it, or if you successfully make a sale without discouraging his inappropriate advances.

      Office parties are going to be part of the office career, not the sales one. I think that'll be the second career which'll be added when I do a major update focusing on jobs.

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  4. It would be awesome if you do an android version!
    Awesome game! Thank you! :)

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    1. I think there is no Java app for Android, and I think Splendid Ostrich is not planning on switching to another programming language. It is not impossible to compile a Java applet into an Android app, but I think there is a focus on the general development, rather than spending extra time making things cross-compile for other platforms...

      Again, not to put words in Splendid Ostrich's mouth, but that seems to be the gist of previous answers to similar questions.

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    2. To make an android version he would at the very least have to redo the entire gui, which is not a trivial task by any measure.

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    3. Thanks, but I'm afraid that reworking the UI to work on android would be too big a change. If I do another game when newlife is finished then that's the sort of thing I'll have serious look at when I can design it in from the start.

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  5. It would be awesome if you do an android version too.
    Awesome game! Thanks! :)

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  6. Sorry for the double post (>_<)

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  7. One suggestion to make clothes shopping a bit easier: Can you implement a way to "compare" clothing stats in the shop? For example, if I want to see the difference between two bras, or compare attractiveness of a dress to top+skirt. The only tedious part of the UI for me is deciding which clothes to pick to give me the best stats :)

    Great game so far, looking forward to all your updates!

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    1. Thanks :)
      I'm not planning to make many more UI updates before the next big release. After that, I'll have a think about comparison, but I think it'll be a bit tricky to implement well so I can't guarantee I'll add it.

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  8. Can you raise the number of weeks? Having it end that early is kinda annoying, when trying to see whats new, or testing things out.

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    1. The game length will increase with the 0.3 update, which will have a proper pregnancy implementation. That's probably 4 updates away, so most likely early March

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  9. Awesome job!
    Just one thing, 26 weeks are too few!
    Cheat Engine doesn't work anymore... could you tell what value is now weeks?
    This game is awesome as sandbox, but 26 weeks really hurt at game play.
    Playing instead lots of turns really add flavour to roleplaying.
    Also another request: is it possible to have a button during female char creation to randomize again? Char creation sometime gets very long if you are like me that like random things... try after try after try, and always i end up custom editing losing that feel of randomness.

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    1. I certainly would like it if quickstart let you get to a random character.

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    2. The game length will increase with the 0.3 update in about a month.

      I've put a note about looking into re-randomisation. It's a bit fidddly with how the character gets created at the moment, but might be possible with a bit of rework.
      As for quickstart settings, I'll look into that when/if I add a persistent preferences file.

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  10. Is there any chance that you could implement character height settings in future updates?

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    1. It's certainly possible. It's a fair bit of work because it'd mean re-writing all the stuff that says things like "you look up at him". Not scheduled in anytime soon, but it's a fairly obvious change if I decide to do an update based around adding more details to the pc.

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  11. Hi! Will you consider to do a spanish translation of the game? I offer to do it if you would like.
    I write as anonymous for privacy.

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. Hi, in theory I like the idea of having translated versions, but the practicalities are quite awkward.

      Newlife isn't written as a CYOA with long paragraphs of text - instead it's common for even a single sentence to be spread over multiple lines of code, with extra phrases being added or not based on traits or other conditions.
      This means that even translating every text string in the game would still leave it badly incorrect, because sentence structure is different in different languages.
      Also, the text isn't separated from the code and that would make it very difficult to do a translated version without access to the source code - something I'm very wary about giving out.
      Finally, there's issues about frequency of updates. I often make small changes to existing text as well as adding new content, and I update about three times a month. That's a lot of maintenance work for any manual translation and if the translator goes on holiday or something then the translated version would end up quickly lagging behind.

      In conclusion, I don't view manual translation as realistic to implement at the moment without dramatic changes to how the game code works.

      I did consider having a link to an automated translation system such as Google Translate, so that the final text could get sent to it just before being shown to the player. This runs into problems though because these systems generally are not free to access, and I can't afford to pay money for them.
      In any case, automatic translation is notoriously bad, and having the game connect to an online service every time an action is taken could run into problems with people who have restricted or slow internet connections.

      I might have another look if I can find a good free library with a suitable free license that I can package with the game so it wouldn't need online access. People should let me know if they know of such a library.

      By the way, to give you an example of what text often looks like in Newlife, here's some pseudocode for a single sentence in the output. This is directly from the game, but I replaced the actual Java statements with capitalised text that'll hopefully be more informative for non-programmers. It should I hope be clear that just translating the text would run into big grammatical problems:

      ADD_TEXT("You wrap your arms around his neck and press as close to him as you can, ")
      IF (BREAST_SIZE IS C) ADD_TEXT(“full ”)
      ELSE IF (BREAST_SIZE IS D) ADD_TEXT(“heavy ”)
      IF (BREASTS ARE BARE) ADD_TEXT(“bare ”)
      ADD_TEXT(“breasts pressing ”)
      IF (HAS TRAIT SENSITIVE_BREASTS)ADD_TEXT(“ sensitively ”)
      ADD_TEXT(“against ”)
      IF (HIS SHIRT IS OPEN OR REMOVED) ADD_TEXT(“the naked skin of “)
      ADD_TEXT(“his “)
      ADD_TEXT(MALE_TORSO_DESCRIPTION)
      ADD_TEXT(“. “)

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  12. Replies
    1. if there is anyway i can help, i would be glad to.
      i know little about coding and such, but if you need any help writing or illustrating anything let me know on here and ill give you my contact info

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    2. Thanks for the offer. Writing is a bit tricky because the scenes in Newlife are all mixed up with code and text together.

      As for illustrations, there are a few places where having some might help the game. That said, a major implementation of graphics is probably unrealistic - there's so many different options for clothes & characters that it'd take a complicated graphical system to show them all.
      To be honest, I feel a little reluctant to say "yes, I'd love to include illustrations" because I can't absolutely promise that I'd be able to put them in for sure. It wouldn't really be fair on you to be spending your time on such things and then have them cut.
      While I don't want you to go to trouble to make stuff for the game, if you've already made images you think might fit well with it, or if you want to discuss that sort of thing then feel free to email me.
      My email address is splendidostrich (at) gmail.com.

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    3. I think illustrations (while nice) would create inconsistencies as new content is added.

      Icons however (such as custom icons for clothes types in the shop interface) could work though.

      As a patron of the game as well as a professional webdesigner and logo+icon illustrator I would love to help should you require it in any way. (For free of course.)

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    4. Hi, thanks for the offer :) You're right that adding icons could improve the UI quite a bit. I'd have to do some research to see how feasible things like adding icons to the shop lists would be - UI work is where I'm least experienced so I often have to look things up!
      I don't want to impose on your time, but if you have ideas for things you want to do that would improve the game then send me an email at the address in my comment above, and I'll look into what it would take to get them into the game.

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  13. Hey! I'm really liking the game so far
    One thing, will it be possible to become fully pregnant? Like, can you do it so the character gives birth after 32 weeks, and the scenes change depending on how pregnant she is?
    Looking forward to 0.2.7 and so forth!

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    1. Absolutely! The 0.3 update will have full pregnancy and it'll also extend the game's length to 52 weeks. I'll probably split the pregnancy updates over 2 releases because they're quite large, but it won't be far away! The current schedule is something like:
      Early-mid Feb: 0.2.7 - Clothing improvements
      Early-mid Feb: 0.2.8 - Dance skill & events (double release to set up early access Patron reward)
      Late Feb: 0.2.9 - Pregnancy update part 1 & this month's lottery event.
      Early March: 0.3.0 - Complete pregnancy implementation & extend game length
      Early-Mid March 0.3.1 - User-friendliness updates.

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