Monday 30 March 2015

Newlife 0.3.0 released

Hello everyone!

The 0.3.0 version of Newlife is finished and I've released it on Patreon. Early-access Patrons can find it in the creations section here. The changelog is below.

That also means that the 0.2.10 release has been made public. The links to the right of the blog have been updated. The 0.2.10 changelog is here.

As usual, saved files & templates from older versions probably won't work with newer ones. I did have one message telling me that someone found their saves were still working after updating to 0.2.10, but I make no promises that this will work for anyone else.


For new players - just use one of the links to the right to get either the jar or the exe version. You only need one or the other - not both. I recommend trying the jar first.

For either version you'll need to have Java installed. A lot of programs use Java so you might well already have it. If the jar shows up as an unrecognised file type, then you probably don't. In that case you can get it from http://www.java.com/
The exe should tell you if you don't have the right version on your computer, but you'll still need to install it to run the game.

0.3.0 is the final part of this pregnancy update, and means that the game's length has been extended to 52 weeks. You can now carry a pregnancy to term and give birth and there's a new scene where you inform the father.


While making this change, I've build up quite a long list of further improvements to pregnancy. Some of the smaller ones will be added in the next few releases, but there are enough larger ones that I think Newlife would benefit from an entire major update based around improving pregnancy. I might put that forward as an option for the 0.5 vote, but it might also make sense to wait until the relationship update gets voted in and is completed first.

Here's the changelog:

  • Fixes for text issues. Thanks to dutchheathen & cubano for reporting problems they found.
  • New childcare skill. This makes it easier to look after children. Maternal characters get a starting bonus and also enjoy spending time with their kids more.
  • Prenatal class that improves your childcare skill. Maternal characters enjoy taking these classes more, so they get a stress reduction from them. Other girls should consider them like an investment in reducing your future baby hassle!
  • Fixed a bug in the client meeting reported by cubano where npc actions were sometimes being processed when they shouldn't be.
  • Added some fun text suggested by Cubano for when the player is heavily pregnant in the endgame scene. Although I did tone it down slightly to make Ivy sound just a tad less selfish.
  • Re-balanced the arousal & enjoyment effects of the sexy talk action in town.
  • Added some restrictions on lines in the “tell him you're ready” action where you tell your partner to get you pregnant. This now requires the maternal trait, for you to be in a relationship and for you to have feelings for him. No more asking one-night-stands to give you a baby. At least not from this action. There are some other lines I plan to have a look at in the future.
  • You can now call your boyfriend to come join you in the couples dance tournament. He'll always come, but he might be annoyed if he doesn't like dancing much. You'll also get a penalty to your performance rating if he's a worse dancer than the other men there.
  • Updated the character sheet to show the pregnancy stage, as suggested by cubano.
  • You can't have sex standing up in the third trimester of pregnancy. You can still make out standing up, go on your knees to please your partner, or go to bed if you're in a place with a bedroom.
  • New traits for npcs that determine whether or not they want to have kids, and if they'll try to impregnate you by underhand methods. These underhand methods are only slightly implemented so far – more will come in later versions.
  • Men who don't want kids are less likely to ask you to be their girlfriend if you're pregnant or you have children.
  • Various text updates & arousal/enjoyment effects in existing scenes based on these new traits and/or pregnancy status.
  • Men who've broken up with you are less likely to ask you to get back together. This can still happen at high relationship/attractiveness values though. 
  • Men who don't want kids find you less attractive when you're visibly pregnant. Men who particularly want children find you more attractive, especially if they know the baby is theirs. I did consider having a separate “pregnancy fetish” trait, but for now I'm keeping it simple.
  • New action in your home where you can talk about your relationship with a man. You'll then get a follow-up choice of what to talk about. For now there are two possible things to say – you can declare your love for him or tell him you're pregnant with his child. The option won't appear if neither of these topics is available.
  • New scene for telling men they made you pregnant. For now you can only tell the father. You need to discover the father by getting a paternity test when you visit your doctor on weekends before you can make the announcement. There are quite a lot of possible reactions, based on his traits and your relationship.
  • If you're in a relationship then either he needs to be very supportive or it will have to be quite strong to survive having a baby without telling him he's the dad. This won't be a problem if you were knowingly pregnant when you got together – he can hardly complain about not knowing if he's the father if conception took place before you were his girlfriend.
  • If you think a 40-week pregnancy is too long, why not spend the weekend visiting your neighbourhood doctor or perhaps a friendly local mad scientist? Modern medicine can help with all sorts of things that would be unimaginable just a few years ago.
  • Added a small table with a list of your children to the Home & Inventory tab of the character screen.
  • Increased the game's length to 52 weeks.


Have fun, enjoy the new version, and please report any bugs!

22 comments:

  1. Will you eventually be adding different sex positions? I assume this is the case, but it doesnt hurt to ask. I also assume if it is so, then it is quite a ways away?

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    1. Yes, I'll be adding doggy style next as it won the vote for the first milestone reward. There'll also be a new sex scene for the 0.4 update which will come in the next few months.

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  2. So much Yay! Even after hundreds of plays, this game still arouses me every time. Keep up the great work, and put out 3.1 soon so I can play 3!

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  3. How much does each pregnancy treatment speed things up?

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    1. x2 for one, x3 for both. There'll be another one coming as a character trait as some point, and it'll be x4 if you have everything once that gets added.

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  4. Hey, is it possible to link to the various generals from this blog? Side bar links, of course. Great work, BTW, I enjoy it. Your updates are great (in content and regular-ness).

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    1. Thanks, glad you're enjoying it. I'm not sure what you mean by 'generals' though. Can you clarify?

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    2. I think it refers to threads on other forums that discuss the game.

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  5. Excellent. I discovered this while I was bored at work, ironically.

    In any case, patreon'd.

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    1. Thank you :) Glad you're enjoying it. Make sure your boss doesn't catch you!

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  6. Will the roles be reversed in the future? i.e. wooing as a male

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    1. Not in this game. The assumption that the player is female is central to pretty much all the content. Creating a male-perspective version would be such a huge change that it'd essentially be creating a new game. Newlife has taken more than a year of development just to get to its current incomplete state, so I'm sure you can see that a change like that wouldn't be realistic.

      The closest you could get in Newlife is a one-off scene as part of the ending where you turn back into a man and have one shag before the end. That would be possible because as part of the ending it could be an isolated scene and it wouldn't need to hook into most of the game mechanics. I do think that sort of scene might be a more romantic ending when the player's in a serious relationship than having him just dump their partner if they turn back to being a man.
      On the other hand, such a scene would only appear once per playthrough and not even in every game, so until they're all done I think scenes that appear during main gameplay are a higher priority than ending-only ones.

      However, if I start another game when Newlife is finished then I'll try to make it more flexible and maybe allow male characters to be played. I'm not really planning a next game yet though. Assuming I'm able to support myself just from Newlife development I expect it to be finished sometime between 2017 and 2019, so what I do afterwards isn't really a concern right now.

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  7. Omg, I think I really like this game. Supporting it on Patreon any time now.
    You ever think of adding a cheating scene? Like you call another guy for a sleepover, but when you wake up in the morning your boyfriend comes?
    I really love the client scenes. The pervert, and you trying to sell the product. More scenes with that maybe? Perhaps everyday at work something or the other happens?
    Ahh, I can't wait to see where this goes. How'd you manage to code it in Java? I'm learning it and it's hecka difficult :/
    I think this is my new favourite, man.

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    1. Hi, I'm glad you're enjoying it :)
      Cheating is definitely getting some more work in the future. That'll probably come with the relationship update. Of course some men might sleep around on you too.
      There'll also be more work scenes, but I think when the work update gets picked the first things I'll be looking at are negative events that are triggered by high stress and/or poor performance.
      As for Java, it's something I've had quite a lot of experience working with so it was a natural choice for me. I keep running into problems with the Swing UI though, as UI work is something I hadn't done much before Newlife. I think next time I start a new game I'll look into alternative UI choices like having an HTML5 version.

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  8. Love this game so far. Have a question, are there plans to add things like threesomes? I imagine that would be fun. Also, any plans to make it possible to be bisexual (sorta related to threesome but also for one on one)?

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    1. Threesomes may get added at some point but only in a limited way. The issue there is NPC-NPC interaction. Adding an extra character would exponentially increase the number of possibilities to consider.

      For example, imagine you're having sex with a jerk and he calls you a bitch or something. You get your own reaction - probably either you're offended or you have low self esteem and you accept it. Fine.
      Now, if there's another bloke there, he needs to react too. But what does he do? If he's a jerk maybe he agrees. Maybe he's a decent guy so he speaks up against the jerk. Maybe he's your boyfriend who loves you so he gets angry. Maybe he'll try to encourage you if you have low self esteem, or maybe he'll find it depressing that you accept these sort of things. Then how does you character react? It's easy to imagine that she's going to side with the nice guy if they start arguing, but what if the jerk is her boyfriend who she loves? She surely should take his side then, maybe even if she doesn't have low self esteem. Especially if the nice guy is someone she dislikes - after all, relationships in Newlife are two-sided so it's perfectly possible to have an npc like you when you don't like them.

      Suddenly, from 2 reactions we end up needing lots and lots. The sex scenes are already large and complex, so adding an arbitrary extra character would probably lead to something far to complex to be reasonably coded.

      Instead, any threesomes are likely to be limited ones. Imagine a scene that has the pre-requisite that both blokes are jerks. Suddenly most of that variation vanishes. Guy one calls you a bitch. Guy two agrees and laughs at you or whatever. You get offended or just accept it. Simple, but it does mean that you can't allow it to be accessed with any npc. There needs to be a mechanic that stops it happening for npcs that don't fit, and does so in a way that makes sense in the game.

      As for bisexual content, lesbians are part of the core plan, so that'll definitely go in. When lesbians get added I think the pc will always be bisexual as a woman, but the player will usually be able to avoid sexual encounters with one gender if they want to play it fully straight or fully lesbian.

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    2. I think most people would be quite forgiving if NPCs became a bit robotic during a group sex scene. The descriptions of the player's reactions to being handled by multiple partners are what is most interesting, so the writing should focus more on PC traits at the expense of NPC ones. For a scene with two guys it would make sense that there's a tacit agreement from the PC that she be used and that two men have agreed to share her, so individual guy personalities wouldn't necessarily need to come into play.

      If the guys seems a little stone faced it can be chalked up to maintaining focus so they don't underperform around another guy.

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  9. How do you download the game?

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    1. Download links are on the upper-right part of the blog

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  10. Will there be an option to name the kids you have in future versions?

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    1. I haven't decided yet. Maybe. There's no place in the current UI for entering free-text mid-game though, so it wouldn't be possible through the usual scene interface.

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