Monday 28 September 2015

Newlife 0.3.10

Hello everyone!

First, some Patreon news. I've decided to remove the "twice as wrong" milestone for now. This is because I currently have a bit of a backlog of patron additions, and I don't want to end up with the core Friendship update taking excessively long.
I might re-add the twice as wrong milestone, but I'll see how long it takes to get 0.4.0 out and decide then.

Feel free to submit suggestions for alternative milestones. Ideally they'd be ones that wouldn't slow the addition of core content. 

I have considered adding a milestone where I'd contact some people with a good record of quality erotic writing and see if they'd do commissions. However, I generally like working alone and I can see some potential pitfalls with that sort of thing. Still, it might be something to investigate. 

Well, now that I've spoken about Patreon milestones, there's some minor unimportant news that you probably won't care much about:

Version 0.3.10 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 0.3.9 release has been made public. I've updated the links here on the blog, so you can download it now from here. The 0.3.9 changelog is here.

As usual, saved files & templates from older versions probably won't work with newer ones. 


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 java to run the game.
There's a guide for new players here which includes some troubleshooting tips for installation & downloading.

0.3.10 is the "Prove me wrong" release. This means that apart from bugfixes, all the new content is based on the recent PMW vote on Patreon. If you like this release, then you owe thanks to the Patron voters who chose the content.
The winning choice was "Consensual submissive/masochistic content (e.g. rough sex, humiliation etc)". That's quite a broad one so I spent the entire release on it. In fact, I could have spent months more on this release, but eventually I had to call a halt and actually do the release. 

The new content is mostly focused on the date/makeout/sex scenes. Some men will take certain actions even if you haven't asked them, but for the most part it's enabled by asking your partner to treat you mean. 
There may be some changes that aren't in the log because I forgot to update it for a few days, but I think everything significant is in there.

Here's the full changelog:
  • Fixes to text issues. Thanks to Cubano, Atc, Death25, BabyJ and Jononamous for reporting problems they found, as well as a whole bunch of patrons who helped me out with finding problems in a dev version a few days ago. Without you girls and guys there'd be just so many typos and text problems with the release version, thank you so much for helping out!
  • The most important change ever – fixed “who to befriend” to correctly read “whom to befriend”. Thanks to Cubano for reporting this problem. With such a big change, it seems almost pointless to do anything else this release. Surely no-one will even notice any other changes after their bedazzlement with the proper use of the objective pronoun.
  • Going to have sex in the gym showers will now correctly strip your character naked, thanks to Cubano for reporting this issue.
  • Fixed a silly bug reported by cubano where the pc could have an orgasm while leaving the changing room.
  • Added some alternative text to fix the odd situation where impregnators can be shocked at the player's pregnancy, even though they were trying to knock her up.
  • Fixed some issues reported over pm on patreon with controls being incorrectly enabled or disabled in character generation.
  • Added a trait “likes rough”. This lets the player ask her partners to be rough with her in some situations, which unlocks a lot of the humiliation/rough-sex content that's added in this release. Some of this content can still be chosen autonomously by jerk npcs though. In the current version men will always agreed to this, but in future I might add traits that give a failure chance.
  • You can also change your mind and ask your partner to stop being rough. In some situations he's able to refuse this request.
  • The "treat me mean" action normally lasts for one date, but you can have a serious talk with your man if you want to be his bitch all the time.
  • Modified many willpower checks, conditions and so on based on the above condition.
  • Improved the npc logic for deciding how they'll behave. Some men can now fake their behaviour in certain circumstances if they want something from the player (usually sex). However, once they've got what they want their true douchebag nature will assert itself.
  • Updated the existing logic behind men choosing which pace to use for sex to take this new trait into account.
  • Made some changes to enjoyment & arousal in sex, mostly to take the new trait into account. Also, having sex at extremely low arousal levels will now quickly drain your enjoyment, with negative consequences both to stress relief and to how your character views her partner.
  • The cowgirl sex position will be unavailable when you've asked him to be rough with you. Also added an action that men can take during non-rough makeouts that lets them initiate sex while you're on top of them.
  • Reworked the conditions & probability of the npc's action where they go back on top of you.
  • Men get a new action in the doggystyle position, which they can take if the pc has asked them to be rough with her, or if their preferences lie in that direction.
  • New content for the oral sex scene.
  • New makeout actions and updated conditions for existing ones.
  • Added a new orgasm possibility to the standing and missionary sex scenes.
  • New npc speech actions for makeout & sex scenes, excluding the cowgirl one.
  • Agreeing to be treated roughly unlocks a new action for the man when you're in your home.
  • Men won't cook breakfast for you if you've asked them to treat you mean, but have another action available instead.
  • Added an alternative text message for booty calls.
  • Say you're uncertain now works differently if you've asked him to be rough. In that situation it's only available for ''cute' girls and represents a clearly fake request that he slow down. You can still use the strong rejection if you actually want him to stop.

Enjoy the new version, and let me know if you find any bugs!

34 comments:

  1. Nice! Or should I say Mean!

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  2. >I've decided to remove the "twice as wrong" milestone for now.

    Oh hell naw
    Not my buttsex voting oppotunity :(

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  3. Hey, really liked your game, keep up the good work.
    I'll throw in some suggestions if you don't mind.
    Is it possible to add randomization to quick/female character creation? Shouldn't be too hard to do since it's already there. Just a button that would randomize things without locking them up for tweaking.
    If it's possible to be a feminine man, why can't pc be a boyish girl (i ofc mean female chars). It's just a matter of adding trait that would reduce starting femininity somewhat. (Unless low femininity values text has some reference to the transformation story, then it will probably require rewriting and be totally not worth it)
    Well, anyway, thanks for all your hard wok, have a nice whatever it is.

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    1. I've had some ideas about quickstart randomisation, but this is something I don't want to add until there's a persistent options file to store that sort of information. I don't know exactly when that'll be added. If next release goes quickly then I might put it in to support a toggle for using custom npcs, but right now I'm working with the assumption that 0.3.11 will include custom npcs but without some of the QOL additions supporting them.

      The problem with female-start tomboys is that a lot of the gender-bender content is gated by femininity, and so allowing low-femininity women would probably mean lots of issues with text talking about how they used to be men. I might look over this again with the femininity update, but I haven't really thought much about how that'll be implemented.

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  4. Pretty disappointing that you have to like rough sex and specifically ask for it to get to most of the content. Still nice it's there.

    Anyway, main issue:

    >First, some Patreon news. I've decided to remove the "twice as wrong" milestone for now. This is because I currently have a bit of a backlog of patron additions, and I don't want to end up with the core Friendship update taking excessively long.

    What the hell made you think that it's acceptable to remove a milestone $150 before reaching it? It's massively dishonest and everyone who supported you on Patreon hoping to reach it will now regret their decision. You don't pull shit like that if you want your supporters to respect you.

    Anything else would be better, delays are nowhere near as bad as this sort of bait and switch. Everyone will now think twice before supporting you to reach some milestone if they know you can just arbitrarily decide that you can't be bothered actually delivering it.

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    1. As much as I'd like to have extra content added to the game that normally wouldn't be there, I'd much prefer to have the game finished first and then the extra stuff added on later or when Splendid Ostrich has time. It's quality over quantity, man. I mean, have you played Slave Maker? That game has a bunch of content and lots of girls, but a lot of it is half finished or poorly developed. Very little of it is actually good, and New Life could easily go down that road if Splendid keeps trying to implement content they don't feel too strongly/passionate about or interested in.
      The way I look at it, the PMW content is like DLC, or some other sort of add-on, especially if Splendid brings back the PMW Twice option later.

      Further, and think if the milestone was going to be removed at all, it's better to have it removed before reaching than after reaching it.

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    2. Come on, don't pretend you don't understand what this is about.

      Let me spell it out for you: using the promise of added content to get people to give you money and then removing it at the last possible moment so you don't have to actually deliver on that promise is dishonest and manipulative, no matter what the excuses provided are. It's not like he just now realized that delivering it would cause delays, so it should have been gone a couple hundred dollars ago, or not added in the first place.

      Of course, removing it after it was reached would be much worse, but I would hope Patreon has some rules in place to prevent/punish that sort of false advertising.

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    3. Come on, don't pretend like you're not being a colossal ass.

      It's not like people were actively driving for the 5k milestone - it's sat at ~$250 away for the past month. If the idea was to pull the cloak aside at the last second, he could have done it long before now.

      If you'd actually been paying attention, you would have noticed that this PMW release took an entire *month*, which is a pretty significant outlier for his release pattern up till this point. So when he says he's not ready for another one any time soon, I can understand where he's coming from.

      Yeah, he could have just left it and said "okay, we've hit this milestone, but I'm not going to actually start working on it for another couple months," but then he'd have folks like you labeling *that* as bait-and-switch as well. Damned if he does, etc.

      I'm certainly not happy about losing the chance for another vote in the near future either, but automatically assuming malicious intent is just ignorant

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    4. This development isn't new. SO's made the idea known for awhile now in a few locations, like Hongfire and the Patreon. No one's raised an objection so far save one dude who apparently doesn't like the new content, and judging from his response, doesn't understand the amount of backend work it took to put in the new sub/dom framework. Hence the reason SO wants to swap out the second PMW; it's a lot of time and work for content that may not appear to have immediate payoff, especially for people who aren't looking for it. I personally don't much care for new content either, but I appreciate the amount of work that went into it and I can understand why he wants drop the PMW.

      TL;DR lrn2empathy

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    5. Ah, I didn't get round to answering this.

      In general, anonymous blog comments are not a good way to raise patreon concerns - it's a communications method that makes it hard to tell the difference between patrons who are legitimately upset and trolls trying to stir up trouble, Making a post on patreon is the better choice.

      The only people directly affected by the change in milestone are voter patrons. I think I already mentioned this on Patreon, but if you're one and you think the change is unacceptable then start a post there to discuss it. If the consensus among voters is that PMW2 should stay, then I'll put it back in and remove content from the core plan instead.

      As for individual patrons, if you were supporting Newlife primarily because of the PMW2 milestone, then pm me on patreon and I'll give you a refund.


      I wasn't expecting there'd be objections to this, because no-one raised any concerns when I mentioned the idea earlier on other threads. To explain:
      I don't want Newlife to stay in development forever. Starting a new game would have lots of advantages, such as letting me design in mod and fan-translation support, look into graphics, and consider ways of having it be playable online - all things that aren't realistic for Newlife.
      As such, I think it'll be better for both me and for players if Newlife can be finished by 2017/2018. However, this is looking more and more unlikely as the game's increasing complexity slows down development and patreon content takes up an increasing amount of my time. The PMW release was a real eye-opener both because it took longer than expected and because of how big the effect of the pile-up of patreon content has been on the friendship update.
      Removing the unreached PMW2 milestone is one step towards that goal, and I'll be looking into other ways as well - perhaps looking into milestones that'll speed up development instead of slowing it, or maybe removing less important content from the core plan.

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  5. When we can go out with no clothes on

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    1. outside of home? SO seems to be wanting to keep it real in most perspectives and hold irl legal guidelines for the most part. so if you mean going to work/club/gym/dates anything in the nude. i doubt it would happen

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    2. I've gotta agree with Sekaides here. Walking outside and going to a dance class in the buff would get you arrested before you even got down the street.

      That said though, I would love some "exhibitionist" content. Leaving your windows open, and walking around your house naked to your neighbors delight, skirts and no panties blowing up with a wind or when you're dancing, or even developing the photography branch to do nude photo modeling or posing for art classes. Things along that line. Still kind of in reality, but not "I'm going to work naked today!"

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    3. I agree with literally everything you just said :D

      First priority should be at least a little bit of flavor text for going panty-less with short skirts/dresses. Both in situations like you mentioned, plus perhaps an opportunity to pay homage to Basic Instinct when you're talking to your boss, client... and perhaps even the old guy, why not :P

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    4. I also looking forward for some exhibitionist content,it would be great!

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    5. I was actually wondering if there'd ever be some kind of anti-exhibitionist content, like a check to see if a character with the shy trait is wearing a short dress and no underwear that causes critical scene failure and ends the event. Shy girls with low self esteem who have been women less than a week never seem to have issues visiting the local meat market with their tits hanging out.

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    6. Yeah, that'd be cool too - also a cap on how naughty your character will allow herself to dress, based on her femininity, overall personality (cute would get a penalty, sensual would get a bonus) and traits.

      Also somehow I only just now realized I've been using a different name here than on patreon

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    7. Full public nudity is unlikely, but some exhibitionist content might well be on the cards.

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  6. Hey, a Patron here, and I haven't played this new build, but I did play the dev-test build last night (actually played it earlier, but lost memory - long story). Anyway, I'm not sure if it was fixed, since I JUST got this release and haven't tried it yet, but in the dev-test release, I noticed a problem with the "rough stuff" settings. Sometimes, when you have an orgasm when doing "rough stuff," the man will demand you hold it in, which is fine. You can either try to comply or not try, also fine. However, if you try to comply, dialog comes up saying that you try very hard, then you cum, then he commands you to cum, then he gets mad at you for disobeying. Pretty sure that's not how that's supposed to go.

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    1. Hi, thanks for reporting it. That one should be fixed in 0.3.10.

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  7. I know this might seem like an odd question, but is it possible far down the road in this game's development that you'll consider allowing us to play as male characters when romance-able female npcs are added in? While I much like the concept of playing as a female character I do like the idea of having that option, even if it is watered down with few things to involve a male character. (Yet saving damsels in distress from thugs in alleyways sounds like a nice way to make new friends... lol)

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    1. Been asked coupla hundred times probably. Nope. It's like rewriting the ENTIRE GAME, GODDAMNIT! Be real.

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    2. SO's mentioned before that there will never be a male option for the PC, because it would simply require far too much work (rewriting of core mechanics, etc) for too little benefit

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    3. For the reasons mentioned, there won't be male-perspective gameplay in Newlife. If I start another adult game when Newlife is done then this is one of the things I'll be looking into when I design it, although that's far enough away that I can't make any promises!

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    4. OP here, and no worries! I just find NewLife makes for a pretty decent erotic sim and will only get better with age/updates, so the prospect of a male-perspective version is something I'd enjoy. That said, I'm content enough with the female-perspective and, with the eventual introduction of player-created male NPCs, it's a nice alternative to what I'm looking for. :)

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  8. Is there a way to change the number of turns in the game? I enjoy it but it seems to go pretty fast.

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    1. Get a patron version, it has a cheat menu where you can adjust game length

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    2. I will eventually add the option to play on after the endgame scene, but this won't be until I'm satisfied with lategame content. Probably that means both marriage and advanced jobs will need to be supported.

      For now, as the anon above says, one of the patreon cheats lets you change when the endgame happens.

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    3. Hey Splendid, I have a suggestion. I don't know how much merit it has, but I hope that this idea might help improve the late game.

      Would it be possible to have the NPCs mingle? Having them interact with each other could aid in fleshing out the game by having them for relationships that don't involve the player. I think it could really help the late game experience, though I don't know if something like that should wait until after female NPCs are introduced.

      Sorry if this was useless, but it was just an idea that occurred to me.

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    4. I think it would improve the game, but npc-npc interaction would likely be too complex to be added without taking an excessive amount of development time.
      However, I might end up putting in some limited ways this can happen. I'd like the player to be able to hold house-parties with all her friends, so there could be some interactions there. I doubt I'll add persistent relationships between npcs though.

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  9. There should be an option to initiate a breakup with your partner. Like you, initiating the dumping-- not getting dumped or wait for the other preferred NPC to steal you away.

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    1. There will be, when the relationship update comes around

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  10. Heya SO and others,

    I've been testing recently now that I've gotten a small amount of free time, and I've got two questions:

    I've seen various people mentioning what sounds like a specific impregnator event or two (and not simply meaning some of their unique dialogues in otherwise normal situations), but for the life of me i haven't been able to track it down yet, despite much trail... how's it achieved?

    Secondly, the Gym sequence with Horse and the (random instigator); it seems as through the game picks one specific npcs to be Horse's friend, and they are the only one who will allow the change room scene to initiate. the scene itself plays and acts pretty much -like- a threesome might; you have interaction choices available in relation to each participant, and they both return a reaction of their own. What I'm curious about is, is it actually possibly to end up getting penetrated BEFORE one of them takes you aside? It hints at it, and suggests that it might/could/is at very real risk of happening... but it doesn't seems as though it actually can. This got me all excited... then subsequently frustrated.

    -Niara

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    1. The special impregnator event chain needs you to have the bitchy trait and not be in the late stages of pregnancy, and he has to be an impregnator who is also not boastful. The specific conditions means it'll be easiest to wait for 0.3.11 and use a custom npc if you want to see that particular scene.

      It isn't possible to have threesome sex. The gym scene is basically a threesome makeout and it's already a large and complicated scene despite the heavy restrictions on the participants, so threesome sex didn't get added due to development time constraints.

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