Friday 9 December 2016

0.5 update voting options

Hi all,

Now that Newlife's 0.4 milestone has been reached, it's time to vote for what major update will be 0.5. The vote will take place this month for voter-tier patrons on Patreon. I'll list the choices here, but for instructions on how to vote see this patreon post.

You'll notice that some releases are bigger than others. Bigger updates have more content, but they'll also take more time to develop, so go ahead and vote for a smaller one if you want and don't worry that you're getting less stuff.

As for sex scenes, I generally intend to add one new one per major update, unless that update requires more. I'll try to add a scene that's related to the update's theme, but if that isn't possible then I'll still add a new sex scene anyway.

Here are the options. Please note that these reflect my thoughts on them at this moment in time. This might change once development starts and I'm looking into an update in more depth, so the specific details shouldn't be considered set-in-stone.

Work & Career
An update about improving your work options. This will include completing the sales career, starting a new one and improving how work interacts with stress. Key features:
  • Complete the Sales career with new events and branching promotions. The current elite saleswoman path will have an alternative where you become a sales team leader. This will use different skills and have different events.
  • Add a special event chain for high-level sales jobs.
  • Add a new management skill for the team-leader path.
  • Rebalance stress.
  • New events with worse consequences for poor job performance and/or high stress levels.
  • A new trait that will make you incompetant at your job and stop you getting promoted to higher levels, for players who want to be stuck in a low-paid basic job for the whole game.
  • Career-related activities such as spending your weekend on a training course.
  • New career, probably office work. This won't be fully complete for 0.5, but it'll have a basic groundwork with some unique events. The new career won't be based on the Charm skill, so it'll provide an alternative for socially inept characters.
  • Add a way of switching between careers.
Romance & Marriage
An update focused on relationship content. This will add a lot to the late-game, which I think is very much needed. As well as adding content for characters with boyfriends, it'll also include the possibility of getting married.
  • New events for characters in relationships. Both romantic and otherwise.
  • Marriage proposals.
  • Weddings and wedding nights – have a sweet and romantic wedding with your special man, or worry about having it disturbed by a smitten bloke making a final attempt to get you to ditch your fiance and get together with him instead.
  • Modifications to existing scenes to allow for marriage, including recognising it in the endgame sequence.
  • Depending on your choices in the endgame sequence, you might get the possibility to continue playing afterwards.
  • "Trying for a baby" relationship status, which will modify actions, dialogue and descriptions in sex scenes.
  • Potential restrictions to your interactions with your husband based on promises made before the wedding. For example, if you promised that he'd never need to worry about protection again once you're married then you won't be able to ask him to wear a condom.
  • Improved relationship interactions including more negative ones like having arguments with your boyfriend and letting pent-up stress get the better of you
  • Better consequences for cheating.
  • Special traits & events for scumbag boyfriends. Is your man a drunk? A cheater? A cheating drunk? Now you can live out your dream life of being woken up in the middle of the night by your husband staggering home pissed and expecting to have his way with you.
Storyline 
An update just for Ivy!
  • Help Ivy fix her machine, or be doomed to the life of a healthy and beautiful young woman... forever!
  • Cackle maniacally as you learn the mad science skill and suffer yet more unforeseen experimental side-effects. The fools called you mad, but they are the ones who will be mad, mad with envy once you perfect your greatest invention!
  • Choose from a variety of tasks with multiple solutions. Maybe Ivy needs a special component – you could study so you can make it yourself, use your charm to convince a technician, break into a workshop and steal one... or use your feminine wiles to seduce someone into helping.
  • Ivy will be added as a friend at game-start, in addition to your normal friend limit. Ivy will have a special "mad scientist" character type with unique content in some scenes, although she won't be available in as many different scenes as the main innocent/party-girl/sophisticated character types.
  • Once fixed, you can use Ivy's machine to adjust certain aspects of your new body.
Femininity
An update based around giving more content to the gender-bender aspects of the male-start. A lot of this content won't be available to female-start characters.
  • A new life as a woman? But you're a man! Just because you have soft silkily smooth skin and full pert breasts doesn't make you any less masculine!
  • Resist the change and act as manly as possible.
  • Wear manly clothes.
  • Most men might find this unappealing, but maybe you'll find one who likes tomboys and have a proper bromance together. You can have lots of sweaty sex in a bromance, right?
  • Lots and lots of changes to existing scenes.
  • Resist the change unsuccessfully, and give in to your womanly urges.
Homes & money
Along with the work update's rebalancing of stress, this is the second of the big balance changes – in this case affecting money. This will add more late-game money sinks as well as an ongoing financial drain from your rent. Starting funds will be increased, but characters who are bad at their jobs might find themselves low on cash even into the mid-game. However, NPC wealth levels will make it feasible to lean on your boyfriend for financial support, and will give an incentive to date a rich man even if he isn't otherwise the best partner for you.
  • Men will have jobs now, and different amounts of money depending on what they do.
  • "gold-digger" content where you try to exploit men for financial gain.
  • Rebalancing of the female endgame content to make it more possible to fail to raise the money – currently this only happens if the player is really trying to spend all their cash.
  • Be given presents or treated to expensive dates by rich men... or eat fast-food on the street with poor ones.
  • Move to new homes, with unique events for each neighborhood.
  • Pay your rent, or suffer the wrath of your landlord.
  • Call the handyman to fix broken appliances. Your fridge is just running sooooo hot and you really need him to inspect your plumbing.

Daily life
An update based around adding hobbies and other things to do that don't revolve around work or dating. Of course these will still lead to plenty of opportunities for sex and romance – the existing dance content should give you an idea of what to expect.
  • Maybe you just want to go about your normal life, but better. If so, this update is for you.
  • Get a pet and bond with it. You can't have sex with your pet (of course), but it might be able to help you in your love life. Different events will be added for different pet types.
  • New stuff for your home.
  • Hobbies for your free time, with new skills and events.
  • Go to the park and feed the ducks.
Lesbian love
An update based around adding lesbian sex & relationships. This is probably the biggest one here because it'll require an alternative set to the core game scenes.
The game mechanics for the player-character will always act as if she's bisexual, in that she'll be able to be attracted to either gender. It will however be possible for you to play them as fully-straight or fully-gay, just by rejecting the advances of anyone of your less-preffered gender.

  • Meet lesbians and bisexual women and seduce or be seduced by them.
  • Alternative lesbian versions to the main club/date->home->makeout->sex->sleep->next morning scene chain.
  • Lesbian relationships
  • Update existing scenes to handle the possibility of the PC being in a lesbian relationship, having had lesbian sex etc.

Improved pregnancy
An update all about improving how pregnancy is handled in the game, including:
  • New events & activities for pregnant characters and new mums (although note that your children themselves will not appear in any scene that's even slightly sexual or erotic).
  • A better implementation of lactation: continue lactating after birth and enjoy breastmilk-related actions during intimate moments.
  • NPC pregnancy.
  • Improvements to the Maternal trait: I'll probably add a more extreme "baby-crazy" trait that allows for more dramatic actions like trying to get pregnant from someone you just met.
  • Trying for baby relationship status (yes, the same one that I listed under the Relationships update – I'll add it if either of these options wins the vote)


39 comments:

  1. Man, I was reading through these and was like: "Oh, I want that one." Then I kept reading and was like: "Oh, I want that one too!" Then again, and again, and you're making it really hard to decide on just one thing!

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    Replies
    1. Me too. but I think [Romance & Marriage] is the best option.

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  2. Not that my opinion matters but I think Lesbian content should come first, mostly since at its core the game is an erotic game so matters of sex should come first. It'll also save time when other systems (like marriege) come into play, to save time from rewrites

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  3. On the Patreon page, spledidostrich did say that ALL of these will be eventually implemented, just that voters get to pick the order. So they should all eventually make their way into the game.

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  4. Does Improved Pregnancy come with the possibility of condoms failing?

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    Replies
    1. based on past posts/comments by SO, I believe it would.

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  5. To me, it would be enough an "endless" option. It is frustrating to have tons of stuff to see and try while constantly looking at the week count...

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  6. Endless option ! :D

    btw, do you want your game translated in french ?

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the offer! Because of how the text is mixed in with the code it isn't really suitable for translation at this time.
      Also, there are regular changes which would make things awkward as a translator would have to keep going over text as it changes with new versions.

      I might look into translations properly when the final version comes out and things aren't changing any more, but of course that's quite a while off.

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    2. Once you localize it the translation should be pretty easy:

      "One week later, you've packed up your meagre belongings and set off to the unexceptional French city where Ivy lives, and where you have a chance to make a new life. But when you get to the train station you discover the transit workers have all gone on strike so you go home and live your old life instead.

      Fin"

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    3. bigger issue there is how it is coded based on what I have read of what SO has posted.

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  7. In a future update will you add a huge and beyond breast size?

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    1. I don't intend to add further breast sizes, although the game doesn't give precise definitions of what the current ones mean, so there's some wiggle-room to interpret "large" ones as being absolutely enormous if that's your preference.

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  8. I like to know if there going to be a "pull out" thing later on like if you don't have condoms you can do the pull out but if say your a bit drunk there a risk you by get off of him too late or him not pulling out in time

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    Replies
    1. when you ride your man of choice, you can end up in a setup where you aim to pull out and finish some other method, but you dismount to slowly.

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    2. Indeed. The male-dominant sex scenes also have a chance that his attempt to pull out will fail. There's also a risk that he lies about pulling out, depending on his personality, traits and your relationship.

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  9. The lesbian update should definitly be the one up there. By the size, and of how much it changes so many things in the whole game, it should be something to be taken care of sooner rather than later, IMHO.

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  10. Will there be an option to drag a guy into the restroom instead of spamming follow his lead?

    I vote for More Pregnancy for the baby crazy trait!

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    Replies
    1. I imagine possibly given there is ever a "shy" guy and a "bitcher/assertive" girl. But, the game is setup to show the "general" way things work, as far as to sterotype a bit based on what I recall of reading/interacting with SO.
      "Typically" the guy takes the lead.

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  11. Can you add cheats to the public release for Christmas like you did last year? It would be much appreciated.

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    1. As a patron, I agree fully.

      Or, at minimum, a version with a longer duration.

      TBH, I would have no problem with a "christmas present" from SO giving the Patreon version to everyone once a year. :)

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  12. Hey, how do i save a game? I have no idea how to save my current one as I couldn't find any save option in the settings and it's pretty frustrating to start a new one each time.

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    1. Click the 'Save Game' button on the week planner screen, it's just to the right of the 'Start Week' one. The shortcut key is 'S'. It isn't possible to save your game midweek.

      Bear in mind that version updates usually break saves from previous versions, so you should finish any ongoing games you don't want to give up on before updating to a new version.

      My original intention was to have a 'roguelike' style of gameplay where the game would autosave in a single slot every week and you'd be stuck with your decisions, but I implemented manual saving first to facilitate testing and decided that it worked better that way. I might still add an autosave option at some point though.

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  13. So just out of curiosity is it the writing or programming that takes longer?

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    1. Almost always the writing, except where UI changes are concerned.

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    2. well if you ever need help to adjust stuff for new content I'd be willing to help out :)

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    3. Also, if you need to see an example of stuff I've written I can send you something

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    4. Thanks! I am slowly working on a guide for submissions as the way Newlife is written means that short-story style submitted scenes wouldn't work the way they can for some other games.
      It'll probably be a while before it's done though and I'll need to trial it with a small group before it's ready for general release.
      If it proves successful then I'll make a blog post - that won't be imminent though as there's be quite a lot to be done first.

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    5. Cool, let me know if I can help at any point though

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  14. Christmas Release! <3 I wonder if anytime we'll be able to celebrate festivals with friends/partners in-game.

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    1. I did consider having a calendar and seasons at one point early on - the todo list might even have some details buried in it. The clothing system might struggle with wintertime though.

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  15. if you said become the office slave(or something like that) instead of leader i would've gone for that one( i want more coworkers as potential interests and everyone knowing that my MC i willing to put out for all of them is hot), as it is, i will probably go for marriage

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  16. Can't you reprogram the game using more array ID and call functions? This would allow you to create your own editor. You could quickly write something and throw out updates like hot cakes. It would take a long time to make such arrays, sure, but, I bet you have the design for the most part, down, for what the end game of this will be.

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  17. My Ideal:
    1.I recently thinking about a Trait that our char can't get pregnant, this is a sci-fi game so i think it is possible. It will be fun, with some of men(NPC) don't like women who can't get pregnant and we have adopt system.
    2.About Femininity, i think at the start our char will act like a men, most of our choices about clothes and actions will like a men, more femininity clothes and actions will be hidden. As the game go on we will have many choices that will affect our char, changing our char status(stat, personality), unlock some kind of event, actions and clothes while locking the other kind depend on our choices in the progress(for example: we choose the path of a "true women" we will have femininity clothes and actions and vice versa), it can affect our char Hobbies as well.
    Wearing clothes will affect status and story(elegant, sexy or sensual, revealing women; men will like some type of women)
    3.We still have a little amount of event about sexual harass, etc(i still thinking ^^). The game process to fast, i think we need process each day rather than each week, and lastly i think we need an actual char development through the choice we make when process the game rather than we choose it from the start
    It is my personal opinion not some kind of offended, ranting, etc or request. And sorry be cause of my poor English Skill -.-

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    Replies
    1. regarding #1, it was said that it will happen with "pregnancy update" a while ago :)

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  18. Maybe as a suggestion if you marry a jerk or jerk+impregnator, he doesn't like the idea of you working so as a condition for marriage he asks you to quit your job and your career. Instead of working, he gives you an allowance and that's all you have to spend.

    Just a thought.

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