Newlife 0.4.6

Hello everyone!

Newlife 0.4.6 has been released. Early-access Patrons can find it in the creations section here. The changelog is below.

The previous version is now public. You can download it using the links on the right-hand side of the blog. The public version's 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 a zipfile containing Newlife. Once unzipped, you'll see a folder containing .jar and .exe files. Either one of these will run the game. 
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.

This version reworks the stress system. I'm short of sleep this week and struggling with a headache as a consequence, so I won't write much for now. Hopefully the changelog will explain things. Otherwise I'll put up another post later with more information.

Major changes & additions:

• Extensive rebalancing/rework of the stress game mechanic. The aim is that instead of gradually increasing or decreasing stress will now quickly increase but can be rapidly dropped down again through rest actions or having a good sex life. However, the relaxation actions have no other benefit so relaxing to control stress has the opportunity cost of using up one of the player's limited timeslots that could otherwise be spent improving skills or relationships. Details as follows:
• New stat Anxiety which is gained if you spend a week at high stress levels. Anxiety cancels out skill gains on a 1-to-1 basis, so if you have an anxiety of 2 and gained 3 points of a skill your skill would actually increased by 1 and anxiety would drop to 0. Anxiety also has some other game effects such as influencing willpower tests and blocking certain actions. I expect most players will attempt to keep anxiety at or near to zero.
• Anxiety is normally only reduced when cancelling skill improvements, but it can also be dealt with through some special means: currently through spa visits or when ambitious characters get promotions.
• Significantly increased stress gain from most sources, in particular the weekly stress gain for the sales job is now 35/40/50 for relaxed/neither/ambitious.
• Massively increased stress reduction from most sources. Relaxation now has a base reduction of 30, increased by 5 for each point of improvement through buyable Stuff (so a maximum of -55). This is halved on the date-night timeslot as an incentive for players to go out and party. Other sources of stress reduction have also been increased across the board.

Minor changes & bugfixes:

• Fixes to text issues. Thanks to Saur and OrangeJuice for reporting problems they found.
• Fixed a bug with skill gains that could lead to skills incorrectly dropping when they were supposed to increase.
• Fixed a bug reported by Lilbobchicago where the pc wasn't getting dressed when the client's wife finds her undressed, even though the text says that she is.
• Reduced some skill training activity effects as it's a bit too easy to max out skills. Ideally it shouldn't be possible to max out every skill over the 52-week duration of a normal game so players will have to choose their characters hobbies and interests. This will be helped by the addition of new skills later on as well, but that's out of scope for the 0.4.x updates.
• Saint Destiny reported that the new proposal scenes in 0.4.5 weren't taking into account the possibility of the boyfriend being the (already married) boss from your sales job. New text has been added to all of these to cover this possibility.
• Fixed a bug where shopping for clothes was increasing instead of decreasing stress. Also increased the values. It now increases the fashion skill by 1 point and reduces stress by 5 + (fashion skill)/5. This is still inferior to dedicated skill-training or relaxation actions but hopefully it isn't so much worse that players will feel compelled to minimise the number of timeslots they spend on shopping. Also added a stress reduction effect (20 points) to the “shop for your flat” action.
• Background relationship improvements from the socialise action are now halved for non-outgoing characters with anxiety > 0.
• Added some lines for certain player-characters when cheating, along with reduced enjoyment for those characters. These generally only apply if the pc is guilty about cheating, which is determined based on stats (specifically Nice, Bitchy, Romantic) and relationship levels.
• Slightly reduced the willpower bonus when the player-character dislikes a man.
• Following a suggestion from Saur, romantic characters will now get a willpower bonus if they're in a relationship with a man other than the one they're with, they have at least some love with their partner (anything about the minimum level) and they aren't completely head-over-heels in love with the other man.
• Added the aromantic trait suggested by Patrick Daitya. This is equivalent to the NPC's cold-hearted trait in that it prevents you from gaining love points. It has the more neutral name 'aromantic' rather than 'cold-hearted' because while the latter is typically limited to NPCs with the Selfish personality the player-character trait can be taken by any PC who isn't romantic.
• Added an alternative to the “tell him you're unprotected” action requested by Hashes. This one is available if you're on the pill and involves the pc lying about it.
• When playing a secret-mod character, the endgame scenes will now give you the option of seeing your hidden stats before the game ends.

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