Newlife 0.4.12

Hello everyone!

Newlife 0.4.12 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 verson adds the blackmail scene from the custom scene example. I know that the example blog posts aren't finished yet: my keyboard time has been a bit limited this past week due to a (hopefully minor) injury so I'm putting them off for next month. You can see the finished version in the additional_scenes/official_content folder and it's hooked and playable in the game itself without using the testing scene.

Writers should be aware that this version makes a lot of changes to the custom scene system - things like renaming methods to be more consistent. This should make writing easier in the long run but for now you'll probably need to run a find & replace over any scenes you've written to update the names that have changed.

Changelog:

Major changes & additions:

• Added a new random event: the cheating-blackmail one from the custom scene example blog posts.

Minor changes & bugfixes:

• Fixes to text issues. Thanks to Jason Montana, OrangeJuice, Saur, Ammut, Classique75, NewFace, Saint Destiny, Death25, Antage, Megh and NoName for reporting some of these.
• Doormat and Likes_to_share traits are now enabled for custom NPCs, thanks to Megh for reminding me of this.
• Fixed an issue where custom scenes with invalid yaml could fail without returning a useful error message to the player.
• Updated some logic around old pc feeling bad about cheating text that hadn't been updated with 0.4.11 changes, as reported by blog commenter “Nobody”.
• As suggested by FutureSight, the blackjack game will now let you hit even when you have 21, for players who are deliberately trying to lose.
• The makeout scenes are now a bit stricter about what counts as cheating: if you're with someone other than your partner and you want to not cheat then you need to end makeouts immediately, even if this means using the harsh “stop touching me” action. If this action is disabled due to a failed willpower test then you may have no possible actions that will not count as cheating – this is a consequence of getting into compromising situations with other men as a low-willpower character.
• Relaxed the conditions for your partner demanding rough-mode after he finds you cheating.
• Following a request by FutureSight, female-start character creation will now randomly set work experience. This does not happen for male-start as their work-experience is set in the male template before feeding into female-character-creation. Work experience relates to the character's past life (which is implied to represent the player themselves in the near future) so it shouldn't be changed by Ivy's machine.
• Relaxed the conditions for NPCs demanding the PC get pregnant as a way of proving her commitment when they discover her cheating. Previously this wouldn't happen if they already had a child together, but this condition has been removed now.
• Increased the event weight for the event where your bf catches you cheating, as suggested by Blargan.
• Beating up the pervy client now checks the characters' strength values instead of just requiring a fixed fitness value.
• The NPC browser now sorts NPCs, first by sex and then by name.
• Fixed a case where the cheating confrontation scene wasn't ending immediately when the PC's partner dumps her.

Changes for user-submitted content:

• Important: While writing the custom scene I found the inconsistency in method names was annoying for writing. As such they've been standardised so that e.g. enjoy changes now use addWEnjoy instead of addPCEnjoy and medium-scale modifiers now all use “medium” instead of “med”. E.g. addArousalMedium. Method calls using the old names will now be invalid and will need to be changed.
• Additionally, the methods using Btm as an abbreviation for bottom have been renamed to use the full word.
• The methods to get and change liking levels all now use “liking” instead of some using “liking” and some “like”.
• The following methods have been renamed to work better with Velocity's property lookup rules (i.e. starting with “is” or “get”) or for consistency with other changes:

hasLaceTop → isLaceTopped

likesPlayersBreasts → getLikesPlayersBreasts

dislikesPlayersBreasts → getDisikesPlayersBreasts

dislikesNpcBreasts → getDislikesBreasts

hasCheatedWith → getCheatedWith

hasAnxiety → isAnxious

• Some methods still start with other prefixes (e.g. hasCondom), if I felt their names wouldn't make sense if replaced with get- or is-
• Rigel created an awesome user-defined language file for notepad++ that does syntax highlighting for Newlife's vm text files of velocity text within tags. They've kindly given permission for this to be included in the release and it can be found in the documentation folder. If you find this useful then be sure to give Rigel a thumbs-up if you see them online!

• Updated the example for adding items to a list, based on some feedback from Rigel. The old example would send unwanted text to the output because the list.add method returns a boolean which needs to handled (by assigning it to a variable) or it'll end up in the output text.
• Added the makeFriend and endFriendship methods to NPCs.
• Added the isAllowedMoreFriends method to the PC.
• Fixed an issue reported by Eulexia where the $scene context item couldn't be referenced in action short- or long-descriptions, even though some methods like capitalise and addPossessiveSuffix have obvious potential uses there.
• Added getCheatingSeverity() method to male NPCs.
• Added clearCheating to male NPCs.
• Added new custom scene transitions: ANAL_SEX, STANDING_FRONT_SEX, STANDING_BEHIND_SEX, CHEATING_CONFRONTATION.
• Added a method $isNpcHidden to the Scene object that lets writers test if an NPC has been hidden via the hideNpc method.
• Added the getStrength method to all characters, returning an integer value.
• Added the getGirlOrWoman method to the PC.
• Added 2 new testing traits to NPCs, for situations where a scene needs more than one.
• Added isNpcRough and isRoughAgreed methods to the scene object.
• Added isClothesDisarrayed to the PC object.
• Added getOrgasms to the PC.
• Added getCockDesc to male NPCs – not sure how I missed that one in the previous version, but it's in there now.
• Added setActiveMaleNpcNoArousal along with updates to the documentation for this method and the similar setActiveMaleNpc one to clarify when each should be used.

The new method is intended for use in the intro for sub-scenes whose parent has already used the male NPC's attractiveness to modify arousal. This lets the writer have them stored as active without double-counting the modifier.

• Writers can now check and set relationship flags on NPCs.
• Added clearPostSexFlags method to the scene object. This is important for clearing down post-makeout flags after they've been handled in a returning section, so they don't confuse the situation if the player transitions to another makeout later in the scene chain.
• Added a list of commonly-used scene flags to the enum reference (although they technically aren't an enum, as a flag can be any String). These may be useful to control how sub-scenes work, or to handle specific situations on returning from them.
• The custom scene testing scene now sorts NPCs by alphabetical order when they're being chosen, so you can name your custom NPC “Aardvark” if you want him top of the list.
• As suggested by Rigel, text is now trimmed of trailing and leading whitespace before being sent to the UI. This will not prevent unwanted whitespace within the text (e.g. mid-sentence line breaks) so watch out for those in testing.
• Improved the error message returned when a condition from the yaml file fails evaluation in Velocity.

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