Newlife 0.4.16: do you hear wedding bells?

Hello everyone!

Newlife 0.4.16 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 release adds the ability to get married, along with a first pass at the many parts of the game this will affect.
This is a big deal both for your character and for the code. Marriage's impact is extremely wide-ranging so it's likely I'll still be polishing and improving this over several releases. 
The same goes for the wedding-day scene itself. This could be seen as the game's culminating moment and will need a suitably large amount of content. It wouldn't be possible to fit everything into one version: as you can see from the changelog, this one is hefty enough as-is! 
This version handles a fairly straightforward path through the wedding without special circumstances. The wedding currently consists of a ceremony and a wedding-night. Later versions will add to this with special wedding paths (like the naked wedding), unusual circumstances (a desperate attempt by a rejected lover to win you over, perhaps?) and more in-depth content like interactions with wedding guests and probably an actual wedding reception.

Changelog:

Major changes & additions:

• Wrote a first version of the marriage scene for standard weddings. I'll be building up the wedding content over several releases but for now there's a functional if simple wedding ceremony that allows you to marry your fiance. Special marriages (like the naked wedding or public consummation) are not supported yet. The public consummation option is ignored and doesn't affect the scene, while agreeing a naked wedding will stop the wedding scene from being available.
• Wrote a simple wedding-night scene. This has special text for vow activation so you might find it better to disable the “activate vows before marriage” option if you'd set it while playing previous versions that didn't include marriage.
• Added the formal outfit for NPCs. The PC has no scenes where she wears one at present.
• Added a new clothing slot for men: jackets. This is handled in existing scenes where the man's outfit type allows for him to be wearing one.
• Updates to existing content to handle the MARRIED relationship status. This is another thing I'll likely need to work on over time as it affects an awful lot of current scenes. If you see something that doesn't make sense post-marriage then please report it and I'll look into changes.
• Updates to existing content to support cohabiting with your husband. The game assumes that you are living together once married. The implementation is currently fairly shallow but still touches quite a few existing scenes: living with your partner will tend to restrict your options to hook up with other men. As with general marriage content, this is something that touches a lot of existing content and it's possible some has been missed: let me know if you see something that doesn't make sense when you're living with your partner.
• One new random event (for married couples). For now husbands still have fewer events than boyfriends as certain events have been blocked post-marriage because they wouldn't make sense for a married or cohabiting couple. I'll be adding more events for husbands in upcoming releases.

Minor changes:

• Reworked how friendship effects are handled internally, allowing them to be added to custom NPCs.
• As requested by Karoak, custom NPCs can now have their friendship and partner effect set. The npc guides have been updated with allowable values.
• As requested by Monokuma, the dance student, teacher and judge can now all be set as custom characters. See the custom NPC guide for details.
• Added a new makeout action (loving pregnancy-focused clothed grinding from behind when the PC is with child).
• Added another makeout action where a shy+low-self-esteem character might fail to reject an attempt to remove some of her lower-body clothing. Unfortunately, after writing this I looked over the code again and it seems that the specific situation (lower-body clothing removal + PC having the REJECT response) doesn't actually appear in the game at present. Still, the action's there in case a scene gets added where the conditions are right.
• Added a new marriage-related MO action.
• Some bad partner effects will now cause low-self-esteem characters to gradually fall in love because they feel a bad boyfriend is what they deserve.
• Babies' ages are now tracked and can be seen in the character screen. This does not mean that the game has content for children growing up: the game's designed for a 1-year duration, so your kids growing up is very much out of scope.
• The lost phone event will now show up about 20% less frequently.
• As requested over PM on Patreon, I've added an option to enable older ages for the PC in the character creation screen: tick the checkbox in the options screen for this. However, older PCs are not officially supported and there will be some text and game-mechanics that don't match the PC's age . I have reduced fertility for older PCs with 50s and older getting a very large reduction unless they've taken a fertility treatment. Otherwise, they're treated the same as younger women.
• Added a new special name reaction from Ivy in the male-start intro section... it's been a while since I put in a new one of these, even though I know it's what people really play the game for. Sorry folks!
• The willpower text for walking home alone from the club when with a man at the end of the night is now more difficult (although still not especially hard). Also added a similar check to the equivalent action when you're at the bar with a female friend.
• The option to tentatively touch a man's penis is now disabled for sultry characters or for non-shy ones at high arousal levels.
• Added a section at the end of the vow-discussion scene where you decide whether or not these vows should be made public at the wedding ceremony. Shy and Refined characters will have trouble accepting this sort of thing as most possible vows are sexual or otherwise personal, although you will get the option at the cost of stress if your partner requests it.
• The special clothes-shopping section of the male befriending scene will now attempt to use standard outfit creation methods for the outfit chosen for the PC.
• As suggested by OrangeJuice NPCs will not ask the PC on dates immediately after a major bad relationship change such as a breakup or the PC fleeing the altar.
• The 'About' section now has a list of contributors whose scenes are in Newlife.
• Instead of failing silently, exceptions in the scene description will now show the error message in the UI. Unlike exceptions when processing actions this will not cause the scene to end. This may sometimes be helpful in custom scene testing but remember that changes to the yml/vm files will not be picked up until the scene is exited (with finishScene or returnToParent) and restarted.
• A few improvements to how the trying-for-baby status is handled in a few scenes. This will still need another content pass later on though. It remains only accessible through Vows. This will also change at some point, but not in this release.

Changes for user-submitted content:

• Added a new isMarried method to the player object so writers can easily check if the PC has a husband. Like isSingle, this checks against all NPCs: if you want to see if she's married to a specific character use the npc getRelationship method.
• Added methods allowing access to Jackets for male NPCs as well as new entries in the documentation. Jackets can appear currently on going-out, business, wedding and formal outfits and are likely to be added to casual ones in the future. It's important that you check for jackets before writing actions that open/remove the NPC's shirt: the jacket should be open or not worn for the shirt to be opened, and it should not be worn if the shirt is to be removed.
• Added basicDesc methods to access 1 or 2 word descriptions of male clothing. E.g. getTrousersBasicDesc will return something like “trousers” or “jeans” or “pyjama bottom”. This may sometimes fit better in a sentence than the longer descriptions.
• Added a new scene transition that can be taken in custom scenes: DANCE_TOGETHER.
• Added a new scene flag that affects the makeout and oral scenes: DONT_UNDRESS. This is used in the wedding-night path where the PC asks to leave her wedding dress on. It also disables the action where she removes her legwear but does not affect removal of lower-body clothing or underwear.
• Added a new scene flag that affects the HomeDate scene: HUSBAND_AWAY_FOR_NIGHT. This allows an NPC to sleep over. It should only be set if the PC lives with her partner and the NPC in question is not him.
• Custom scenes should now support NPCs being null and this can be tested via the custom scene testing scene (the null option will be at the bottom of the character list). Scenes where an NPC might be null will need to account for this by checking for it before calling methods on the object. However, this will be a rare situation. You do not need to have null-checks unless your preconditions allow for a null NPC. The main situation where this might happen would be having the PC's boyfriend as a hidden NPC so the scene can retrieve things like his name. Even then, null-checks would only be needed if the preconditions allow the PC to be single. A scene that requires her to be in a relationship (like the blackmail one) can assume that the PC's partner is non-null.
• New method for npcs: isCohabiting. This returns true if the PC lives with the NPC and is currently only true for married couples: I've no plans to change this but the method's separate from marriage checks just in case. There's one for the player object too: isLivingWithPartner. This will let you check if she's living with someone even if he isn't an NPC in the scene.

Bugfixes:

• Fixes to text issues. Thanks to OrangeJuice, MadCat, “…?” (not a typo, their username is an ellipsis and a question mark) and Saur for reporting some of these.
• Updated how the jerk friend talk handles virginity following a bug report from MadCat, although there may still be some edge cases that end up being a bit odd. In particular you'll now only get 1 of the 3 virgin lines (instead of all of them) and they won't appear for sultry characters (who get a different discussion of virginity). He also won't ask your bf if you're using condoms if you're a virgin. You can still get the “sheepishly admits you haven't had sex” line if you aren't a virgin but you haven't slept with your current bf.
• Added a line of text to an action in the jerk friend introduction scene that would previously have had none.
• Fixed a bug where the FASHIONABLE trait was being added to every non-dull man. It's now a rare-ish trait as intended.
• Fixed an issue reported by MadCat where the jerk friend's alcohol-seduction attempt could fire even when the PC was knowingly pregnant despite the game preventing pregnant characters from drinking alcohol in other circumstances.
• Changed how Vow activation worked to prevent potential issues if the pre-marriage-vows option gets changed mid-game. Changing the option after vows have been activated during engagement will no longer de-activate them for that relationship, unless the engagement is broken off.
• Fixed an issue that allowed the “always use the pill” vow to put the PC on the pill even when she's already pregnant.

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