Raaaaape!

Hi all,

This is a post I've had sitting on my hard drive for over a month - I anticipate it might lead to a lot of typing for me so I've been reluctant to post it while my keyboard time was limited. 

I feel that I'm getting better day by day though so I'm posting it now before I forget about it completely. Just remember that I'm still not 100% so don't expect me to be getting into long written discussions!

I'd like to talk about a rather divisive fetish: non-consent.

Nonconsent is a popular fetish that's often requested by players. However, it has some key issues that prevent it being part of the main Newlife release. I'm going to put them in a bullet-point list, because I love bullet-points so much that I might put a path into the wedding scene where the player gets to marry one.

• Firstly, while it's often requested I also often hear from people who are happy it isn't included. While it could be gated behind a trait similar to block_rough, it's questionable whether it's a good idea for me to be dedicating my development/writing time to content that I know a significant number of players actively dislike.
• Secondly, "glorification of rape and sexual violence" is forbidden under Patreon's community guidelines. This seems like it would block a lot of potential nonconsent content.
• Third, it's legally questionable for a UK-based developer. While writing the guides for the user-submissions content I found the Crown Prosecution Service's guidelines on the Obscene Publications Act, a law which has been used to arrest people for text-only content in the past. This has a section on content most commonly prosecuted which includes "realistic portrayals of rape".

In summary: Non-consensual content can never be featured in the main Newlife release. It isn't something I'll be working on and it also won't be allowed on the PMW voting list or accepted in scenes submitted for inclusion.

However, with the addition of user-submissions, there may be avenues for it to be included as a separate add-on that wouldn't be affected by the above:

• The first issue is essentially a problem with the efficient use of my limited development time. However, if the nonconsent content is principally written by a team of volunteers then it wouldn't affect other content
• The second one is only an issue for content on Patreon. If it's an add-on distributed separately then that shouldn't be a problem
• The OPA only applies to people who publish content. If I'm not directly involved in creating this add-on and I'm not the one who distributes it then I think that would be safe for me. For example, the team creating it could host it on a blog that they control, and I could simply have a link to their site from this blog here. Of course the people who do make the non-consent addition might have to worry about the OPA, but that wouldn't be a concern if they aren't based in the UK.

I've set up a discussion board on Discord to allow volunteers to contribute towards a community-created rape add-on for Newlife.

This will be a sort of semi-official project that won't be written, edited or distributed by me but that I will link to from the blog so players have an easy way of accessing it.

It'll also need a way of hooking into the main game without being restricted to the testing scene, but that needn't be an insurmountable problem – I'll discuss this further with the NC writers when/if a group of them have got together and figured out what sort of NC content they want to add.

There are some ground rules I want to put in place. These should all be common sense, but my time on the internet has taught me to never assume common sense from every member of a group of random online strangers!

• First, the NC add-on absolutely must not risk legal consequences for players. As such, it must not include any sexual content involving under-18s, including sexualised descriptions of them or them being present while someone else has sex.
• Second, if I'm going to link to something and help it connect up to my work then it shouldn't risk negative consequences for me, be they personal, financial or legal. This shouldn't be an issue, but don't do anything dumb like using the add-on to rile up easily-offended people who are likely to form an online hate mob.
• The add-on should be the volunteers' own work and should not include any copyrighted characters or real-life people. I don't want to have to deal with people sending in cease-and-desists or plagarism lawsuits.
• The add-on should focus on nonconsent and related content only. Consensual content should be submitted for inclusion in the main-game, as this lets it also be enjoyed by people who aren't into rape.
• Extreme fetishes other than nonconsent shouldn't be included in this add-on. It's supposed to be the rape add-on, not the "every fetish imaginable" one! If the NC add-on is successful then I'm open to starting similar projects for some other extreme fetishes but the aim is that they would have separate downloads so people could pick and choose the ones they're interested in.
• Distribution will be something I'll discuss in more detail with the NC team: probably they'll need to set up a blog or something, but that can wait until something's ready for players. However, any distribution must be gated behind an "are you over 18" interstitial and it must make clear to the player what sort of content it includes (i.e. rape) before they download and play it.
• The add-on should be playable before being released. Something that crashes all the time or runs into a bunch of "to be continued" dead-ends isn't really suitable for Newlife.
• As I'm not involved in the add-on's development I also won't be able to help with bugfixing. As such, the people who make it should be prepared to take error/typo reports from players and fix them.

The first stage towards this is for NC volunteers to get together on the discord, talk about what they want to work on collaboratively and maybe start prototyping outlines for a scene or two. I won't be organising the group or working as part of it, but once they've got an idea of what sort of scenes they want to add first then we can discuss how they can connect into the game.

If you want to be part of this group and work on NC content then head to the Newlife Discord and check out the nc-discussion channel under the "Nonconsent Project" category.

Have fun, and remember, Newlife is entirely fictional and I do not condone using it as a guide on how to behave in real-life!

Newlife 0.4.13

Hello everyone!

Newlife 0.4.13 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 is the first of two PMW releases. There were two joint winners for the vote and I've had some issues with work this month due to an injury so I decided to just have 2 separate releases instead of trying to get it all into one.

This one is focused on manipulative content for the cunning trait. The largest chunk of new content is probably the lowlife changes: choose "throw her under the bus" to access this path. The next release will implement the other PMW winner, which was content related to a jerk friend of the PC's boyfriend.

This release also marks the first user-written scene to be included into Newlife - great timing considering I'd been having a bad month until Rigel swooped in to save the day!

Changelog:

Major changes & additions:

• Added new content based around the cunning trait. Some of this is not available for Nice characters. This includes:
  • Cheating at the card game
  • Convincing your innocent friend to get involved with the lowlives.
  • Getting the innocent colleague to sort out the boss' problem during a presentation at work (innocent NPCs really are getting the short end of the stick in this release)
  • Cheating at the partner dance contest. Some of the existing solo cheating options are also now available for non-bitchy cunning characters but players still need the bitchy trait to access the crueller paths.
  • Accessing the “helping an impregnator” friendship event. I'm not convinced this shockingly evil scheme makes much sense for a non-evil character but I've had a lot of requests to slacken the requirements and it is relevant for cunning characters.
• Included a new scene that was written by Rigel. In this scene you run into the lowlives again when on a day out with your friend. Anyone interested in Velocity should definitely check out Rigel's work. Their skill with Velocity certainly exceeds mine so we can all learn from them!

Minor changes & bugfixes:

• Fixes to text issues. Thanks to Death25, OrangeJuice, Megh, Pgiac6 and Thomas123 for reporting some of these.
• Fixed an error reported by Antage in the blackmail scene when you use the “friends don't blackmail” action.
• Fixed a bug where “addFlag” was being called instead of “hasFlag” in one of the blackmail scene conditions.
• The cunning trait now gives +10 to starting charm.
• As requested by FutureSight, the “shop for your flat” action now shows your money when the scene starts and in the describe-scene text and window-shopping action.
• Modified NPC preference scoring so that impregnators should be better disposed towards the “have 3 kids” vow request unless they don't like children.
• Added a new male orgasm text for the first time you sleep with your boss, as long as it's in the missionary position and without a condom.
• The game will now generate 4 lowlives, as there's a chance that the new path can block one from being available for the befriending scene so there needs to be a replacement. The scene itself still only uses 3, chosen randomly from the available ones.

Changes for user-submitted content:

• Yaml files can now include an optional characterDescriptionTextId entry to override the default character descriptions: see the yml syntax guide for details. If you want to use the default functionality then you should leave this entry out completely.
• The haveOrgasm method is now also available for male NPCs: you can thank Rigel for pointing out this omission in their scene submission.

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