Newlife 0.3.27

Hello everyone,

Version 0.3.27 of Newlife is finished and I've released it on Patreon. Early-access Patrons can find it in the creations section here. The changelog is below.

The previous version will be going public soon. I currently don't have access to the public version of 0.3.26 so I won't be able to upload it today. I'll make it available later this week or, if there proves to be issues with getting that version, I'll upload the patron one.

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 was particularly annoying to implement due to a combination of sickness, writing difficulties and overoptimistic planning. The main addition is the ability to play strip-blackjack as a party game. You can read the rules in-game by choosing the appropriate action when the scene first starts.
This scene is by some distance the largest one to be added to the game - more than a third larger than the most recent sex scene and around 4.5 times the size of the "spin the bottle" one. While this would normally be something for me to be proud of, in this case it looks very much like bad planning. Despite its huge size in the code, the scene doesn't in my opinion provide enough benefit to gameplay to justify the time involved in writing it. 
The fundamental cause is NPC-NPC interaction, and that's something I should really know by now has a tendency to become unmanageably large, so I guess I can only apologise for this. 
I'll try to learn the lesson this time and aim to do better in the future: really I should be aiming for new content to be similar to the original stuff with a strong focus on PC-NPC interaction and minimal interactions between NPCs.



Here's the full changelog:
Major changes & additions:

• Added a new party game: Strip blackjack, aka the most annoying scene to write ever. This is available when starting a sexy game at the house party: you'll either get this one or spin-the-bottle with a 50% chance of each. Whereas previously you could only play a sexy game once per party, you can now play each different one once. If you've already played one of the games and you choose to play a sexy game again then you'll automatically get the one you didn't play before. 

Minor additions & bugfixes:

• Fixes to text issues. Thanks to Cubano, Megh and Kayla for reporting problems they found.
• The NPC added in the last release can now be a custom NPC. Use the INNOCENT_SALES_COLLEAGUE trait to mark them as such – female NPCs only. The female custom NPC guide has been updated to reflect this.

• Fixed a bug with the “tell her to show herself” action reported by Secondarian where the conditions for removing panties and lower-body clothing were reversed, potentially leading to some bizarre situations.
• The long action description will now scroll to the top when an action is selected: previously it would scroll to the bottom which meant the player had to scroll it up to read descriptions from the start. 

Have fun with the new version and let me know if you find any bugs.

Newlife 0.3.26

Hello everyone!

Version 0.3.26 of Newlife is finished and I've released it on Patreon. 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 0.3.25 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 has two main strands of work. 
The first is the implementation of the latest Patreon milestone, a new cheat option that lets players choose a full starting wardrobe instead of having to save up and buy their own clothes. As part of this, I've added some new clothing items that were requested by patrons, although there are still plenty of their ideas that I've added to the todo list for future consideration.
The second strand is a new event chain based around making a friend through work. This potentially allows club-hating characters to make a female friend without relying on talking to them randomly in a nightclub.


Here's the full changelog for 0.3.26:

Major changes & additions:

• Added a new NPC to the sales career, along with 4 events involving them. This branches after the second, which means that you'll get at most 3 of these events in any single playthrough – which ones will depend on your decisions.
• Added a new cheat option to meet the final milestone. This lets you choose from a number of different starting wardrobes instead of beginning with Ivy's ill-fitting hand-me-downs.
• Added a number of new clothing items, mostly based on ideas from patrons.

Minor changes & bugfixes:

• Fixes to text issues. Thanks to Alliterative Acolyte, Drgong, Max Mustermann, Death25, Cubano and Secondarian for reporting problems they found. I also found some myself, but do I get credited in the changelog? Like hell I do!
• Forcing information out of your friend now counts as an act of evil. Thanks to Cubano for reporting this omission.
• Fixed a bug reported by pgiac6 where a mistake in the conditions for the actions following on from a disappointing anniversary made it possible for no actions to be enabled.
• Fixed a bug reported by jayjay78 where a guest could leave but then use some sex-teleportation magic to still try to sleep with the player later in the evening.
• Fixed a bug where knee-length skater dresses weren't being generated.
• Added an alternative description for when you return home with a new baby after giving birth if it isn't your first child.
• Automatic success for befriending attempts now require the highest liking level, rather than the second-highest or better as before. This affects both female and male friends.
• Adjusted colour choices for most clothing to allow Brown and Purple to be picked for some clothing styles they previously wouldn't appear for. This includes the default style used to populate the shop.
• Plunge bras now give a small boost to attractiveness when worn with a lowcut top, as their description says that this is what they're designed for. Yet another reason for people to raise bug reports because their outfit stats aren't the sum of the individual items of clothing...
• Modified outfit-level modifiers for women going braless for many outfit types. In particular, wearing a partially-transparent top with no bra is both very naughty and not very elegant.

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

Newlife 0.3.25

Hello everyone!

Version 0.3.25 of Newlife is finished and I've released it on Patreon. 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 0.3.24 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 adds a new large sex scene, using the cowgirl position as chosen in a vote on patreon. My general approach is to add one per major update, and this is the one for the 0.3.x releases.

The new scene itself is definitely the largest one in a new release, and might even be the biggest in the game outright, despite most of the other big ones having been built up over multiple releases. It's hard to be sure though as some of them are split over several files. Considering that there are multiple new scenes in this release including the fairly-substantial new makeout one, this makes it an absolutely massive update. 

While I'm hoping you'll be pleased with the large amount of new content, I don't plan to make updates of this size a regular thing. 

In this case a mix of over-optimistic planning, the mutli-participant nature of the new scene and the need to put the sex and makeout scenes in the same update contributed to its size, but that's a combination I will need to avoid in the future.

I've said in the past that for a game that's funded on a monthly basis I consider the minimum release schedule to be one version per calendar month unless something really critical happens. That's still been met with this being the update for August. However, the time between releases was about five weeks which is obviously not sustainable - perhaps once in a rare while for an exceptionally large release, but not as a regular thing.

Fortunately, the next two or three updates will be putting the finishing touches to the friendship update rather than adding new major scenes, which tends to be the most time-consuming thing to do. This will include a few new small and medium scenes as well as improvements to some of the recently-added large ones. Those updates certainly shouldn't be as large as this one, and so I'm expecting them to be out in less time.


Here's the full changelog for 0.3.25:

Major changes & additions:

• Added a new full sex scene.
• Added a somewhat-simplified makeout scene that leads into the new sex scene.
• Added 2 new socialisation events that can lead to the new scene.
• Added a new path to one of the house-party actions that's the third and (for now) final way of getting to this scene. Other ways into it will be added in future releases.

Minor changes & bugfixes:

• Fixes to text issues. Thanks to DrGong, Max Musterman, pgiac6, Jayjay78, Death25, Joram78 (any relation to Jayjay or is 78 a popular number?) & centerflag982 (shouldn't that be centerflag78?) for reporting problems they found.
• Disabled NPCs will no longer appear with Name: Not Set in the custom NPC test output. Instead, the name field will not appear for them.
• Fixed a bug reported by death25 where requesting rough treatment from one partner at your house party would cause all future partners in that scene to also be rough.
• Modified the text for some of the gallery scene actions when the pc had her first time with someone she loves as Jayjay78 had quite correctly pointed out that the what the pc said didn't always make sense for the action the player had chosen.
• If YML parsing fails then a disabled placeholder custom NPC will be created with an appropriate error message. This won't affect actual gameplay, but it means that the Test NPCs function will show output informing the player of why the NPC isn't valid, instead of showing nothing because the process errored before creating the custom npc object.
• Automatic outfit generation is now significantly more likely to include underwear for athletic outfits if the pc has large or medium-large breasts, as otherwise it's difficult to work out without a bra. Automatic outfits will now always include one in that circumstance if possible unless the pc has the sultry trait, and the chance is quite a bit higher even for sultry girls.
• Automatic outfit generation can now create athletic outfits using only a sports bra as the top.
• Added a new cheat option that doubles the number of clothes for sale in the shop.
• Rewrote the simple “man caresses you during sex” action following a report by death25 that it wasn't correctly tracking the player's clothing status – in fact this was an old-style action like those in the original 0.1.0 version that had just a single line of text that showed up in all circumstances. It now has tender/rough/normal variants as well as actually checking the pc's clothes before describing her as “naked”.
• Following a suggestion by Cubano, added a small action to the end of the art gallery scene where the pc goes back to experiencing the art as previously the scene ended rather abruptly. I also gave refined characters a small stress reduction, seeing as the scene is in an art gallery after all.
• Female NPCs can now go on the pill and have a fertility cycle similar to the player's, although their fertile/safe weeks won't necessarily be in-sync with yours. This affects text and dialogue relating to impregnation-risk. However, female NPCs will not actually become pregnant for now.
• As requested by Drew on Patreon, when playing through a scene you can now double-click an action to take it.

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

Newlife 0.3.24

Hello everyone!

Version 0.3.24 of Newlife is finished and I've released it on Patreon. 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 0.3.23 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 adds the House Party scene, which is one of the two really key large scenes that were remaining before going to 0.4. Originally envisioned as a large socialisation scene with the pc and her friends, I decided that this limited it too much due to the small number of friend NPCs, so it will now include a number of non-friends. 

The scene is modelled after a student or even a teen house party. It might seem a bit odd that you can get a group in their 40s and 50s together to play spin-the-bottle, but I think it makes for a more interesting setting than a dinner-party would.

There are a lot of potential extensions to this scene, and I'll be revisiting it before the 0.4 update. In particular, there's scope for another sexy party-game: probably some sort of strip card game. In fact, there's almost no end to the potential for these sort of scenes. It would be possible to make an entire adult game just for one party or even just a single party game. In fact, that's something that has been done, although not by me.


Here's the full changelog for 0.3.24:

Major changes & additions:

• Added a new House Party scene. This can be accessed in the weekend-evening timeslot as long as you have at least one friend. After hosting a party, you need to wait four weeks before hosting another, or three if you're outgoing.
• Added a scene for a sexy party game (spin-the-bottle) which can be accessed from house parties. There might well be other games added in the future as well.
• Added a new event for when you get a boyfriend, which lets you drop other man back to acquaintance relationship status instead of dating. This will also make them less likely to ask you on dates although the effect is weaker than “just friends” status. Some characters can also decide to keep quiet about their new relationship and continue getting some on the side.

Minor changes & bugfixes:

• Fixes to text issues. Thanks to Saur, Max Mustermann, Cubano, Nameless, NotYou, Kayla, Atc & Classique75 for reporting problems they found.
• Fixed a bug reported by Cubano where the condition for the “let's be more than friends” action was incorrect.
• Fixed a bug reported by Saur where a lowlife NPC transitioning from the oral scene to the makeout one was losing the flag that blocks the PC's rejection actions.
• Fixed a bug where custom special NPCs with low priority might not get loaded, even though they don't count towards the total NPC limit.
• Following an issue reported by NotYou, added some alternative lines for when your friend encourages you to sleep with an npc so she can hook up with his mate. If she dislikes the NPC she'll now make it a bit clearer that she thinks he's a loser even though she's asking you to have sex with him.
• Added an alternative line requested by Saur for when you're thinking back to your first time and it was with an ugly man who's also your boss, and the pc has the ambitious trait.
• Following a bug report by NotYou, added alternative outcomes to the “flirt” and “butter up suggestively” actions if you've given the pervy client a thrashing in a previous meeting.
• Added GYM_JERK to the custom NPCs, see the updated male Npc guide for details. Please note that the gym jerk has several required traits and the game will override what you set for the custom NPC if they don't meet the requirements.
• Added a new male orgasm description to the missionary scene: this one can trigger for male-start romantic girls having unprotected sex with a man they love. It won't appear if there are higher-priority descriptions so if you're looking for this one then avoid Romantic-personality men as they have an option that's higher in the list.
• Also a new one for the standing scene – this time for when he lies about pulling out (it won't trigger if he does try to pull out but fails).
• As suggested by NotYou, you can now check your stats while shopping for clothing: use the 'C' key to access the character screen.
• Some small adjustments to the conditions unlocking the Romantic behaviour to make it less ubiquitous for romantic characters meeting strangers but easier for other characters towards their boyfriend.
• Added some new dialogue suggested by Saur where a repairman can reference how the PC paid last time.
• When you call a repairman, if you lied and didn't pay him on his previous visit then you'll now need extremely high charm to get away with lying again. This only applies if you didn't pay him at all. Lying but then paying with either money or sex doesn't count.

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

Plans for the near future

Hi all, I wrote a rough outline of upcoming releases for a comment on Patreon, so I figured I'd copy them here.

As with all such discussions of future additions, these are my thoughts at this moment in time and might be subject to change. You shouldn't consider them a binding promise.

0.3.24: Big new friendship scene (no details here... beg the inner-circle for info if you must know!)
0.3.25: Another big new scene that I'm keeping secret-ish but will involve the outcome of a current vote.
0.4.0: final touches to friendship scenes (e.g. adding sophisticated friends to the bar scene). This ends the friendship update. I might need two releases if there turn out to be a lot of final touches - I'll go over my notes at the time and decide then.
0.4.1: A release covering additions that aren't based on a particular major update. This might include things like UI improvements, legwear, or generally any changes that don't have an obvious place.
0.4.2: Probably the PMW release, assuming the vote's done in time.
0.4.3: probably similar to 0.4.1, as I doubt I'll have finished the 0.5 vote yet.
0.4.4: Assuming the vote has finished, this will be the start on whatever voters chose for the 0.5 major update.

Newlife 0.3.23

Hello everyone!

 
Version 0.3.23 of Newlife is finished and I've released it on Patreon. Early-access Patrons can find it in the creations section here. The changelog is below.

Version of 0.3.22 is now public. You can download it using the links on the right-hand side of the blog. The 0.3.22 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.

Here's the full changelog for 0.3.23:

Major changes & additions:

• Fixed the issue of the player being able to cook dinner in the apartment even if she was treated to a meal by an NPC earlier in the evening, an incongruous date night behaviour that could immediately pull players out of their immersive Newlife experience. As the most important change in this release, it deserves pride of place at the top of the Major Changes section.
• Added custom female NPCs. See the custom NPC guide for details. This is linked from http://splendidostrich.blogspot.co.uk/p/custom-npcs.html.
• You can now ask a man to be “just friends” with you, which will deter him from making sexual advances in most circumstances. This is currently done via the “important talk” action at home, although I may add other opportunities for it if it proves to be a popular change. This status is automatically removed if you act provocatively towards him. This functionality is not related to friendship directly: you can be “just friends” with someone who isn't actually your friend – you don't even need to like each other. Maybe I should think of a less confusing name for it!

Minor changes & bugfixes:

• Fixes to text issues. Thanks to Kayla, Saur, NotYou and Cubano for reporting problems they found.
• Fixed the problem reported by Cubano where the custom NPC tooltip was just appearing on one line.
• Fixed a bug reported by Mihir where men with the jerk personality didn't have a reduced chance of being conscientious, and a second one where character types weren't being checked properly when determining if they got the Magic Fingers trait.
• Men can now invite themselves back home with you at the end of a date. The player can refuse them, but only when passing a willpower test.
• Added quite a few alternatives to the “his penis twitches inside you” line that appears when your sexual partner is about to orgasm during unprotected sex.
• Added some more descriptive text when changing into a sexy outfit at home, if that outfit means you're naked or just wearing panties.
• Added a new nightclub action for NPCs where they can stop by briefly to talk with you instead of chatting you up. This is primarily intended for those under the “just friends” curse, but can be used by others in some circumstances.
• Fixed a bug with uneditable character creation where some checkboxes were being re-enabled on loading templates or selecting the “block rough content” option – this was reported by NotYou on the 0.3.13 version and is finally off the todo list.

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

A screenshot

Hi all, I'm just doing some final testing for the next release. I thought I'd make a quick post to share this screenshot. Is it a bug, or is Adam just that seductive?

And yes, I did notice that it says "gives reaches". No need to report that one - unless it's still there when you get your hands on the next version!