Java Newlife [v0.8.10] [Splendid Ostrich]

[sta123]

The 'Splendid Ostrich is a lazy thief' narrative crops up a lot here. I've poked through the de-obfuscated code in the past and have been able to (crudely) compare a couple of versions from the past and present. From that I think it's feasible that planning and writing the code & content I see takes the time between releases, and there's no evidence there that SO puts less effort into versions now than in the past.

Newlife has a very - I'd argue overly - expansive game design, which means that, even by interactive fiction standards, an unusually large volume of content has to be written and coded for each short piece of gameplay. It's implemented in custom code that's difficult to refactor, which means almost all new content can only realistically be written by SO, not commissioned, and that content generally has to end up being sort of awkwardly bolted on to the existing content.

Either of those issues alone would make it a project I'd never consider supporting on Patreon, because the extra resources I give are unlikely to result in extra content, but that's just my opinion. To me it's a messy and inefficient game, but that's different from lazy, and a long way from criminal.

 

[Deleted member 4322938]

Probably best if he just restarted. The content itself is great, but the community would have already written Ostrich a full world if the code wasn't so difficult. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there's anything in the game which couldn't be replicated more easily in your average twine game.

Also, any chance of 7.5?

 

[stochastic]

Probably best if he just restarted. The content itself is great, but the community would have already written Ostrich a full world if the code wasn't so difficult. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there's anything in the game which couldn't be replicated more easily in your average twine game.

It could be rewritten as a Twine game, but it would be a large amount of work and you would not be able to use any of the existing custom scenes (neither the ones that are part of the game in official_content nor any of the scenes distributed separately) without completely rewriting them in the Twine story format you chose (Sugarcube, Harlowe, etc). Newlife tracks a large amount of internal state, has a lot of internal logic, and an extensive API (see the documentation in under additional_scenes), which would be extremely difficult to recreate in pure Twine. So instead of a bunch of Java code, you'd be writing a bunch of JavaScript code.

So it could be done in Twine, but the average Twine game has little to no custom JavaScript, whereas this would involve a very large amount of JavaScript coding. I don't see how this would be an improvement.

 

[Pajonk]

Hey now, that's actually too far. It's enough to say he doesn't deserve the money he gets.

Nobody deserves to catch a plague. Unless they were the ones who started it.

That's why i was careful with my post, i didn't say he should get sick, i just said he should be in the same room with sick people.
But ultimately i was of course kidding, i don't want anyone to get sick.

 

[sta123]

Probably best if he just restarted. The content itself is great, but the community would have already written Ostrich a full world if the code wasn't so difficult. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there's anything in the game which couldn't be replicated more easily in your average twine game.

Newlife has a complex game world but uses a storylet structure for many of its scenes: Each such sequence is a short narrative (storylet) which describes a particular scene, is initialised by the game world, and feeds back the results of the player's actions into the game world. There's been an attempt to represent these storylets in a form simple enough for contributors to create using YAML + Velocity, but the result hasn't seen much takeup by SO or contributors.

Community contributions are a possible source of content, but if SO can shift complexity out of the storylets and back into the game engine then I think commissioned writing could feasibly form a lot of Newlife's content. If the storylets (not the entire game) are implemented in a more common format like Ink or a Twine variant then it's even more feasible.

However, from the examples I've seen it seems a lot of the real complexity of writing for Newlife is in herding the mass of boolean flags - character trait flags and event tracking flags - in order to shape the dynamic text within each storylet into a form that fits the grammar of the storylet and the narrative of the story so far. Unless you reduce the number of tracked traits, I'm not sure you can reduce that complexity without replacing Newlife's traits with a more abstract system. I don't think SO can implement that without a complete rewrite of the bulk of Newlife's code. At that point you're talking about a new game.

 

[Kimitiri]

Any chance for new version?

 

[CreepyGhost]

Any chance for new version?

Wait 2 more years for actual new content. Playing with minor fixes won't change anything mate.

 

[Pajonk]

So what are you guys playing lately? Are there any similar games to this one? But with more content obviously.

 

[souldead341]

So what are you guys playing lately? Are there any similar games to this one? But with more content obviously.

Well, Accidental Woman and Girllife (both are on this site) both are life sims focused on female PCs. They (unfortunately in my opinion) are far more complex in gameplay, having you manage a hell of a lot more things in the character's life.

 

[CreepyGhost]

Well, Accidental Woman and Girllife (both are on this site) both are life sims focused on female PCs. They (unfortunately in my opinion) are far more complex in gameplay, having you manage a hell of a lot more things in the character's life.

Girl Life has cheats for the needs, relations, money etc, so it can be super easy and less complex. But the real problem with QSP games, are the size. But yeah, both games you mentioned are pretty much what Pajonk is looking for.

 

[LabRat1]

Girl Life has cheats for the needs, relations, money etc, so it can be super easy and less complex. But the real problem with QSP games, are the size. But yeah, both games you mentioned are pretty much what Pajonk is looking for.

Personal issue for me as well with Girl life is the fact you have to download literally gigabytes of straight up porn onto your computer. Along with the fact that it can mess up immersion with the fact it's not the same person in the images, just pulled based on tags from the scene and clothing you're wearing. Would be nice if they added a dynamic pixel art option I see a lot of games use. Have separate images for the hairstyles, clothing etc. then layer it all together as needed. But especially considering you can mess with the MC's age and sizes, it can easily not line up with the pictures being shown.

 

[Blackrockomega]

and sizes

don't get me started on the sizes. breast sizes after a certain point all looks the same despite the description saying otherwise. and they themselves admit on keeping it the same size.

 

[CreepyGhost]

Personal issue for me as well with Girl life is the fact you have to download literally gigabytes of straight up porn onto your computer. Along with the fact that it can mess up immersion with the fact it's not the same person in the images, just pulled based on tags from the scene and clothing you're wearing. Would be nice if they added a dynamic pixel art option I see a lot of games use. Have separate images for the hairstyles, clothing etc. then layer it all together as needed. But especially considering you can mess with the MC's age and sizes, it can easily not line up with the pictures being shown.

Indeed GL can be messy, but it has tons of content. It is (maybe) the best freeroam-sandbox game you can find. As for the dynamics, yea, that would be better. But that would need a pro PS user, since pixelated art is NOT what this game represents. So yeah...

 

[RudyMan]

I just cant understand why wouldn't he just open up the code for modders? At least in few updates most of new content was written by community. But with open source modding would be much easier. And its not like he doesn't have kinda big profit from Patreon, so he could find a dude or two to do the long and boring stuff. With usual updates full of content he'll earn much more. But. He didn't. For the years already. He just want to things be that way. That's why folks don't like him. Cause they, unlike him, love this game.

 

[sta123]

I just cant understand why wouldn't he just open up the code for modders? At least in few updates most of new content was written by community. But with open source modding would be much easier. And its not like he doesn't have kinda big profit from Patreon, so he could find a dude or two to do the long and boring stuff. With usual updates full of content he'll earn much more. But. He didn't. For the years already. He just want to things be that way. That's why folks don't like him. Cause they, unlike him, love this game.

In fairness that's probably too risky. Someone (Fenoxo?) did that on early projects and forks inevitably appeared with extreme / illegal content. If the engine could be separated from the text content then I think the risk would be manageable, but Newlife wasn't designed like that.

 

[Unknownuser00]

In fairness that's probably too risky. Someone (Fenoxo?) did that on early projects and forks inevitably appeared with extreme / illegal content. If the engine could be separated from the text content then I think the risk would be manageable, but Newlife wasn't designed like that.

Also some modders are crazy and would/could expand the game far faster, even adding new systems and mechanics quickly eclipsing the base game. If that happened it would probably lose support but mainly its cashflow.

But it could be what some people have said, that his code is awful. So if he did release it it might simply be an auditorium of laughter, which may result in a loss of funds as people flee upon the hopelessness of his coding.

 

[Deleted member 135775]

can somebody upload the latest character creator from ostrich pisscord? it keeps asking me for a phone number to log in and im not even giving it my real name.

 

[regicide123]

can somebody upload the latest character creator from ostrich pisscord? it keeps asking me for a phone number to log in and im not even giving it my real name.

assuming you dont need the linux one

You must be registered to see the links

 

[schneefuchs]

I just cant understand why wouldn't he just open up the code for modders? At least in few updates most of new content was written by community. But with open source modding would be much easier. And its not like he doesn't have kinda big profit from Patreon, so he could find a dude or two to do the long and boring stuff. With usual updates full of content he'll earn much more. But. He didn't. For the years already. He just want to things be that way. That's why folks don't like him. Cause they, unlike him, love this game.

Because it's lasagna code where, apart from what's included in custom scenes, changing 1 line of code will fuck the whole thing.

It's entirely his fault that it's like that, but it's not really his choice that it's not mod-friendly.

 

[fass]

He probably doesn't want too much modder involvement as it'd put him to shame if they just made the game ten times better and with more content instead of the glacial pace we've seen while he milks the paypigs for years. Making a fap game that's so boring and drawn out over years that the most "exciting" feature in years was the "skip sex" option should be the biggest red flag for the state of the game and development.