Java Newlife [v0.8.14] [Splendid Ostrich]

[blueebluebluee]

ik it's been said 1000 times before but it's So disappointing to see how this game is being handled lmfao Nothing is being done . it rlly sucks that the code is so tedious to work with cuz if this game was easily moddable it'd be so good but theres just barely enough content to last more than two or three playthroughs

 

[Mallee]

Didn't know these were scenes! Any tips on how to get these?

For the second, you just need to have a low self-esteem MC and a jerk partner. It might not trigger immediately, but you'll get there with those parameters.

For the last, your partner needs to be not into sharing. Does he need other traits? Probably. I'll leave the build of the NPC that always triggers this questline below.

IDK if this actually speeds up the process or not, or makes it more likely, but I just have my MC stay in during the week and on the weekends until her partner calls and wants to introduce her to his friend.

Spoiler: NPC Build

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I recommend creating custom NPCs to help out here, otherwise it will be difficult.

 

[GoblinSpokesman]

How do you change flats? i tried to search before asking

 

[orcagaming]

How do you change flats? i tried to search before asking

select move home option from weekly activities

 

[anon1010]

i asked this question a while back without any answer but it seems theres an event where an npc can trick your character into having sex by persuading you that it isn't really sex which makes your character think they're still a virgin, if they end up getting pregnant they end up confused over how that could have happened to them?

i know that explanation isn't great, i had seen someone talk about it on discord so ill just quote what they said if that helps "iirc you can also get tricked by your lover and that he says X isn't really sex, so you think you're a virgin, and then are confused why you're pregnant" they typed that in response to someone else asking how you can get pregnant while staying a virgin.

 

[LeaveMeALoan]

is there a way to make an npc that saves you from getting mugged? if yes, how / what traits do I add to them?

 

[voerman]

I am not sure, but sporty nice guys seem likelier to save you.

 

[GoblinSpokesman]

anybody know what the tags are for the landlords in custom character creation?

 

[GoblinSpokesman]

select move home option from weekly activities

thanks idk how i missed it

 

[Deleted member 4855306]

i asked this question a while back without any answer but it seems theres an event where an npc can trick your character into having sex by persuading you that it isn't really sex which makes your character think they're still a virgin, if they end up getting pregnant they end up confused over how that could have happened to them?

i know that explanation isn't great, i had seen someone talk about it on discord so ill just quote what they said if that helps "iirc you can also get tricked by your lover and that he says X isn't really sex, so you think you're a virgin, and then are confused why you're pregnant" they typed that in response to someone else asking how you can get pregnant while staying a virgin.

I've never seen an event where the main character gets tricked into fully having sex while still thinking she's a virgin. But iirc the main character can be impregnated and still be a virgin by grinding and having an NPC cum only onto and not in her pussy.

There are multiple other situations where the MC gets tricked into having sex, but not with her thinking she's still a virgin or necessarily leading to pregnancy. Just what I remember are the hypnosis events, your bf's sleazy friend coming over for drinks, jerk NPCs pretending to only do anal, etc.

 

[Fizel]

anybody know what the tags are for the landlords in custom character creation?

Copy-pasted right from the customNpcGuide document. That's where you can find any traits. Spoiler for size.

Spoiler: landlord types

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[LeaveMeALoan]

Seems like there are many hidden stuff that are gated by characteristics and whether the player is shy, bitchy, outgoing, etc. Is there a way to view all events in this game?

 

[ohwhatnow]

Is there a way to view all events in this game?

Some, but far from all of them. Copy the files from additional_scenes/official_content into additional_scenes_user_custom_scenes

In the in game options, go most of the way down and enable 'Allow custom scene testing'. After starting a game select 'Test custom scenes' for 'Free Time Activity' or 'Weekend Activity'.

This lets you pick the involved NPCs and does bypass requirements/randomness.

 

[johnysanchez01]

The UK also has laws against sexual harassment, revenge porn, recording someone without their permission, and having sex with someone too drunk to stand, let alone consent, all of which are legally defined as non-consensual... but they're all in the game.

There are a ton of h-game devs from the UK and they include all sorts of insane depravity with no consequence. It's understandable to be wary of Patreon but even that platform sells games with way harder content than Newlife.
I'm not even arguing for straight up noncon scenes in this game, in fact I think the existing noncon events in this game should be reworked to be taken more seriously in the narrative because it ruins immersion otherwise. There are way too many actions overall which don't have enough consequence in the game.

 

[johnysanchez01]

the good news is this game would be incredibly easy for an LLM to recreate and make better and it will happen soon

This game isn't hard to recreate even if you don't have access to an LLM. The hard part is not railroading yourself with scope creep because you became obsessed with a million other hypothetical features. Also I think a lot of what made Newlife worth playing would likely be lost on AI dev.
My biggest takeaway from Newlife is that despite its numerous flaws and lack of content, it managed to nail the pacing and focus on story events extremely well. Most other lifesims simulate days and even hours in their game, with the devs dedicating time to having the player trudging through maps and menus to get to where they want. Newlife on the other hand simulates a week going by, with 4 major player actions + random events, and these actions all are just about the story. It's a pretty clever setup that lends the game's storylines a more natural sense of progression.

 

[gunnnn12345]

This game isn't hard to recreate even if you don't have access to an LLM. The hard part is not railroading yourself with scope creep because you became obsessed with a million other hypothetical features. Also I think a lot of what made Newlife worth playing would likely be lost on AI dev.
My biggest takeaway from Newlife is that despite its numerous flaws and lack of content, it managed to nail the pacing and focus on story events extremely well. Most other lifesims simulate days and even hours in their game, with the devs dedicating time to having the player trudging through maps and menus to get to where they want. Newlife on the other hand simulates a week going by, with 4 major player actions + random events, and these actions all are just about the story. It's a pretty clever setup that lends the game's storylines a more natural sense of progression.

I very much agree. One thing that turns me of from a lot of similar games is having to navigate way too many menus and maps. Not to mention keeping track of a bunch of systems like Hunger and Energy, that I often feel add very little to it (Not to mention that you need to sort through several other maps and menus to keep track of it. Like, I don´t want to click "Shower, brush teeth, toilet, and then chose outfit" every morning in a game. It just gets tedious for me).

Newlife and Lilliths Throne (Through I have not checked that one out in a while), are my favorites, because they are easy to navigate and there aren´t a bunch of things I need to keep track of.

 

[ohwhatnow]

"Shower, brush teeth, toilet, and then chose outfit" every morning in a game.

I agree that things like this are usually tedious and meaningless. It's all too common to see games here try to create an expansive framework, but effectively use none of it. But I'd argue a weakness of this game is that most of what a player does stems from intrinsic motivation. For a long time Newlife only had the sales job and there was no need for cash after buying everything for your home. As a consequence, there was little motivation to explore new scenes other than the fun of discovery or roleplay. Now we have rent, a new home to move to, the ability to get fired and locked out of a job, paying for hypnotism, etc. This game tries to replace "hunger and energy" with savings and stress. Now we actually have a reason to consider the prositution/porn events, or try staying a job. When done properly having resources as extrinsic motivation can make a game better.

As a tangent, something else Newlife does really well is it largely focuses on having a lot of short to medium length scenes that each cater to just a few traits. By virtue of having many scenes doign this it feels like all of the traits get representation, but the actual complexity of each scene tends to be a lot smaller. I always see comments talking about the exponential work in writing for all of this different stuff, but Newlife cleverly routes events in ways that limit the impact of traits. For example, the Tanya event can branch depending on the PC's alcohol tolerance, attractiveness of the friend, or if selecting the "honest" route, but all of the routes reconverge on getting the PC in bed then switching to a generic sex scene. Segmenting the event into intro, story, proposition, and finally generic sex limits complex trait interactions and simplifies the scenes. Meanwhile there's no shortage of abandoned Twine/VN games here that failed to realize this and put themselves into a bad spot. See also, TiTS which does pander to PC customization successfully (and imo, isn't really any better for it).

 

[johnysanchez01]

It's all too common to see games here try to create an expansive framework, but effectively use none of it. But I'd argue a weakness of this game is that most of what a player does stems from intrinsic motivation.

Agreed. I think the key issue with extrinsic motivators in lifesim h-games like these is unlike regular games they shouldn't be a way of merely increasing difficulty for the player, because h-games are primarily played for the intrinsic motivation of wanting to see the h-content. The goal should be to develop alternative paths based around not meeting those extrinsic motivators and then tuning that sytsem to make that content accessible by the player if they want to experience certain types of storylines. With Newlife, the current extrinsic motivators are only a good addition because failing them offers specific storylines you can experience as opposed to them being a bad end state.

I always see comments talking about the exponential work in writing for all of this different stuff, but Newlife cleverly routes events in ways that limit the impact of traits. For example, the Tanya event can branch depending on the PC's alcohol tolerance, attractiveness of the friend, or if selecting the "honest" route, but all of the routes reconverge on getting the PC in bed then switching to a generic sex scene. Segmenting the event into intro, story, proposition, and finally generic sex limits complex trait interactions and simplifies the scenes. Meanwhile there's no shortage of abandoned Twine/VN games here that failed to realize this and put themselves into a bad spot. See also, TiTS which does pander to PC customization successfully (and imo, isn't really any better for it).

This an excellent point you brought up. The idea of segmenting events, with each having several variants of what is ultimately the same narrative "branch" is actually a really solid concept that does let the dev avoid having to juggling tons of divergent endings. I actually remember seeing a talk by some visual novel developers for mobile games (primarily romance VNs aimed at women). The devs highlighted that they received more positive feedback when they focused on giving the same routes multiple variations by acknowledging small choices that the player made, than when they focused on branching the plot out through major decision trees. I think they even mentioned that players found it more replayable, which seems counterintuitive since you'd think that people replay to experience different story branches.

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Your point about TiTS customization not really improving the game is something I definitely agree with. Most of the customization options don't really matter. They only make the game feel limited when you experience the plot and characters since nowadays the devs of TiTS and CoC 2 are obsessed with their OCs being a certain way. CoC 1 on the other hand had much fewer customization options for the player character, but those customizations were woven into the game and story itself giving them much more meaning. Plus there's fact that many side characters could be experienced in multiple different ways.
It all just makes the lack of development in Newlife a real shame. Maybe we couldn't have gotten more cross-event interactions due to the complexity, but we could have gotten more small variations in existing events and more minor events in general. Surely that wouldn't be too hard to implement since it would just come down to being able to write those events and variations in the first place.

 

[gunnnn12345]

Agreed. I think the key issue with extrinsic motivators in lifesim h-games like these is unlike regular games they shouldn't be a way of merely increasing difficulty for the player, because h-games are primarily played for the intrinsic motivation of wanting to see the h-content. The goal should be to develop alternative paths based around not meeting those extrinsic motivators and then tuning that sytsem to make that content accessible by the player if they want to experience certain types of storylines. With Newlife, the current extrinsic motivators are only a good addition because failing them offers specific storylines you can experience as opposed to them being a bad end state.

This an excellent point you brought up. The idea of segmenting events, with each having several variants of what is ultimately the same narrative "branch" is actually a really solid concept that does let the dev avoid having to juggling tons of divergent endings. I actually remember seeing a talk by some visual novel developers for mobile games (primarily romance VNs aimed at women). The devs highlighted that they received more positive feedback when they focused on giving the same routes multiple variations by acknowledging small choices that the player made, than when they focused on branching the plot out through major decision trees. I think they even mentioned that players found it more replayable, which seems counterintuitive since you'd think that people replay to experience different story branches.

You must be registered to see the links

Your point about TiTS customization not really improving the game is something I definitely agree with. Most of the customization options don't really matter. They only make the game feel limited when you experience the plot and characters since nowadays the devs of TiTS and CoC 2 are obsessed with their OCs being a certain way. CoC 1 on the other hand had much fewer customization options for the player character, but those customizations were woven into the game and story itself giving them much more meaning. Plus there's fact that many side characters could be experienced in multiple different ways.
It all just makes the lack of development in Newlife a real shame. Maybe we couldn't have gotten more cross-event interactions due to the complexity, but we could have gotten more small variations in existing events and more minor events in general. Surely that wouldn't be too hard to implement since it would just come down to being able to write those events and variations in the first place.

I had a reply to the same comment that I can see didn´t get posted, but which is bascially what you say, just you said it a lot better!

For a non-porn game example of this, I recently tried out the game "Fields of Mistria", a "You inherent a farm, now meet the lovely locals" type of game. And something I thought was really nice about it compared to some of the other games I have tried in the same genre, including one of its clear inspiractions Stardew Valley, is how it acknowledge stuff like if I gave someone a gift recently, found a specific item for the museum or completed a specific quest. With various characters making mention of it.

And it was just nice to see the NPCs acknowledge the efforts I had done, and it made the world feel far more reactive. Even if it was just a couple of comments every now and then.

In the same way, something I adore happening in RPGs like Owlcats Games like Wrath of the Rightious and Rogue Trader, or Obsidians games like Pillars of Eternity, is when I get to reference things like my Species, Class or Background. It doesn´t have to be a big thing, but it is nice to see that the game makes note of it. Or, as you said, makes note of small decisions I made or said. I often find myself going along the same path mostly, when I replay games. But I make note of the small differences, based on my choices in them.

Having been a bit involved with Game Development I think that one of the things many new Devs can quickly get overwhelmed by is how quickly branching plots can spiral out of control. Even a simple binary choice can quickly escalate to insane degrees. It is why I often go into games on here where you can chose the Gender of your character with a bit of variness. Because in a H-Game that will quite likely mean you have to at the very least write double the amount of scenes for your game. And I think a lot of people don´t really grasp the amount of work that can lead to. That is not to say it cannot be done in much simpler way, but it is something I have seen games seem to struggle with before.

 

[stochastic]

Agreed. I think the key issue with extrinsic motivators in lifesim h-games like these is unlike regular games they shouldn't be a way of merely increasing difficulty for the player, because h-games are primarily played for the intrinsic motivation of wanting to see the h-content. The goal should be to develop alternative paths based around not meeting those extrinsic motivators and then tuning that sytsem to make that content accessible by the player if they want to experience certain types of storylines. With Newlife, the current extrinsic motivators are only a good addition because failing them offers specific storylines you can experience as opposed to them being a bad end state.

This an excellent point you brought up. The idea of segmenting events, with each having several variants of what is ultimately the same narrative "branch" is actually a really solid concept that does let the dev avoid having to juggling tons of divergent endings. I actually remember seeing a talk by some visual novel developers for mobile games (primarily romance VNs aimed at women). The devs highlighted that they received more positive feedback when they focused on giving the same routes multiple variations by acknowledging small choices that the player made, than when they focused on branching the plot out through major decision trees. I think they even mentioned that players found it more replayable, which seems counterintuitive since you'd think that people replay to experience different story branches.

You must be registered to see the links

Your point about TiTS customization not really improving the game is something I definitely agree with. Most of the customization options don't really matter. They only make the game feel limited when you experience the plot and characters since nowadays the devs of TiTS and CoC 2 are obsessed with their OCs being a certain way. CoC 1 on the other hand had much fewer customization options for the player character, but those customizations were woven into the game and story itself giving them much more meaning. Plus there's fact that many side characters could be experienced in multiple different ways.
It all just makes the lack of development in Newlife a real shame. Maybe we couldn't have gotten more cross-event interactions due to the complexity, but we could have gotten more small variations in existing events and more minor events in general. Surely that wouldn't be too hard to implement since it would just come down to being able to write those events and variations in the first place.

I had a reply to the same comment that I can see didn´t get posted, but which is bascially what you say, just you said it a lot better!

For a non-porn game example of this, I recently tried out the game "Fields of Mistria", a "You inherent a farm, now meet the lovely locals" type of game. And something I thought was really nice about it compared to some of the other games I have tried in the same genre, including one of its clear inspiractions Stardew Valley, is how it acknowledge stuff like if I gave someone a gift recently, found a specific item for the museum or completed a specific quest. With various characters making mention of it.

And it was just nice to see the NPCs acknowledge the efforts I had done, and it made the world feel far more reactive. Even if it was just a couple of comments every now and then.

In the same way, something I adore happening in RPGs like Owlcats Games like Wrath of the Rightious and Rogue Trader, or Obsidians games like Pillars of Eternity, is when I get to reference things like my Species, Class or Background. It doesn´t have to be a big thing, but it is nice to see that the game makes note of it. Or, as you said, makes note of small decisions I made or said. I often find myself going along the same path mostly, when I replay games. But I make note of the small differences, based on my choices in them.

Having been a bit involved with Game Development I think that one of the things many new Devs can quickly get overwhelmed by is how quickly branching plots can spiral out of control. Even a simple binary choice can quickly escalate to insane degrees. It is why I often go into games on here where you can chose the Gender of your character with a bit of variness. Because in a H-Game that will quite likely mean you have to at the very least write double the amount of scenes for your game. And I think a lot of people don´t really grasp the amount of work that can lead to. That is not to say it cannot be done in much simpler way, but it is something I have seen games seem to struggle with before.

To piggyback on both of you guys - whom I generally agree with - one of the big problems I see with a lot of NSFW game designs is that the branching nature of the plot often means devs are effectively making two, three, or even more games; every track or branch becomes increasingly or entirely independent of the others, often quickly revealing which tracks (or which kinks) the dev is actually invested in.

On the other hand, while branching stories or scenes that reconverge towards the end solve some problems, they're also quite limiting, need a fair amount of planning beforehand, and a combination of discipline and discretion to prevent feature bloat. They ignore choices or traits that would naturally lead to very different sequences of events, and it's definitely possible to mess up and leave players feeling like their choices actually don't matter because you end up in exactly the same place regardless.