Java Abandoned Newlife [v0.8.7] [Splendid Ostrich]

[sta123]

Last I checked Newlife is run through a code obfuscator before it's released, so all these comments that go on about poking through the code and how it's a nightmare are coming from people that haven't actually seen the codebase the dev works on.

Yes and no. Deobfuscators do a very effective job of rebuilding the structure of the code, and this is a text game so it self-comments quite effectively.

Everyone has a different style of coding, so it's pointless to say that code in a single-person project is 'good' or 'bad'. What I said is that it's clear that the text content is clearly deeply intertwined with the code (the game's engine and the game's content are one and the same, effectively), so it'd be difficult to make any significant retrospective design changes.

The notional "good code" people think would be so valuable ultimately wouldn't make scenes any quicker or easier to write; the effort is in actually writing decent prose and the complexity is in the ideas and concepts involved, not somehow an artifact of the object system or something.

Agree and disagree. There's complexity in writing scenes for any form of interactive fiction, certainly, but the extra writing and conditionals - often nested - required for Newlife's elaborate game mechanics multiply the complexity.

The object system isn't hard to use within custom scenes, Velocity is pretty simple (it's simpler than Twine/Twee and everyone seems to be able to pick that up easily enough), and YAML is both universally supported and not tough to figure out.

Some of the story formats for Twine have very simple wiki-style syntax. I believe you could feasibly commission erotic fiction writers to write material for those story formats. I know it's an apples and oranges comparison because Newlife's game design is so complex, but I'm not sure there's a large pool of talent that could understand Velocity and YAML and still be able to write compelling erotic fiction.

The only way to make writing scenes for Newlife easier to ignore all the variety in characters and traits by writing bland scenes that apply the same to everyone and need no internal logic or meaningful choice. At that point you may as well just go write short stories on Literotica.

Branching choices are good. I'd say the issue with Newlife's approach is that it involves lots of small branches for fine details, and the workload of implementing those precludes larger story branches. The ability to have your choice of flavour text comes at the expense of more story with more meaningful choices.

 

[Orlu]

People who think it's easy to hammer out content for a game like Newlife are ignorant.

The reason why people play this one over a ton of the other games is the depth out there--the fact that you can play a substantial variety of traits and variation of things. However, that also means that writing scenes gets very complicated. Scenes have to take into account all the different things you might be wearing, the traits you may have, your character's various attributes, which scenes you may have already been in.

Which makes it way harder to write for than a much more "on rails" game, but that's also why people want to play games like this and not the "on rails" games.

That's really not the issue. I could write you up a small story branch pretty quickly appropriately marked up for the variables in a sensibly encoded way - say Twine's code, just as a semi-decent example. Actually hooking that into the game as it is? Pure cancer. That's not on an inherent problem with heavily variable-dependent scenes, that's a problem with shitty code.

And if it's not a problem with shitty code? If it is actually as quick and easy as it could well reasonably be? Then it's just a shitty author who puts out barely any content.

 

[stochastic]

Everyone has a different style of coding, so it's pointless to say that code in a single-person project is 'good' or 'bad'. What I said is that it's clear that the text content is clearly deeply intertwined with the code (the game's engine and the game's content are one and the same, effectively), so it'd be difficult to make any significant retrospective design changes.

I think that's fair. I wish more of the built-in scenes were written in the custom scene format instead of in Java to maintain some separation between the two. At this point, the time necessary to convert them all would start a whole new round of complaining.

Agree and disagree. There's complexity in writing scenes for any form of interactive fiction, certainly, but the extra writing and conditionals - often nested - required for Newlife's elaborate game mechanics multiply the complexity.

Again, I think the nested conditions in the text are unavoidable if you want the text to reflect the characters involved, regardless of the internal game design. Also, if you choose to write a scene in a way that requires every combination of traits to have its own separate text, then that's the writer's fault: The the API documentation explicitly recommends against this.

Some of the story formats for Twine have very simple wiki-style syntax. I believe you could feasibly commission erotic fiction writers to write material for those story formats. I know it's an apples and oranges comparison because Newlife's game design is so complex, but I'm not sure there's a large pool of talent that could understand Velocity and YAML and still be able to write compelling erotic fiction.

I've only used SugarCube so I can't comment on the other formats, but there's definitely a lot more stuff in SugarCube you need to understand in order to write anything more complicated than a CYOA or VN. In NL it's mostly `set`, `if/elseif/else`, and API calls. I might actually be the only one to ever use a `for` loop in the Velocity code (for Newlife, not in general). I don't have much trouble switching between Velocity/YAML and SugarCube/Twee/JavaScript.

Branching choices are good. I'd say the issue with Newlife's approach is that it involves lots of small branches for fine details, and the workload of implementing those precludes larger story branches. The ability to have your choice of flavour text comes at the expense of more story with more meaningful choices.

This is also fair, but I think we different ideas of what "more story" means or should be: Playing the game is essentially a story generator itself for me. I don't really care about the framing device with Ivy (and patrons in general clearly don't care either as none have been asking for more). To me, the important choices are whether the PC gets too drunk at a house party and ends up cheating on her partner, or whether she should help her boss out with the sales presentation or not.

 

[jewtube]

Didn't want to interrupt your fascinating discussions, lads, but I strongly feel that I must put out a reminder, for no reason at all, completely arbitrarily, that 0.6.12 is out on patreon.

 

[sta123]

It being unusual doesn't make it less of a valid design choice. That's no different than saying "This is good solely because of it's popularity" or "This is bad solely because it's obscure." You're still saying the same thing as you did in the first post. The idea is that the inflexible traits mean that each created character will be different and thus give a different playthrough. This exact idea is 1/3rd of the entire design philosophy behind TableTop RPGs. His execution of it is just flawed and unmotivated.

The unusual thing about Newlife's approach is that many parts of each playthrough are different only if you change your character. I can't tell you whether that approach is valid or invalid (where would you draw the line?) but it does mean that this extra content is hidden if your playing style is to start with a particular character type. I know I'm being opinionated rather than objective when I say that this content is wasted, but it seems a significant number of players don't experience / enjoy it and subsequently don't benefit from that content.

 

[Funny Asian Pirate]

Look as a member of this website, I guess we don't have the moral high ground in our arguments since we are getting the Patreon version without having to be SO's patrons. I also don't blame SO for not letting outside people take peeks under the hood or accept outside help, modders, etc since they want to protect their cash cow; I totally respect that. Yes we are know that the code in the game is complex and every update is not going have a long multistage event with multiple paths; but what is a valid metric to measure how much content SO releases each month? If the amount effort doesn't match the amount of results, I can see why people complain. It might be daunting for SO to make a scene because of the code and having all the different choices you made as a player reflect in the flavor text, descriptions, and stuff; but it is really up to the patrons. If people are willing to pay $5 a month and are satisfied with the content drip then all the power to them.

I also think the way alot of players go through the game (like me) is to make custom NPCs, cheats/tweaks, and player character builds to be able to hit all the new scenes for every release; it makes all the new content feel very little because long time players know exactly what to expect. I feel like this game was supposed to be more of a roguelike where using the 1 year time limit, randomized player traits, and randomized NPCs is the real way to play it so you can have a somewhat different experience each time. Having premade characters sort of takes away from the game a bit, and sort of make sense of some events having strict requirements to trigger since you're not mean to see every scene in one play through.

 

[Orlu]

Didn't want to interrupt your fascinating discussions, lads, but I strongly feel that I must put out a reminder, for no reason at all, completely arbitrarily, that 0.6.12 is out on patreon.

Lemme guess-


Major changes & additions:

Added a new scene that allows the PC to gossip to her hunky co-worker about her bitchy rival (with certain traits).

Added a threesome scene that can be accessed from the alley rape event where the female friend is pregnant and the rapists have both likes_to_share and big_balls.


Minor changes:

Adjusted starting skill points given by different backgrounds.

Slightly modified the requirements for when AI characters will attempt to use a condom for oral sex.


Bugfixes:

Fixes to text issues.

 

[bankonit]

I usually back away slowly from these types of internet discussions, but I think we can generally all agree that the updates we receive on a monthly basis are not really worth the wait and/or the investment I think the patrons are putting into it. (We on the pirating site don't get to have much say on the money side of things.)

We can argue all day about whether or not the developer is "milking" the situation or if they honestly put in hours upon hours of work each month, only to result in near miniscule scene updates that sometimes take outrageously specific traits to fire. We may really never know.

I think the game's problem is this: some of the better scenes are locked behind specific traits. And unlike some other games, I don't feel like the branching in NL is all that successful. For me, it seems like either your character either gets the scene or doesn't if you have a specific trait. What I'd like to see is that scene play out with different but achievable variations depending on your traits. Now, the major issue with NL is almost undoubtedly that it takes too long to code things because it cares about different personality types, clothes, date of your first kiss, and your mom's SSN in order to write anything.

NL's strength is also its weakness. It's SO DEEP in the character building that the actual story / structure of the game suffers because of it. I would sacrifice some of that depth in order to have a game that is more generous to the player and has real options presented to them. A shy girl run should have just as much content as a sultry girl run. If that means the system needs to be overhauled and/or streamlined, that makes sense to me.

 

[Eulexia]

Overhauling the game wouldn't get you more content, it'd get you less--game goes into development hell limbo for years.

Newlife has been successful because of its depth. This is also why it takes a long time to write scenes for it. I know, I've written one, and burned out before managing to finish others, because they are a tremendous amount of work. I've got an entire game nearly complete that is about as much work in total (but much more on-rails).

All the folks complaining that SO is taking in too much money, and not getting stuff out fast enough: You guys have a tremendous business opportunity here. Just make a better game, with faster updates, and snag those Patrons. Everyone says it's super easy.
Go for it--get those dollars. Get paid.

I just want to see good games made, and if you're the folks to do it, get on it.

 

[Funny Asian Pirate]

Didn't want to interrupt your fascinating discussions, lads, but I strongly feel that I must put out a reminder, for no reason at all, completely arbitrarily, that 0.6.12 is out on patreon.

Yeah its been like a week since released and no one here has posted a link for it. Either there are no F95 contributors who are patrons left, or all the ones who previously uploaded and posted links to the patron versions got their info written down by the two mods of SO's discord and got their Patreon's blocked.

 

[NachoCheese]

I usually back away slowly from these types of internet discussions

Are you kidding? This conversation has been worth the price of admission to this forum.

NL's strength is also its weakness. It's SO DEEP in the character building that the actual story / structure of the game suffers because of it. I would sacrifice some of that depth in order to have a game that is more generous to the player and has real options presented to them. A shy girl run should have just as much content as a sultry girl run. If that means the system needs to be overhauled and/or streamlined, that makes sense to me.

Newlife has been an inspiration as a developer who's been toying with the concept of starting a project in the genre, both of what to do and what not to do. I've been looking into the concept of soft gated content, basically making it progressively easier to access content branches as various factors (such as time) progresses. It resolves from a story perspective as characters becoming either more emboldened or promiscuous. This won't work for everything, ie: you're not going to have unprotected sex in a public toilet if you never go clubbing, but it makes some of the more esoteric encounters more likely. The plan was to also make it non-deterministic: the player has some degree of control, enough to make it predictable but not enough to make it boring.

Enough with that talk though, carry on.

 

[Sunite]

On the topic of game creation, if someone with no experience in coding or game design at all were to start looking into creating a game similar to Newlife, what engine / coding language would those with more experience recommend learning? Asking not only for myself, but also for anybody else who might be interested.

 

[asdfasdf12341234ACSACA]

On the topic of game creation, if someone with no experience in coding or game design at all were to start looking into creating a game similar to Newlife, what engine / coding language would those with more experience recommend learning? Asking not only for myself, but also for anybody else who might be interested.

If you look at newlife specifically as "text based, little UI interaction other than picking from a list", whichever one's most comfortable with would work, really. That said, Python is pretty straightforward, handles text manipulations/construction fairly easily, and modding (adding additional content) is practically built into the language itself if you set up your software architecture correctly.

That said, I think HTML+JS (be it Twine or from scratch), while much more verbose, is the better option solely for easier portability+somewhat easier to add UI elements

 

[Dracis3D]

All the folks complaining that SO is taking in too much money, and not getting stuff out fast enough: You guys have a tremendous business opportunity here. Just make a better game, with faster updates, and snag those Patrons. Everyone says it's super easy

Not so many saying it is super easy, clearly loads disappointed with the output per month. How long would you say some of the updates take to build? My gut feeling is 15-20 hrs on new scenes, and a few hours on bug fixes. Then a few hours of updates and engagement on the media channels, so 25-30 hours effort per month? Impressive if SO holds down a full time job as well.

I get you with burning out writing scenes, I wanted to contribute something on the sales office sleaze and just suffered with all the <if> options (no bra, low cut top, shy, ambitious, has BF, had sex with boss, big tits etc).

 

[sta123]

Again, I think the nested conditions in the text are unavoidable if you want the text to reflect the characters involved, regardless of the internal game design.

Hmm, not sure about unavoidable, in many cases. I mentioned flavour text in a previous post, writing that's not central to the action but adds detail. Newlife's branches are often about flavour text, branching from the basic text into descriptions that restate or reaffirm something about the characters involved. Those details are nice but I'm not sure that they're the beating heart of Newlife. It's only necessary that the content of the base text doesn't contradict the traits of the characters involved, which is much more straightforward.

I think we different ideas of what "more story" means or should be: Playing the game is essentially a story generator itself for me. I don't really care about the framing device with Ivy (and patrons in general clearly don't care either as none have been asking for more). To me, the important choices are whether the PC gets too drunk at a house party and ends up cheating on her partner, or whether she should help her boss out with the sales presentation or not.

I agree, your important choices are what I'd regard as important choices too. Namely scenes where there's an element of tension involved, presenting the player with choices that have potential gain but also potential cost, creating a sense of anticipation for a possibility that eventually occurs or is denied. Some scenes in Newlife have really well-written story devices for tension, but there are some sections that have extensive, elaborate mechanisms for flavour text but entirely free of any story device that could provide tension.

Having finally managed to get that written down I've now decided to cowardly duck out of the discussion, because the real world keeps delaying my responses and any internet discussion that lasts more than a day or two has to tendency to start to repeat itself, wasting everyone's time in the process. Thanks to everyone who's participated.

 

[Deleted member 135775]

more than anything else i believe that ostrich intentionally delays the development of the game.

 

[Eulexia]

Not so many saying it is super easy, clearly loads disappointed with the output per month. How long would you say some of the updates take to build? My gut feeling is 15-20 hrs on new scenes, and a few hours on bug fixes. Then a few hours of updates and engagement on the media channels, so 25-30 hours effort per month? Impressive if SO holds down a full time job as well.

I get you with burning out writing scenes, I wanted to contribute something on the sales office sleaze and just suffered with all the <if> options (no bra, low cut top, shy, ambitious, has BF, had sex with boss, big tits etc).

I'd say substantially longer. To be honest, I think that the reason why there's no competition with NewLife is because few people are willing to put in as much work as SO does, not the opposite.

I wrote the 'Shyness Cure' scene, which folks generally have said they enjoy. It took me the better part of a year to get done, and I was putting in a fair bit of work, although it was not my day job.

 

[International]

I wrote the 'Shyness Cure' scene, which folks generally have said they enjoy. It took me the better part of a year to get done, and I was putting in a fair bit of work, although it was not my day job.

I really like that scene, but I've seen it trigger in game like once, and there's so much content in there that's gated behind specific traits, wardrobe choice, and RNG. It's a whole storyline worth of content that I never would have seen without replaying it over and over via forced custom scenes.

Each of those 3 scenarios could be their own scene, since they have as much or more content than the normal random scenes.

 

[Dracis3D]

I wrote the 'Shyness Cure' scene, which folks generally have said they enjoy. It took me the better part of a year to get done, and I was putting in a fair bit of work, although it was not my day job.

Ironically I'm aware of it, but it never triggered for me, SO called it a 'massive update' -

You must be registered to see the links

Appreciate the view as I knew it would be hard work writing the scenes, no idea how long they would actually take. I found myself 50/50 on whether SO was keeping the updates reasonably small to keep the income coming in. Your point about no competition allows that, but I do think few people can maintain effort on what in a lot of cases is tedious writing.

I'd rather do my day job than make a game like Newlife, purely due to all the variables. As an aside on my next playthrough I'll try to engineer the scene! I'm not 50/50 any more, just wish he didn't put in so many options in now.........

 

[Deniz31]

Could someone share new version with us so we can see if it's really a small update?