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Newlife (adult game)


Serpentus

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From my point of view, it isn't enough to justify the price tag. A text game with a developing cycle of several years, if supported by just 5 per month (the lowest possible amount) ends up costing you several hundreds of $. That's the price of 5-6 AAA titles.

 

It's a mind boggling price for me.

 

That being said, I've followed the game from it's inception more or less (not a patreon supporter) and I would have to say that updates have been fairly regular with roughly similar amount of content for more than two years now. So, it's not like supporters were mislead in any way, what you see is what you get. On that front, splendidostrich gets an A+. There are a lot of scammers on Patreon, especially those that ask for a monthly contribution and have a new, unique computer malfunction, a death in the family or a new job every month, but splendidostrich definitely isn't one of those.

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Hi all,
The public version of 0.4.2 that I uploaded earlier was a buggy one with several issues that were patched out in the final version of 0.4.2. I've now replaced the download links with the correct zip file. If you're using 0.4.2 that was downloaded earlier today then I recommend replacing it with a fresh download.

 

From my point of view, it isn't enough to justify the price tag. A text game with a developing cycle of several years, if supported by just 5 per month (the lowest possible amount) ends up costing you several hundreds of $. That's the price of 5-6 AAA titles.

 

It's a mind boggling price for me.

 

That being said, I've followed the game from it's inception more or less (not a patreon supporter) and I would have to say that updates have been fairly regular with roughly similar amount of content for more than two years now. So, it's not like supporters were mislead in any way, what you see is what you get. On that front, splendidostrich gets an A+. There are a lot of scammers on Patreon, especially those that ask for a monthly contribution and have a new, unique computer malfunction, a death in the family or a new job every month, but splendidostrich definitely isn't one of those.

 

I agree entirely: the cost of providing monthly support for the entire development of Newlife or pretty much any substantial single-developer game is going to end up way higher than you'd pay for an equivalent commercial game on Steam. Especially as even though Newlife is my baby and I'm proud of it despite its design issues, not even I can claim that it comes close to a big commercial title in terms of quality or content.

 

This is both one of the weaknesses and one of the strengths of the Patreon model with free public releases and patron releases with perks - mainly early-access in terms of Newlife, although I know some adult developers have different advantages for patrons.

 

It's a weakness because it's obviously unfair. Massively so. Sure, some patrons just support for one or two months as a short-term donation and then cancel it, but a lot of them keep their pledges month after month. These patrons are paying a very large amount of the game, far more than could be considered a reasonable price for what they're getting.

 

It's a strength for the same reason. A lot of players won't have much money and won't be able to pay for a niche game like Newlife. These players get to play the public version, which is not just a demo but the full game. Other players will be quite well-off and will have no trouble supporting it even for more than AAA prices. These players can get perks with the patreon version and (I hope) the good feeling of having helped keep development going.

Essentially this means that the wealthier players are paying over the odds but subsidising the game for the poorer ones. I make enough money to work on it full-time, and even players who never pay a penny still get to play the results of that work. I guess it makes sense for a site called Patreon, as it's not too dissimilar from the old system of artists having wealthy patrons.

 

By contrast, if every player paid a fixed one-off price to get access for the game for good but no-one had it for free then the price could be very low indeed. I haven't set up google analytics on my blog so I don't know exactly how many people have played Newlife, but I'd expect it to have gone over 100,000 by now - the blog has nearly 3 million pageviews and there are direct download links on tfgamessite too.

 

That means that if every player had paid just $1 once to get access to Newlife forever then I'd have made more money than I have through Patreon. Of course that wouldn't have actually worked. The poorer players wouldn't pay even $1 and rightly so because they need to be careful with their money and sex games are a pure luxury. Chances are that I wouldn't have made enough to go full-time, would have had to slink back to my old desk-job and Newlife would have ended up either cancelled or as an occasional weekend project with super-infrequent updates.

 

So, from that point-of-view Patreon has been a big success for me, but you're right - it isn't a fair way of paying for games compared to fully-commerical ones where everyone pays the same and the price is lower as a result.

 

While I'm talking about patronage, I'd like to highlight that no-one should feel guilty if they can't or don't want to support the game. Obviously like every other person I prefer making more money to making less, so I do encourage people to become patrons if they enjoy the game and can easily afford it. However, even if you love the game you shouldn't be spending money on it if you don't have the income to spare - Newlife should never come ahead of your rent, bills, food or whatever and if you're in a precarious job situation then you might need the money in your savings instead just in case. Just, you know, maybe remember me when you come into your fortune!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I love what you do with the game and find it quite interesting the one disappointing thing but I can understand is the ability to continue past the 52 weeks is only given to patreon supporters. Cause I have played the game multiple times and if I was employed would be supporting this, it is just a small thing to have this ability I don't necessarily care for the other "cheats" Just the ability to continue past 52 weeks would be great.

 

With saying that I always go onto your blog to check if there has been updates ^.^ Keep up the good work

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Hi all! I'm cracking on with the next version - this will be the proper start to the Relationship update. Not sure when it'll be released - as usual it's hard to estimate the completion date until I'm almost done.

 

 

I love what you do with the game and find it quite interesting the one disappointing thing but I can understand is the ability to continue past the 52 weeks is only given to patreon supporters. Cause I have played the game multiple times and if I was employed would be supporting this, it is just a small thing to have this ability I don't necessarily care for the other "cheats" Just the ability to continue past 52 weeks would be great.

 

With saying that I always go onto your blog to check if there has been updates ^.^ Keep up the good work

 

Thanks, glad you're enjoying it!

 

There's some discussion on opening up the customisation options going on at the moment, but I won't be making an announcement about that for a few days time.

 

Overall, I think that the 52-week limit is important for the game. Both in terms of balance (although Newlife is not exactly a well-balanced game) and to encourage people to replay it. I try to write the scenes so playing different characters will give a different experience, and so I want to encourage players not just to take their first ever character and stick with them forvever.

Still, there are ways of mitigating that, especially since I added persistent options a while back. There'll also be a post-ending gameplay option coming at some point in the 0.4.x releases - that'll work a bit differently from the cheat option though in that it won't just delay the endgame but rather allow play to continue after it. I won't be adding that early on though - probably not until there's some post-marriage content. So far I've only ever increased the game length when testing things - I've never done it when I play Newlife for fun. If I find myself doing that then that'll be a strong sign that the ability to continue after the endgame sequence would be an important addition.

 

 

 

Any screenshots of the game? Blogspot and the thread are pretty much text.

 

That's because the game pretty much IS just text. :)

 

 

:D Indeed so.

 

backupfly: there are some screenshots on the 'Getting Started' page on the blog. They're from quite an old version but the UI hasn't changed significantly since then - I think that automatic outfit creation and some new traits are the only additions that affect the interface.

 

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  • 3 months later...

Hey just found out about this game - absolutely love it. I can appreciate how dynamically you've written the game especially with the complexity of the paths that you have to write. Out of curiosity, what platform do you use to code? I've always been interested in creating my own game but never had a place to really start.

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I am a great fan of the game, and the only reason I am not a supporter is because I agree with the fellas above about patreon: it gets ludicrously expensive as a recurring contribution. If there was another way such as a ONE time contribution to have access to updates for a decente amount of time I would jump aboard instantly,

That said, I also agree that it's been quite some time since the game got any significant update. Most of the recent updates have focused on bugs and small text adds. Since i only play the public version, I dont complain about it, but I wonder if your patreons are not getting a bit frustrated with it, since their support does not come cheap. 

 

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Hey just found out about this game - absolutely love it. I can appreciate how dynamically you've written the game especially with the complexity of the paths that you have to write. Out of curiosity, what platform do you use to code? I've always been interested in creating my own game but never had a place to really start.

It's a Java app, I don't know what IDE he uses but Eclipse is one of the more popular ones.

 

As for development it's a been a mix of minor and major ones, the friendship feature was a major one but most of that work is behind the scenes. Major updates need to be architectured or else the whole thing will become a giant mess of spaghetti code.

 

You can compare coding to physics, every line of code adds mass to a program, at first the program is light and easy to move forward but as the mass increases it takes more and more effort to move forward. How you architect the program has impact as time goes on in two ways, one it lets you break the project down into smaller parts which individually are easier to move then the whole and two it can effect how much resistance it has to moving forward ie a 300 pound ball would be hard to move forward but a 300 pound cube would be even harder.

 

This is why so many armature projects stall and fail. Most just start out banging out code and before you know it they have a 800 pound cube shaped spaghetti monster on their hands that they ether need to completely redesign or give up on.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi all! Hope you're having a good week. Next release isn't too far off - the makeout work is all done and I'm just figuring out what permutations I need for the wedding dress scene before that can be finished off.

 

 

Hey just found out about this game - absolutely love it. I can appreciate how dynamically you've written the game especially with the complexity of the paths that you have to write. Out of curiosity, what platform do you use to code? I've always been interested in creating my own game but never had a place to really start.

 

Thank you! Newlife is written in Java using the Eclipse IDE with a Swing UI and some open-source libraries to help with a few things (such as Kryo, and yamlBeans). I originally used the WIndowBuilder plugin to make the UI but I've later moved onto writing the layouts by hand which is time-consuming but gives better results. Swing is in general not a great choice of UI though and I'd recommend something else (javaFX perhaps?) for a new project.

 

 

I am a great fan of the game, and the only reason I am not a supporter is because I agree with the fellas above about patreon: it gets ludicrously expensive as a recurring contribution. If there was another way such as a ONE time contribution to have access to updates for a decente amount of time I would jump aboard instantly,

That said, I also agree that it's been quite some time since the game got any significant update. Most of the recent updates have focused on bugs and small text adds. Since i only play the public version, I dont complain about it, but I wonder if your patreons are not getting a bit frustrated with it, since their support does not come cheap. 

 

Hi, glad you're enjoying the game. I don't think output has changed much recently - I don't believe that either the size or the frequency of updates has significantly changed since last year. I have been working on the side on a system to allow user contributions which is still ongoing - I keep having to set it aside to get releases out of the door. Once that's complete I may look into taking user submissions or paid contributions which might increase the new content that gets added. However, I don't know yet if this will be a success. Writing for Newlife is quite complicated due to all the factors to take into acount and so it might not prove realistic for people less familiar with the game's internals to write for it.

 

 

Hey just found out about this game - absolutely love it. I can appreciate how dynamically you've written the game especially with the complexity of the paths that you have to write. Out of curiosity, what platform do you use to code? I've always been interested in creating my own game but never had a place to really start.

It's a Java app, I don't know what IDE he uses but Eclipse is one of the more popular ones.

 

As for development it's a been a mix of minor and major ones, the friendship feature was a major one but most of that work is behind the scenes. Major updates need to be architectured or else the whole thing will become a giant mess of spaghetti code.

 

You can compare coding to physics, every line of code adds mass to a program, at first the program is light and easy to move forward but as the mass increases it takes more and more effort to move forward. How you architect the program has impact as time goes on in two ways, one it lets you break the project down into smaller parts which individually are easier to move then the whole and two it can effect how much resistance it has to moving forward ie a 300 pound ball would be hard to move forward but a 300 pound cube would be even harder.

 

This is why so many armature projects stall and fail. Most just start out banging out code and before you know it they have a 800 pound cube shaped spaghetti monster on their hands that they ether need to completely redesign or give up on.

 

 

Well put. Of course many parts of Newlife are quite poorly designed - I can't claim it's an especially well put-together piece of work. There are a lot of things I'd change if I were to start a new project along similar lines.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 6 months later...

Hello everyone!

 

I've just put out a new version. I know I don't usually post every time I do a release, but this is a very exciting one. - with Version 0.4.16 you can actually get married!

 

The public version is up to 0.4.15: this has a scene where you wreak a terrible revenge on your boyfriend's douchebag friend. It's a bit of an experimental one so I'm keen to get people's thoughts on it as well as the marriage content.

 

Let me know if you find any bugs, and good luck on your wedding day!

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  • 9 months later...
9 hours ago, Higurashika said:

And i see in inventory window for children. Is it possible to give a birth in this game??

Yes. You can see your doctor and Ivy while pregnant to get pregnancy acceleration treatments. There's a passing mention of lactation in the third or fourth "pregnancy stage" scene. If you have an impregnator boyfriend you go to a farm for the proposal scene, I forget if there was something about it there.

 

Not sure what you mean by kinky perv actions but there's some unfortunate laws over there that can limit content. Though anything goes for user created custom scenes, you can get those on the discord channel linked from the main page. For now there's the 'sultry' trait for a PC and various 'jerk', 'crude', 'sleazy' type traits for NPCS.

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5 hours ago, Phelps1247 said:

Yes. You can see your doctor and Ivy while pregnant to get pregnancy acceleration treatments. There's a passing mention of lactation in the third or fourth "pregnancy stage" scene. If you have an impregnator boyfriend you go to a farm for the proposal scene, I forget if there was something about it there. 

 

Not sure what you mean by kinky perv actions but there's some unfortunate laws over there that can limit content. Though anything goes for user created custom scenes, you can get those on the discord channel linked from the main page. For now there's the 'sultry' trait for a PC and various 'jerk', 'crude', 'sleazy' type traits for NPCS.

Thank you very much!

5 hours ago, Phelps1247 said:

Yes. You can see your doctor and Ivy while pregnant to get pregnancy acceleration treatments. There's a passing mention of lactation in the third or fourth "pregnancy stage" scene. If you have an impregnator boyfriend you go to a farm for the proposal scene, I forget if there was something about it there. 

 

Not sure what you mean by kinky perv actions but there's some unfortunate laws over there that can limit content. Though anything goes for user created custom scenes, you can get those on the discord channel linked from the main page. For now there's the 'sultry' trait for a PC and various 'jerk', 'crude', 'sleazy' type traits for NPCS.

Nothing forbidden. Just more slapping (face slapping), some bdsm stuff, pissing/scat you know. Maybe bestiality in some way (dreams for example). I understand thats extreme fetishes, but i think there a lot of ppl who dont do it irl, so games are the only way to feel something about it. But its just suggestion i cant insist.

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Slapping and BDSM stuff maybe because the club is already there, I figured it'd be used again at some point but I highly doubt there'll be any watersports/scat. The current beastiality/monster dream is probably all you're gonna get there.

 

There's one parenting scene but that's all for now. They don't grow up or anything. All that happens if you extend the weeks is the game not ending until that chosen week. You can set it to 1 week with a character that has low self esteem for an ending most people probably never see.

 

There's a gay-ish trap-ish type dream sequence available but other than that, no.

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  • 1 year later...

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