Need help with recurring program stuff.

[Jak]

About 3 months ago, we decided to enter the adult entertainment field, coming in from the video game development industry. We're now on the verge of releasing our first adult software program (interactive 3D girls) out into the wild, and I've got some questions I hope someone here can answer.

This may get wordy so please bear with me, lol.

With previous software we've released in the mainstream world, it was always one shot deals. The customer pays for it, downloads it, and that's it. We've never had a recurring program before.

We want to go with a recurring situation for this new software, where a surfer who signs up will get a new interactive girl each month in addition to other content we've got in development. The main reason to sign up though is for the monthly girl.

Each month the previous month's girl will be removed and a new one put in her place for members to download. We may or may not release the removed girls at some other time as "back issues" for a small fee. When a member signs in, whatever girl is available for the current month will be downloadable.

So far, so good, but I'm starting to see potential problems here.

First:

Let's say a member signs up on July 10th. They will be able to download July's girl as part of their membership. Now, on August 1st, the August girl will go up, and July's will come down. The member then downloads August's girl, and cancels their membership before the 10th of August (30 days from joining). They've now got two girls for one price. The way we figure it, everyone who joins will eventually end up with an extra (unpaid for) girl when they cancel.

So...

Is this just part of the cost of recurring programs, or is there some way around the "extra girl" thing that I'm missing?

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Second:

Imagine that a member gets billed for the month of July, but it turns out that they were in the Bahamas for the whole month and didn't have a chance to download the July girl. When they get back, in August, the July girl is gone. They were billed, but didn't get the girl.

Are there any CGI scripts someone can recommend that can automatically keep track of which files a member can download, and allow them to download one for which they were billed but didn't get?

Or... another thought is sort of along the lines that if we have content other than just the girl, and the content is available each month online at our web site, the member is actually paying a monthly fee for the content, and not necessarily just the girl. So if they miss a download, it's not up to us to reimburse them as the charge for the month was actually for acess to the web site's content.

Can anyone here give some advice to a newbie player in the adult field, so we can get this program off the ground with the right start?

Thanks very much in advance for any help.

Jak

[kenny]

A complex perl script

[foe]

First write in your terms saying if you unsubscribe you cant use the girls anymore. That way if the person still uses the interactive girls you can sue them.

[Jak]

Thanks guys. Since I posted this we've come up with a good solution that I believe will work best for this project. I appreciate the help, though.

Jak

[raymo]

(is your solution complete?)

Is the system web based or an executable?

If the former, I don't rate your chances of success very high, since you seem highly inexperienced with server side coding. Unless you have someone else that knows their shit working on it, you're going to need a helluvalot more knowledge as far as server side coding goes.

YES this could be achieved with a CGI script but I advise against it - CGI is becoming extinct, and these days there's really no reason to choose it over ASP or PHP.

Again, if the former, and you are hosted on windows (ASP), I can provide a solution to meet your needs. If not for a small monetary reimbursement perhaps some traffic to my paysite which is currently in development.

Lemme know,
raymo

ICQ me. 10282541