Multiple Feature Request

[beshman2]

Wow, great game! My DW and I are pretty exhausted after purchasing your product last week and trying it out this weekend (but exhausted in a great way). We purchased the whole package after reading the review at wired.com. A good portion of the add on package was beyond our comfort levels, but the action editor allowed me to remove or modify the actions that were a definite "no". The actions we left definitely added to the excitement of the game. Overall, this is a great package. A couple things we would like to see added, some may have been touched on in other threads.

1. Alternate media player choice. We currently use iTunes and have playlists defined with hundreds of songs ripped from our CD collection. We really do not want to jump through all the hoops (and legalities) to make these playable in Windows Media Player).

2. The ability to add a "this action must have happened before this action can occur", and the ability to add a "this action will happen next roll" feature would add some flexibility to continue a certain course of actions once started, or to make sure a certain desired action occured first.

3. The ability to start a game with a predefined set of actions, profiles and toys would be nice. I merged the original and addon pack databases after saving the originals to a backup directory. I was able to highly customize the resulting single database to fit different moods and to save different versions and custom profiles in subfolders in the Bliss directory, ie. "Conversation and Cuddling", "In the Mood", "Hot and Heavy", ect. It would be nice to be able to start these with a single click instead of manually moving the files back and forth within the game directory.

Again, this is a great game that has added a new dimension to our marriage. Thanks!

[Don]

Hi,

Thanks for the input on the game. These are interesting suggestions, and I would welcome additional input from you and others regarding them.

Regarding the three suggestions you made.

1. Alternate Media Player Choice. This would be quite difficult as there is no standard API for controlling media players. Thus we would need to provide specific code for each media player. With the proliferation of media players, it is difficult to do this. I would not rule this out as a possibility, but it would be a lot of work to manage and debug. I will look into this. I suspect that ITunes would not be a top choice and that more people would be interested in WinAmp, but I could be wrong. If anyone has an opinion on this, let me know.

2. Prerequisites. The "this action must have happened first" is a good idea and is already being planned for a future release. However, "this action will happen next roll" is very problematic because the next action may be entirely inapproprate for the square landed on next or the passion level of the player. It is possible that we could give the upcoming action first priority, and run that action as soon as conditions allow.

3. Interesting idea here. Perhaps a set of check boxes indicating which action databases to include in a given game.

However, the idea was that the moods that you describe could be set by setting the players initial and final passion level and perhaps their profile. We intended that you would not have to change action databases from game to game, but that the other controls (passion level and Profiles) would be sufficient. Have you found that this is not the case? This would be an interesting topic to get more information on. Similarly, you should have been able to block anything you didn't like from the add-on pack without actually modifying the database. The Profile should have been sufficient to block the categories of action you didn't want to see.

The design of the game has three customization points.
1. The easiest and most dynamic is the beginning and ending passion level, this is where we figured that people would adjust the game according to the mood of the moment.
2. Second is the profile editor. Using profiles, a player can specify how aroused they must be for a certain category of actions. We figured that a persons profile would not change much or often.
3. Third is the action editor. Because of it's complexity, we figured that most users would avoid it and stick with items 1 and 2.

It is apparent that you found 1 and 2 insufficient for your needs. I would like to hear from others on this idea as well.

Thanks for your great input.

Don

[beshman2]

Thanks for the quick reply. I can live with one and will probably just redo the playlists in WMP. Two sounds good, I can see how the "action after" would be problematic and happening the next appropriate time would certainly suffice. I will try to expand on three a little more. I am one of those people who likes to tweak things, with one of the tweaks being to reduce something to its simplest form. In this case, that means the game start.
I am thinking of something similar to a "Save Game" feature (of course, not literally saved in the middle of a game). The profile editor comes close. I would like to see something that would save a predefined toy list, saved profiles and custom database that could be started from something like Game -> Select Saved Game Type -> place a check next to the desired title and hit "Go". That or something similar that would load the appropriate files without browsing for them, perhaps from subdirectories within the action and profile directories. When launched, it would go straight to the clothing selection and from there straight to the game. I liked making the individual databases as there are categories or situations that we may want to do in all game types, but we may not want to do individual actions (some are similar, but with just enough difference that we would want to skip them at times) within the category or situation during that specific type of game. I know, we can just pass on it while playing, but "skipping" a turn interrupts the game flow and can put a damper on things. I hope this makes a little more sense. Thanks again.

[dachimp]

The nice thing about what the above poster is saying is that it would allow people who want to have specific types of sessions/games to jump right into it. For example, a couple into S&M/BDSM could have the game ready to go with the right equipment and actions loaded, and not mess around doing set ups or talking about romantic date ideas. (Nothing wrong with any of those; simply providing an example).

DC

[beshman2]

Yes that would be one use. I was thinking more along the lines of a quick and flirty type game when you may be time limited and that would involve more talking and limited touching. This would be nice to start without having to setup/select profiles and toys or worry about certain actions still being in the database. You may still wish to keep some initmate categories active, say touching or kissing certain parts, but not get into some of the more aggressive actions that fall into those categories.

[NewOttCpl]

Hi beshman

Is it possible for you to share your modified database?

Thanks ... J&J

[Don]

Hi all,

I wanted to point out one hazard of the kind of database modifictions being discussed here. When future versions of Bliss are released, they will have a new BasicActions.bdf database with new actions in it. It is our intent to significantly enlarge that database with each new release.

However, when you install the new version, the new BasicActions.bdf file will overwrite the existing BasicActions.bdf file. If you have modified it, you will lose your changes. For this reason, it is often unwise to modify BasicActions.bdf. That being said however, modification of this file is the only way to modify or remove existing actions, but you need to be aware of this issue.

When Bliss starts a new game, it reads all of the .bdf files in the Actions directory and merges them at runtime, so there is nothing to be gained by combining multiple databases into one, except perhaps the convenience of moving them around more easily.

Don
don@gamesforloving.com

[Glover]

I like the fact the game reads all the files in the actions folder. It means you could have different files for different types of actions, i.e. a kissing file, a touching file, an anal file etc.

I would like the game to list all the files and allow you to select which ones you want to use via a tick box. This would allow you to adjust the game to suit your mood with out having to move tthe unwanted actions to a seperate folder before you start.

[Don]

This ability to select which action files are used in a given game has been requested several times and is already planned for a future release.

Don

[maintainman]

It would be nice if the basic actions that come with the game could be overwridden by customizations from other files... for example, if you want to slightly modify the text that normally comes up with the basic actions, you would create a mirrored action in a separate action file, with the same name/id... when this occurs, the alternate version would be used instead of the base version that comes with the game.
By doing this, you could also somehow write protect the base version so that nobody would accidently change it, and it would only change through upgrades.