On RLV restrictions

Two things have happened today that have got me thinking about RLV restrictions, what makes sense, what level of control makes sense and so on. I'll caution anyone reading this right now: this might be more of a ramble than something with direction and purpose.

The first thing that happened was, earlier today, I was reading through some of the SL blogs I follow (some kink-related, some general SL) and I stumbled on a review of an RLV product. The product itself was some sort of isolation suit, a rubber drone sort of thing -- the kind of thing that's not a million miles away from a bane suit and, if it had a male version, likely the sort of thing Miss Vila would approve of and add to the list of things she likes to lock on me (she does rather enjoy things that cover me and isolate me). The reviewer seemed to be rather bothered about the fact that, by default, when first locked, the product denied IMs.

That struck me as really rather odd. The review stated that this was an option and the restriction could be turned off but they seemed to think that it should be off by default. Given the nature of the product I'd be surprised if it was any other way than the way this product did it. Something that is about isolation and which, in RL, would heavily restrict your ability to communicate, really does suggest to me that the default restrictions are such that communication is made as difficult as possible.

This was my thinking when I made the Z&A Isolation Helmet, for example. The main reason someone would buy this, or a similar product, would be for the heavy RLV restrictions that are implied by heavy isolation and so, by my reasoning, denial of outgoing IMs, at the very least, is a sensible default.

Of course, it makes sense that as much as possible these things are optional, can be toggled and changed. For any given build there's very few restrictions that make sense as hard-wired. Examples I can think of are detach (for anything), local chat for gags, seeing emotes for a blindfold, etc... Those sorts of things aside, a lack of the ability to tune restrictions can be frustrating (and I say that as someone whose early builds made the mistake of being all-or-nothing and who's made a point of improving on that error of judgement ever since).

Now, sure, I guess I can appreciate personal preference but that's where getting to know the product you've purchased comes in. Personally though I find being locked in something and finding it's not as restrictive as the RL equivalent would imply to be more frustrating and jarring than finding out the opposite. I'd appreciate and respect "harsher but appropriate" defaults over "might as well not be scripted" defaults every single time.

Which sort of brings me to the second thing that happened. As mentioned in my previous blog post, I'm currently locked in a spreader bar that makes walking around a reasonably frustrating experience. To walk I can't use the normal forward and backward keys. With this I have to press shift-left and then shift-right, over and over again, to (in effect) shuffle each foot. It's a very old build (dates back to 2010 from what I can see, although one script inside it has a creation date in 2008) but rather well done (if "rather frustrating, just like I imagine being RL hobbled by such a thing would be" is the measure we're using).

Except... one thing lets it down. It doesn't deny sittp. This means that I can cam anywhere on the region, find something I can sit on, sit on it and get there in an instant. While I'm doing my very best to not do this, knowing that I can do it sort of spoils the full effect.

This is a thing that I look for in the RLV toys I buy (and I do love buying RLV toys): appropriate restrictions. I like gags that control chat and instant messages. I wouldn't like a gag that didn't and neither would I like a gag that also controlled teleporting. I like leg restraints that control far-sitting and arm restraints that control far-touch, I'd like them a lot less if they didn't do that or tried to deny my maps. I like (and try and make) devices and restraints where the restrictions make sense.

So, if there's a conclusion to this ramble, it's this: if you're making an RLV product I'd applaud and encourage the harshest restrictions that make sense as being on by default. Just please make sure that a) there's good documentation available and b) that all the restrictions that make sense as being toggles are toggles. On top of that, I'd applaud and encourage restrictions that go as far as possible and still make sense, but no more.

After all, if Miss Vila wanted me to always walk up to objects before sitting on them, without the use of RLV, she'd tell me to do it rather than lock me up in fun things that use RLV. ;)

Some more landscaping, and a slow 24 hours

Today, Miss Vila and I carried on with the landscaping we started on Saturday. Time's kind of in short supply for Mistress right at the moment so we're having to do little bits each day. Today we had a play with making a small beach that, hopefully, fits the region. We spent a bit of time going over the options and how well it might work...

...and then we went shopping for bits and started work on making the beach area.

There's still plenty of work to do, we need to better blend it in to the edge of the region so it's not a stark contrast between grass and sand, but we're happy with how it's going so far. We think it helps make more sense of the bay that surrounds Z's home and the boat dock (which still needs work too, especially the choice of seating and possibly the odd toy or two).

And then it was time for Mistress to head for bed. First, however, I needed a top up for my teleport allowance. That got me a payment of being locked in a spreader bar for 24 hours, as well as having my hands cuffed.

The spreader bar isn't just for show either. It stops me from normally walking. To move anywhere now I have to press shift-left then shift-right, over and over again, to take small shuffling steps. There is, however, one RLV choice in it that I find rather curious and it's this: sit-tp isn't denied. This means I can cam over to anything that can be sat on and I can sit on it to get around quickly.

Not that I would. ;)

The Lab broke time again

Edit to add: this is fixed as of around 19:00 UTC.

It appears that the Lab broke time again. It's been a while since I last saw anything like this. Back in June 2012 we spent a week running on UTC (which was really nice, I wish the grid always ran on UTC) and, this time, they've done something that has caused the grid to not skip forward an hour to keep track with the US's switch to daylight saving.

This switch is always problematic on the grid as it is, especially if, like me, you're in the UK and your daylight saving switch doesn't happen for another couple of weeks. This now makes it confusing for everyone.

But it gets even better.

I noticed that the Raven Park and Z&A clocks were showing what would be the correct in-world time. It seems that, although the viewer time is wrong, in-world clocks that use llGetWallclock are correct! Here's a copy of the Raven Park clock, photographed when the viewer said it was 08:24:

So, not only will those in the US get their event times confused at the moment, any in-world clocks will further confuse matters by showing the correct time.

This is going to be a fun day.

Some landscaping, eventually....

We've never been ones for doing the whole "delete everything on the region and start again" remodel thing when it comes to Raven Park. Generally we prefer to let the region evolve, changing the odd thing here and there, rebuilding parts of it within the constraints of the other parts around it. While this does have the advantage of not causing complete upheaval it also has the nice side-effect of making the whole thing feel more organic, more natural, less planned. Just like an old village/town would be.

After replacing the old pony area with a slightly wild pond we decided that the next thing to get an upgrade would be the sun deck that's by the side of the Mansion. We'd already had a chat a couple of days back to decide on how it was going to go and had the main components picked out. So, earlier today, before it was Miss Vila's bedtime, we went in to make a start on it.

First off, however, because there would be lots of landscaping involved, Mistress decided that she just had to get a gardening/landscaping outfit sorted. Something with sturdy boots, some sort of dungarees that she didn't mind getting dirty and, of course, a big floppy hat to keep the Sun off.

Almost two hours later she had the outfit and almost no time left to actually get going on the build. Meanwhile, knowing that she'd actually not be getting the outfit dirty 'cos I'd be doing all the heavy lifting while she supervised, I went shopping for a clipboard for her. ;)

Thankfully we did get to spend about 1/2 hour on clearing the area of objects and Mistress supervised the terraforming and placement of the new dock that we're replacing the old deck with. Starting tomorrow and over the next few days we'll work on the details.

At least she'll have an outfit ready this time...

Six days later

Today marked six days since Miss Vila locked me on my knees. In that time, while I've managed to do most of the things I'd normally do, it's been slower -- much slower. As you might imagine I was looking forward to a bit of time with a bit more freedom of movement.

When we got together earlier today we first decided to pay a visit to the newly-opened Beaumont Manor. Miss Delores has recently done a rebuild of her region (which, in part, inspired me to reboot a Z&A product as lower land impact and more detailed mesh) so we were keen to go and see how it looked now. We'd actually tried this a couple of days earlier but had had the bad luck, or rather bad timing, of landing there about 7 minutes before the Tuesday restart hit. So rather than having a good explore we ended up back at home, having a chat over coffee. Well, Mistress had coffee anyway.

Anyway, back to today. We met up at home...

...and then headed off to Beaumont to have a good explore. Here's a few photos from the visit:

Eventually we headed back home, the TP home also using up my last teleport from my allowance. So, when we got home, I had to request a top-up for that, which meant a visit to the office...

First though, because my 6 days on my knees was up, I was released from that...

...and then I had to touch the punishment picker to find out my payment for the TP top-up. This turned out to be that I will spend 12 days wearing nothing but a chastity belt.

So that's me for the next 12 days. Mistress has already made it clear that she won't be relenting for Saturday's dance and that it's up to me to work out a costume that works with me like this. So that should be an interesting challenge.

Goodness knows what I'll do if I need to photograph a new product in the next couple of weeks... Beg, and bargain, I imagine. ;)

Texture hollow script

A couple of weeks ago I was asked by someone if I knew of a way to get the inside face of a hollowed cube to texture exactly. As in, how to work out the repeat so the texture appears to be one per "face" (okay, there's only one inside face, but when it's square it looks like there's four, or three for a triangle, etc...).

By coincidence I'd been faced with the exact same problem just a day earlier with a build that I was working on (and should be released in the next day or so) and after a bit of searching had found a blog post with some useful pointers.

Given that scripting is my thing, I thought I'd turn that information into a simple script that helps out. It's not terribly clever, and it assumes that you want an effective repeat of 4 for a square hollow, 3 for a triangle hollow and 1 for a circle. It also, for now at least, only bothers working on cubes (although there's little reason why it can't work with other types -- it's just I normally only want to do this with cubes and it makes the default hollow shape decision easier to do).

Here it is: you just drop it in the cube you want to texture, hollow it, throw the texture on the inside face and you should be good to go (so delete the script again). If you change the hollow size it'll recalculate on the fly.

Simple RLV self-locker script

The other week a friend asked for an easy way to lock an item on their avatar such that it would survive outfit changes -- sort of like a very simple version of the Z&A HUD Locker, only for something worn (okay, technically, HUDs are worn too, but you get the idea...). Given that they used RLV and had no desire to let anyone else lock it on, I quickly knocked up a script to do it.

It's hardly clever, and there are more sophisticated RLV locking scripts out there, no doubt, but I thought I'd post it here in case it was useful to anyone else: