Today I am going to tell you about a plugin I use all the time : the Outfit plugin. This one relies on RLV to work, it won't do anything if the captive is not using the RLV.
This is complex stuff, so please bear with me. There are a lot of things to explain, but fortunately they could be split into two posts. This one will talk about how to handle shared folders (restricting them, forcing them on or off etc), while the other post is about its child plugins Wear and Unwear, which work exactly the same way as Touch and Control, that's why they are melded into one post only (you can read that one here).
For this tutorial I will wear these pieces of clothing : a jacket, a shirt, a bra, a skirt, panties and boots.
Yeah, I know, it looks like I am just missing my umbrella for a walk under the rain. Har har.
First off, I am going to talk about the two buttons named "Detach at" and "Remove at". These buttons are on the main page of the Outfit plugin, and are meant to detach things that the captive is wearing, quickly. Let's see... Right now I am wearing shoes, boots to be exact. Let's say my top wants to force me to remove them but does not want to browse my folders. All he has to do is to tell the plugin to make me remove "whatever outfit containing the shoes layer". So he clicks on "Remove at" and chooses "shoes". And immediately my shoes layer, as well as my left lower leg, right lower leg, left foot and right foot attachments are detached. Simple, easy. It would have done the same thing if he had pressed "Detach at" and chose, say, the left foot.
Now, let's head to the really interesting part : handling the shared folders through the Outfit plugin. You already know the RLV handles what is called "shared folders". In a nutshell, a shared folder is a folder in the inventory that is "exposed" to the scripts, so they can manipulate it. I won't detail how shared folders work here, there are tutorials on this blog, but let's see how to use the Outfit plugin to exploit them to the best of its abilities.
Browsing through the shared folders is easy. Shared folders are just that, folders, and as such they are organized in a hierarchical way, exactly like your files on your computer. And like in every hierarchical structure, there is a root that is the entry point to the whole data. So I click I click on my cuffs, I go to Plugins, select "Outfit", then "Root"...
I'd like to find one particular outfit I am wearing, without knowing much about its name. It happens when your shared folders are beginning to become a bit populated, like mine... And I'd like to find my jacket.
Did you notice that little "(w)" sign before "> Glamour" ? This sign means "something is being worn somewhere in that general direction". So I press on this button, and get shown all the folders contained in it. Once again one of them shows "(w)". I press on "> Casual", I see that the "Jackets" button has the "(w)" sign, so I press it and...
Found it ! The "Black bomber" is the outfit I am wearing. I know it because it shows a "(W)" sign now, not a "(w)" anymore. The capital "W" means "this outfit is worn". So I click on it and will decide what to do with it.
Before I go any further, let's say I am distracted by RL for more than 10 minutes. Since the Outfit menu has a 10 minutes timeout, when I come back it will have expired so it won't do anything when I press a button. So I press "Ignore" to close this now useless menu, but I do not want to walk all the way down to the jacket again ! That's what the "Selected" button is for : I click on my cuff, press "Last Plug" to go to the Outfit plugin again, and then choose "Selected". And I am lead right to where I left ! "Selected" means "the last folder I was on", as opposed to "Root" which means "the topmost folder" (in our case, "#RLV" itself).
Now, what options do I have ? Not many. There is no outfit contained in the "Black bomber" one so I cannot keep browsing that way (the shared folders are a hierarchy after all, it is a tree with a root, branches and leaves, and this particular outfit is a leaf, a dead-end). All I can do is detach it or walk back, or change its mode (more on that later).
I press "DETACH" and right away my jacket and its prims vanish.
Naturally, if I pressed "ATTACH" now, it would come back, but this is not what I want.
This was pretty straightforward. Now on to the sexy stuff. No I'm not talking about lingerie ! I will show you how to allow and deny folders, and what it really means to do that.
Some of you might remember that in the past, the RLV was only able to restrict attaching and detaching clothes and attachments per name. For example, you could only prevent from attaching a jacket, a shirt, or something on spine, things like that. But you couldn't prevent from wearing one particular folder, or prevent everything except one particular folder. It can do that now, and this plugin is up to date to handle this new feature.
Before I begin, let me remind you exactly what this new feature is. You already know that your #RLV folder is a hierarchy of folders and items. By default you are able to wear and unwear what you want, except what is locked. The RLV is able to completely lock a folder and all its children out from you, making you incapable of wearing it (or removing it, depends on the option), renaming it, moving items in or out of it... It is secure. It is also able to prevent you from wearing or unwearing things that are NOT in your #RLV folder. In other words, it allows the top to control the captive's ability to wear things totally.
This is the theory. Let's see it in practice. Let's say my Mistress wants me to be able to wear only heels. Only N-Core heels, for that matter, and nothing else. No boots, no flatties, no sandals, nothing but high heels.
You may have noticed the "Mode" button on the menu. When clicking on it, it switches between "Normal", "Allow" and "Deny". And on the top of the menu, you see the current mode as well. Redundant you say ? Not really, let me explain why.
I click on my cuffs again, Plugins, Outfit, then I go to the Root folder, and Shoes.
This folder contains all my shoes, and I have lots. Ankle-high boots, knee-high boots, thigh-high boots etc... and all these must be restricted except on particular brand of one particular kind of boots.
Here is the folder in my inventory, entirely expanded :
What I want is the top "Shoes" folder to be locked out, but NOT the "N-Core" folder. I am in the "Shoes" folder now, let's press "Mode" twice to set it to "Deny".
There, what I have just done is this :
The red overlay indicates what I am prevented from wearing or unwearing.
But this means I cannot wear my n-core heels, right ? Yes, for now. I go to the "n-core" folder, it is contained in "prim heels" :
Oh, interesting here. The "Mode" button pretends it is "Normal", but I can try as I might, I won't be able to wear any of these shoes, or any other shoes whatsoever. But what is the top part of the menu saying ? "OUTFIT DENIED BY INHERITANCE"... What the hell does that mean... Remember that the "Shoes" folder and all its children was red, in the picture above ? Including "N-core" and the rest ? I denied only "Shoes" though, I did not deny the other folders one by one (imagine the task it would be). This means that since one of its parents is denied, this folder "n-core" is denied too. By, uh, inheritance.
Now I want to specifically lift the lock for this folder. So I click on "Mode" once, to switch to "Allow". And in the process, the top part of the menu indicates "ALLOWED". How convenient. Here is what the menu looks like now :
And my inventory is now treated like this :
The red still indicates what I am prevented from wearing, but there is an isle of green folders, that I am allowed to wear.
And I can now wear my n-core Pinup shoes ! These are the pumps I am wearing on my Vixen Leather vendor pic, btw. Lost of people asked.
Lastly, managing all the allowed and denied folders can become tedious, when there are a lot. Fortunately the Outfit plugin gives you a way to check the lists, and to actually use them as shortcuts if you like.
I click on my cuff, and go to the main page of the Outfit plugin, then I click on "Allowed" :
It shows the list of allowed folders, for now there is only one but this is really a list. And it also gives me a wall of numbers, plus a "Clear" button. If I pressed "Clear", it would clear the list instantly, and my Pinup shoes would be locked away from me again (to be exact, they would be locked ON me right now, since I am wearing them).
But instead of pressing "Clear", I press "1", which is the number of the N-core folder... and it brings me straight to that particular folder :
From there, I can change its mode or navigate at will, it saves a lot of time.
Now, if you are interested in the internals, here is what the RLV actually does when you ask it to wear or unwear an outfit :
- It checks if the folder is locked, if so, bail.
- It looks at all the parents, from that folder up to the root folder, and stops as soon as it finds one that is not "normal" (i.e. one that is either "allowed" or "denied", well, the RLV equivalent anyway). If it stops on a non-normal folder and that folder is "denied", then you can't wear the outfit. If it is "allowed", you can (even if one of its parents is "denied").
- If it went up to the root without finding a non-normal folder, all is well, the requested outfit can be worn or unworn.
There, it's pretty simple to understand but not so simple to explain. I find the red and green overlays on the pictures to be a lot more self-explanatory.
Have fun !
Marine
Posts
