Updaters back online

... and they work better now.

Hi there, the updaters for the RR products are back at last ! I'm sorry for taking them out for so long, I know some of you have been wanting to update for a while and couldn't.

I had to take them offline because suddenly a protection against a certain hack was not working anymore, and someone told me about it. This was one of the first protections I put in the update system two years ago, and it worked like a charm (except once when an avatar and two alts exploited it without me noticing) but for some reason a SL change broke that lately, so it was urgent that I removed them.

But that's not the reason why they were taken out for so long. The main reason was that the updaters were not able to handle v1.22 of my products, whatever I tried. This all came down to petty memory issues, but the huge differences and increases in inventory size in 1.22 simply brought the system to its knees, so it was time to rethink it all.

That's what I did, I redid the whole system from scratch. In your point of view, the thing works exactly the same as before, with these subtle differences :

- It's faster, it does not take several seconds per script anymore.
- You can rez several orbs at the same time to update one product per orb, in parallel. The old system could not do that.
- You can cancel an update at any time.
- You know in advance what product you will receive if you choose to replace your item.
- And last but not least, it can handle huge inventory lists like the many animations in 1.22 restraints, the old system could not. In other words, you will be able to replace a 1.22 restraint in the future (it was not possible before).

Please be aware that if your product is not recognized as a retail one even though it was never modified, it is probably due to me not having put its signature into the updater yet. In that case, the updater won't let you replace it with the latest version so all you can do is IM me and send me your product for a manual replacement (and I will add the signature to the list in the process).

Also there is no new version yet, the latest version is still v1.22 at the time of this writing.


There are three updaters in-world :

My little shop : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Pak/76/61/105

The Little Shop of Kink : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Lineside/102/146/77

S&M Castle : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Free%20Bird/38/149/39


For your information, here is my roadmap for the months to come :

- Some people have trouble adjusting the Siren ropes to their shape, due to a big shoulder width over body size ratio, or due to a small arms length. I want to cut some of the ropes (mainly the over-arms, vertical box part and front SJ part) to make them take a couple prims instead of just one, so it will resize better. The downside is that it makes more prims, so it will be longer to resize. But you can't have the cake and eat it.

- I want to make sitting poses for the other legs restraints to make them behave like the Siren ropes.

- I want to add animations to the existing restraints so they are on par with the Siren ropes.

There are other projects in the making, maybe a couple products that I might slip in-between, but overall lifting the existing restraints to make them as good as the Siren ropes is what I want to do next.







Have fun !

Marine

New product : Siren Rope Set

Hi !

After nearly two months of hard work, I am proud to announce the release of my latest product : the Siren Rope Set. I have been wanting to make something like this for years now, but the building resources of SL were simply not adapted until recently. My closest attempt was the Shibari arms and legs, which works well for the Japanese style bondage, but I also wanted to make a Western-style rope set. Problem is, it requires thinner rope or it looks cheap... and only mesh could allow that.

So, where to begin... This is a huge release, the most accomplished of all my products in fact, and I am quite proud of the result. There is a lot to say about it as you will see.

I mentioned Western-style. Like the Japanese style, the goal is to render a captive completely helpless and sexy. But unlike the Japanese style, the focus lies on the amount of ropes rather than on the precision of the ropework. We don't want the ropes to massage pressure points or to do tricky things like tightening when the captive struggles, we just want to use lots and lots of ropes, and to make them tight enough to ensure helplessness in the first place !

You don't believe me ? Here is an example of how many ropes you get :

The Siren Rope Set is actually two products in one : the arms part and the legs part, exactly like the Vixen cuffs, the Elegance shackles and several other products of mine. Both parts are independent, but they work so well together that it makes more sense to put them into the same box than to sell them separately.







The features

Before I go further, let me give you the obligatory list of features :

- Miles and miles of thin rope, very close to the skin, very sexy.
- All the ropes are mesh objects, most are not rigged so they are easy to resize to your shape.
- The ropes linking the wrists to the ankles and the arms to the torso are rigged so they follow your movements. They are actual ropes, not particles, for a better look.
- 8 ties for the arms.
- 8 ties for the legs.
- Over 300 animations ! 314 to be exact.
- 20 photorealistic textures : cotton, nylon, polyester, hemp, rough, climbing, camouflage... Plus the ability to change the tint and the material to make the ropes look wet, plastic, latex or metallic.
- Smooth walks linked to the position you're in.
- Smooth custom struggles, linked to the position you're in as well.
- Ability to change the style of the bondage, by making a plugin hide and show some parts according to your tastes.
- The crotchrope and harness rope can be shown even if you are not tied up.
- If you are wearing heels, they can be tied by the ropes as well, forcing you to keep them on until release.
- Three vibrators compatible with the ropes, for additional stimulation.
- The ropes can be leashed, so you can be dragged on a leash while tied up.
- Low script count, very low lag.
- New Anim plugin, lets you navigate among the many poses easily so you always find the one that suits your bondage. It also adjusts your height automatically (RLV required for that feature to work), and it even includes its own animator to play vanilla animations to variate your predicament even more. 18 animations are included by default in the arms plugin but you can add your own.
- Totally compatible with RLV so the ropes can restrict you in a realistic way.

The arms ropes

Both parts of the set contain 8 locks (well, ties) instead of 6. You have to press "More..." on the menu to reach the last two. Here is what you get :

For the arms, the first tie is just the elbows behind the back, so you can hold an object and use it. Like a feather duster. Or a paddle. It's fun for sessions with several subs !

The second and third ties bind the wrists only, on the front and behind the back :

The fourth tie is more particular, typical to bedroom bondage : the arms over the head, with or without a rope going around the neck.

The fifth tie is the regular arms bound parallel behind the back.

The six tie is very intricate : a rope straitjacket ! Try getting out of this one. Hehe.

The seventh one (don't forget it is on the second page of the menu) is the box tie, looking like a U-shape but tighter and a bit higher, with the arms crossed. It's very beautiful and has many styles.

And the eighth one is the tightest of all, besides its very name says it all : "Supertight" !

Now, I mentioned the 8 ties for the arms, but before I show you the 8 ties for the legs, let me tell you that you are not restricted to only 8 positions for your arms. As I explain here (http://realrestraint.blogspot.com/2012/11/rr-tutorial-anim-plugin-v2.html), the Anim plugin lets you choose between many many variations for each tie to fit any situation you may find yourself in. To put it simply, there are over 70 poses just for the arms for you to choose. Let me show you a few examples :

 

The legs ropes

Now on to the legs. Like the arms, there are 8 ties, the last two being accessed from the second page of the menu.

The first tie is a hobble, with a rope cinching the knees and another tying the ankles together loosely. You can walk in it but not fast, or you can crawl if you're sitting. You can also kneel down, sit or stand against a wall, using furniture and elements in-world is always more natural !

The second one is tighter, the legs are held tightly and parallel so you can only hop around or slide on your butt. Like in hobble, you can stand, sit in several ways or stand against a wall.

The third one is similar, but laying on the floor, so all you can do is crawl slowly. But what better way to get lazy and lavish in bondage ?

The fourth one is a regular hogtie. You can stay on your belly but you can also roll over, left, right and up.

The fifth one is a much tighter hogtie ! You can still roll over but you will feel how tight it is when you do.

The sixth one is a hogtie with your legs crossed, forcing them open and not leaving much room for movement. Roll over to your back if you want to tease your captor !

The seventh one is my favorite : the frogtie. You can actually stay on your knees, bend forward, bend backward, spread your legs, lay on your side in several ways... This is the tie that holds the most variations. And you can even have sex while in frogtie ! *nodsnods*

And finally, the eighth tie is a lotus position. While in lotus, you can sit on your butt but also get up on your knees, or lay down on your side or on your back.

 

With all those different and complimentary ties, you can find yourself into interesting situations...

Looking good in bondage has never been so easy !





The animations


The bulk of the work is focused on the animations. They are smooth and natural, the walks are adapted to the pose you're in, as well as the struggles. That's right, the struggles are custom ! Try them out !

Speaking of the walks, most of them are actually crawls, because the bondage is often so stringent that all you can do is crawl slowly on the floor. But you know that when you move, your camera follows you at a regular pace, right ? I took care of making the avatar actually stop and thrust repeatedly instead of just sliding continuously, for a more realistic look. Here is an example with the laying frogtie :

If you want to see some other walks, here are a few more examples :

The new Anim HUD is included in the ropes. Simply click on them, select "Plugins..." then "Anim..." and press "Give HUD". Wear the HUD, and you are ready to control your animations. The tutorial I mentioned earlier explains in detail how to use it.


I can't stress it enough though : you do need the Anim HUD provided with the ropes (or any other one but this one works better since it has been updated). Without it, you'd miss 50% of the fun since you wouldn't be able to control your bondage so easily.


You will notice that you will stay bound even while sitting on a piece of furniture, whatever it is, without the ability to turn the animation off anymore. Why ? Because you can pick the perfect position among the ton of sitting poses contained into the ropes and it will suit the animation of the furniture, while not breaking your bondage. Look for yourself !




Kneeling by the bed :

Curled up in a small cage :

Imprisoned in another cage :

Tied in a strappado :

Being silly on the bed :

Or just lazing in a chair :

No more having to be untied in order to use a piece of furniture ! Now you can actually live in bondage !


What do you mean, "enough bragging" ? Wait, you aren't seriously going to...

Eek ! Ow !   Alright, Alright ! I yield ! No more bragging !




The textures


Of course, since they are meant to be realistic, the ropes are textured in a photorealistic way. There are 20 textures, 17 of them made by me. Here are a few closeup shots :

To control the texture of the ropes, simply use the "SirenTex" plugin.





The styles


As I mentioned earlier, the captor is able to control the look of the ropes, not only their textures but also which one is shown and which one is hidden, according to the chosen bondage. There are two ways to do that : either go to the "Style" plugin and choose the style there (some bondages offer up to 7 styles), or simply choose the same tie several times in a row. The ropes will say which style they have switched to.

The "Style" plugin is also in charge of hiding and showing some special parts of the ropes. The arms one controls the visibility of the chest harness, while the legs one controls the crotchrope and its vibrator (more on that later on). You can make it show the harness and the crotchrope without having to be bound.

Resizing


No doubt you will need to resize your ropes the first time you wear them. It is actually not as hard as it looks. Sure they look complex, but they are mesh, which means there are only a few items. To resize them in the easiest way, I recommend you this procedure :

1. Tie your arms in the "Elbows only" tie.

2. Edit the elbow rope that appears (how to do that depends on your viewer, on the RLV I maintain you just press Ctrl-3 and click on the rope, or right click on the rope and select "Edit"), this shows the "Tools" window (not to be mistaken with the "Tools" menu of the ropes, the "Tools" window is a window shown by your viewer, some viewers call it the "Edit" window or the "Build" window, but it is always the same window).

3. You notice that you did not select only the elbow ropes, but also one more rope located higher on the arms, and which is invisible. Most objects contained in the box are made of two or three items (or prims, even if the term is now incorrect).

4. Click on the "Edit Linked" or "Edit Linked Parts" checkbox on the "Tools" window (the actual name depends on your viewer as well), this will allow you to select one item at a time.

5. Click on the elbows ropes again, the item that is highlighted in yellow, not the blue one (you'll take care of it later, it is shown only on the 8th tie).

6. You can move it with the arrows, or rotate it by holding the Ctrl key, or scale it by holding Ctrl and Shift at the same time.
7. If you make a mistake, and you will certainly (I do all the time), press Ctrl-Z. This undoes your last action. Pressing it again keeps undoing until you're back to a fresh state if you need to.
8. Once you are satisfied with the positioning of your elbow ropes, switch to the next tie ("Arms front") and do it again.

It sounds long and hard but it really is not. I have cut the ropes in a way that they are easy to resize to your shape, and many ropes are used for more than one tie (and you need to resize them only once, not once for each tie, of course).

Note that you do not necessarily have to resize every prim individually, perhaps your shape is close to mine enough that you only need to resize proportionally. But editing linked parts allows you to stretch in one direction at a time, this gives you a lot more control over how your ropes fit your body. You do not want to look like you are floating in your ropes or like they are cutting through your skin, do you ?

One thing to remember, though, there are two harnesses ! The light one is used in the "Straitjacket" and the "Box" ties (and is also controlled by the "Style" plugin), while the heavy one is used in the "Supertight" tie only. It is tricky because they both overlap a lot, so it is a good idea to check what you select before resizing, for example by pressing Ctrl-Alt-T to see the invisible items in red.

See what I mean ?


One more thing : if you have trouble connecting the two wrist ropes in the "Hands front" and "Hands back" positions, that means your shoulders may be wide. No problem, there is a coil of rope hidden inside your right wrist (it might be tricky to see it, but it's there), that you can move, scale and rotate all you like to close the gap between the wrist ropes.

I'll show you how it's done.

My shoulder width is normally 47, but for this example I have set it to 70. See the gap ? We're going to close it without resizing the ropes.


First locate the hidden coil, that might be the trickiest part because sometimes the viewer won't let you cam inside your own body. What I do is kneel on the ground (thanks to the "kneel low" anim of the animator contained in the Anim HUD, for example), tie my hands in the "Hands back" tie and focus on the ground behind me with the Alt key. Then I move my camera until it is inside my right arm, and I select the small coil with the "Edit Linked Parts" checkbox ticked, like this :

It works best if the drop-down list of the "Tools" window is set to "Local", because the coil is more or less aligned with the coils already present, so all you have to do is to slide along the red arrow and then to adjust slightly until you are satisfied.

Drag the red arrow to the left.

Adjust a little, scale, move up or down until you are satisfied with the result :

Done !




The bonuses

The ropes contain a couple funny pluses that I'm sure you will enjoy !


Firstly, like the Vixen leather set, they are able to tie your shoes to your feet, to keep you from removing them at all until you are untied. I call that "heel ropes", and those ropes can be resized and rotated even by your captor (but you can do it yourself too, although you cannot remove them yourself if someone else tied you up). The way to control these ropes is through the "TieShoes" plugin of the legs ropes.

Another bonus is the vibrator, that ties itself to the crotchrope. Inactive while invisible, it can be shown thanks to the Style plugin of the legs ropes (the crotchrope, which is controlled by this plugin as well, has to be visible too). Once shown, it can be turned on, and... mmmmmmm... It actually vibrates and hums, making all the knots of your crotchrope going all rub-rub...

And if one vibrator tied to the crotchrope is too light for you... guess what, the box includes two more vibrators ! Those are not tied with ropes but merely inserted... but they do react to them all the same, which means you can't turn them off if your legs are tied up (since they are controlled by the legs) and you can't untie yourself !


And another bonus is four gestures called "Tiptoes" that allow you to control the angle of your feet, should they be bent out of shape when you wear high heels (it happens with some of them). You need to activate them in order to use them. Simply press F9, Shift-F9 or Ctrl-F9 to force them to 60°, 30° or 0° respectively, and press F10 to release them.





The price

I left that matter for the end... You can acquire these ropes for L$1000, and the updates are free. Be advised that this is not an update to the Shibari rope set, but an entirely new product.

Have fun and enjoy life-like bondage !

Marine