Fourth update to the Police Collar

Hi there,

Yep, this is yet another update to the Police Collar ! After nearly two years of not touching it. This one is about adding two features to satisfy some popular requests I've gotten during this year while working on other stuff : the ability to mix the two position monitors (relative to captor and absolute) with an AND or with an OR, and the ability for the captor to zap the sub without having to click on the collar first.

These sound easy but they were tricky to implement because the former required a substantial rewrite of the monitoring code, while the latter involves a new Police Collar Remote HUD.

 

Before you read further, if don't know how to update your collar please follow these instructions :

First you need to go to one of these locations :

My Little Shop
Chorazin's store
Roper's Dark Playground
Dark Wishes


Once there, click on the updater and follow the instructions. You need to choose "REPLACE" for this one as the Zapper plugin has been cut in two and has a second slave script now, and the HUD has been added to the collar so the updater cannot provide you those changes without a replacement. Don't forget to save your times. If you do not get a "REPLACE" option, contact me (Marine Kelley) to get a manual replacement.

Position monitors mixing

Until now, if the Relative position monitor (i.e. force the sub to stay close to their captor) and the Absolute position monitor (i.e. force the sub to stay close to a fixed point in a region) were both active, the sub was punished whenever she was outside the bounds of either of these monitors. This meant that if the captor was too far from the absolute area, the sub could not be in both areas at the same time and was constantly punished, so the captor had to turn the Absolute position monitor off before taking the sub for a walk. Not really practical.

This update provides you with a new "OR" switch (or "union" switch if you're into math) that is ON by default. When ON, the monitors will motivate the sub to stay either within the Absolute area or within the Relative area (if both are active). When OFF, the monitors will make the sub stay within both areas, like before, with the risk of constantly punishing her if the areas do not intersect.

Please note that although I write "area" I mean "volume" because the distances are 3D, but you get the point. "Area" works too because most of the time we move horizontally anyway.

Here is how you turn this switch on and off. Go to the Relative Position menu and click on "OR Abs.", or go to the Absolute Position menu and click on "OR Rel.", both buttons set that same "OR" switch. You can also go from one menu to the other by clicking on "Abs. Pos..." or "Rel. Pos..." respectively, as a shortcut.

Yes, I know, this "OR" switch is technically an "AND" switch since when it is ON, the monitors punish the sub when she is outside BOTH areas at the same time. But I find it easier to call it an "OR" switch as the sub is expected to stay inside the Absolute area OR the Relative area, not necessarily both at the same time. From the captor's and the sub's points of view, the sub has to stay either in one area OR in the other in order to avoid being punished.

This is pretty much it for this new switch, but it required to rewrite a good part of the monitoring code, which led to adding a new slave script named "CheckTargetPos" which is fully in charge of the monitoring now. This was needed because the original Zapper plugin was close to memory exhaustion, and the two features contained in this update required a lot of additional code which would have made the original script explode. Hence the need for a replacement.

Police Collar Remote

This is a new object provided along with the Police collar and you will find it by clicking on the new "Get Remote" button in the Zapper plugin menu (lower left corner) :

Once you get the Police Collar Remote object, wear it and you see this HUD :

Please note : If you do not see the blue text right away, right-click on the HUD to refresh it. I don't know what causes it but it seems to be a viewer issue.

Click on "TARGET" to set the target, either "NONE", "ME" (that's you), or any of the names that appear in the target menu if you are not alone. Those are not necessarily wearers of a Police Collar, they're just the 10 people closest to you within a 30 m radius around yourself. Choose one of them who is wearing a Police Collar preferably, ideally your own sub.

Please note : The communication only goes from the remote to the collar, there is no feedback the other way around.

Once a target is set, you see their display name (or at least the printable characters in it, I know some of you guys like to include bizarre Unicode characters in your display names ; well those certainly won't show on the remote) followed by their user name. If the text is too long to fit on the 24 characters of the display, it scrolls.

The remote itself is pretty easy to understand and to use. Here is what every button does.

- TARGET : Set a new target among the people around you, or yourself, or clear the target.

- MENU : Opens the menu of the Zapper plugin of the person set as the target. If their Zapper is not active, you see either "ACTIVATE" (if the target is yourself or if the Zapper is simply switched off) or "ASK" (if the Zapper was not activated by the sub manually first).

- SWITCH : Switches the monitoring on and off. This is different from the initial activation that the sub has to do manually in order to use the Zapper, even if it looks very similar. Internally, this is treated like a temporary deactivation that allows anyone, not just the sub, to reactivate the Zapper. Of course, if the sub clicks on "DEACTIVATE" in their own Options menu, then the Zapper is totally deactivated as if it were brand new, and will have to be reactivated again. This switch is useful when you want to take your sub on a walk and don't want her monitored and punished automatically, but you still want to be able to use the Zap buttons (which are out of reach in the menu since you have to click on "ACTIVATE" first to get access) to punish them manually.

- ZAP 1 to 3 : Immediately delivers an electric shock to the sub. This is exactly like clicking on "Zap low", "medium" or "high" respectively in the Zapper menu. These buttons work whether the Zapper is switched on or off, but not if it is completely deactivated by the sub.

- Title bar : This hides and shows the HUD to make room when needed.

The HUD is Copy/No-mod/Transfer so you can pass it along if you want, but only the person holding the key to the collar can control it through the remote. Unless the key is available, in which case anyone can control it.

You do not have to set the target every time you wear the Remote, and you do not need to get a new Remote every time you log on or whatnot. Once you have gotten this Remote, you can just keep using it.

Also, please note that this remote functions only if you are in the same sim as your target, it does not do cross-sim messages.

Have fun !

Marine