We have released a new update for the OpenCollar on the weekend! It is called Peanut N°9 and ​a good follow-up release for the previous, and first Peanut version of the collar. We have been able to smooth out all the known kinks that had come up, and added a few more features and animations.

The update can be found as usual at Arcadia, or at the Little Temple of the Collar™ in Bondage.

If you need to upgrade more than one collar, you should get the updater at the Second Life® Marketplace, where you can add it to your cart, and then increase the quantity to how many you need, that saves you the unboxing because you get it delivered in folders.

At this point I want to warn from installers or updaters that are handed to you by strangers or attached to group notices somewhere. We don't distribute like that and never have. Our updates are only available through in-world vendors, or on the Second Life® Marketplace.

Here is a list of places where you can officially get this update:

​• Our sanctuary at Arcadia provided by virtualdisgrace.com
• Our place at Bondage provided by the Dictator Shop

• Ahegao by AmiTrouble - In front of the reception desk
• Archaic by Grey Mars - On the pillar in front of the landing point
• Cae by Caelan Hancroft - Upstairs and to the left

• Blacksilk Academy (vendor spot provided by Serjourn Daxter) - In the library, on the right wall
• Yiff Lounge (vendor spot provided by Zian Dragovar) - Inside the building to the left, on the wall
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• My own shop on the Second Life® Marketplace

Now let's discuss what's new in Peanut N°9. I would appreciate it if you take a moment to read it. ♥

Most noticeable will be the new pose selection. It's always a matter of taste with such things, but I think that the new sets are a huge improvement over what we used to have, and so far everyone seems to like them. Before I get into further details, it is important to tell that the new poses are only available in new collars, we don't install or override existing poses with the updater. Updaters only install utility animations that were not previously part of the OpenCollar Six™ specification.

The free collars have a new selection of 12 poses that are more shape and gender-fluid. These definitely are a lot less binary than the previous selection, and that is good!

​Premium collars have a selection of 18 poses, with some of them being the same as in the free sets, but with natural breathing added to them. Most of the poses were animated by Ash Ellsberg, one of Second Life's oldest and most talented fetish artists.

There is also a new crawl stance and motion, with the free selection using a nice one from the Dari's Haus public domain resource, and the premium selection having a more exclusive puppy crawl animation that has been created by Stockholm & Lima's rock star animatrix Surrealia Anatine.

We have also a new default chain. It's a derivative that I based on an original creation by Grey Mars, so this is a magical chain, it has history and bound many a beautiful damsel before. The chain links are also smaller size, meaning, it will shrink a bit smaller than the old chain when customizing it in the menu, and it also tints much better, so have fun playing with that!

The big feature in this release is the crawl, not only the animations, but the code behind making it happen. As some of you know we had a rather cryptic feature called AntiSlide, which was the basic idea behind stuff like a pet crawl, but we decided to swap it for something more simple and robust.

The pet crawl is enabled automatically after the installation, but you can also turn it off and on as you wish in the collar's Animations menu, and you can crawl now when you are also playing a pose through the collar, such as nadu oder beg. If you move while in a pose, you are doing a puppy crawl!

Here is a quick how-to:

The first thing that you should do is to play the "crawl" stance through the collar's pose menu. Next you want to use the up and down arrows in the menu, to adjust the crawl stance so that the avatar's palms and knees line up with the ground. If you own a Virtual Disgrace(tm) New Wearer's Remote, you can use the HUD buttons instead. Then all you have to do is to move around and watch yourself crawl like a good puppeh, awww!

If you end up looking as if you first stood up each time before starting to crawl, you can turn your AO off, which should make it look more smooth. That's a bit annoying but depends on the walk animation in the AO, some walks are more aggressive than others. In any case, the Stockholm&Lima version of the pet crawl should be a bit more robust but I turn my AO off anyway.

In the fixes department we found a bug where some crafty users would be able to hax their RLV restrictions away with a well timed device reboot. (My god, so naughty!) That is now no longer possible! You can use the reboot command any time to give your collar a healthy clap on the bum without losing settings or restrictions.

Oh, relay

The RLV relay was also tweaked in places to compensate for extra spammy furniture or grabbers, but those will always be a pita. I really think that our collar internal relay should be fun and snappy for furniture play needs, not so much for ancient traps that were scripted in 2007. In fact, I was visiting a place called Psi's Realm and none of the traps or cages there made my internal relay nervous or spammy, even though there were a lot around. Vivisecting the little bugger was one of the best decisions we made in the last years: Our RLV relay plugin kicks ass now! 

Finally monsieur, a waffle-thin mint

We also subjected the dialog script to a good and thorough cleansing, and... well, you would not believe how congested it was. I think if we hadn't lightened it up a bit, it might have burst, and we would have had all the stuff, like menus and colors and chat notifies just splash and splatter around! I'm not saying that it was broken, I'm just saying that it had to ease up a little and it did. ♥

On that end we mostly tweaked a few things for those users who upgrade legacy content. Remember this crazy "Appearance bundle" that we used to have in OpenCollar 3.x, some 8 (!!!) scripts? I realized that when those users would upgrade, they would lose the ability to customize their collars as they did before, so we made a derivative of oc_themes, called oc_looks that takes care of that, and will automatically install when this kind of legacy content is recognized.

The installer is a very complex beast and I couldn't make "Wendy's" installer without Otto's divine engineering, and Eva's diligent testing and support. We all make this stuff together.

Wendy's OpenCollar Distribution, which is the name that we use right now for the collar package, has a much clearer legal text. OpenCollar Six had some extra licensing, using contract law, that was used to describe the rights and limitations for content other than GPL licensed open source scripts.

This type of licensing is now gone, it was just too much and too complicated for our needs. Instead we have more compact user-rights and licensing information that explain everything in a language that everyone should be able to understand more easily.

As promised we have compiled all feedback and made a community refresh version of Peanut N°9 to adjust things and make everyone happy. If you have already updated to the first N°9 prior to March 21, 2018 you shouldn't skip this one either, it's 5 minutes well invested if you love your collar.

More User-friendly Outfits
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We have been looking at the problems most users had when trying to get the outfits feature to work, and simplified the process significantly. It is now no longer required to use a "hidden" type of folder for the outfits, and we have a new sub-directory for your avatar basics, that doesn't get stripped away when you are changing your outfit.

Thanks to that we can also load stuff a bit faster now, but please understand that the loading time depends also on your net speed, sim lag and how fast your GPU can render geometry and textures!

IMPORTANT: Once you installed the Peanut N°9 community refresh, your already existing outfits won't show up at a first because you have to rename a few things real quick. To learn how to prep for the improved outfits feature, please check out the updated manual page.

Vanilla and Expectations

As it turns out most of you expect that Vanilla mode is something that is intended to ensure your safety, and in that sense an option that can be used only by the wearer of the collar, meaning, it is seen as something that absolutely requires the wearer's consent, and that is a good way to see it.

We adjusted it to work in this way and without any doubts: Vanilla is the wearer's choice.

Vanilla mode will from now on also be already enabled out of the box. This can be adjusted per brand, meaning, if you want to ship your own collars and rather not have this behavior, then you can easily adjust it, however for the vast majority (which should be a bit more than fifty thousand users at this point into P9) this is what's expected, and the desired behavior.

Practically I'm sure that a lot of users will pick up a collar, set their owners and trust lists, and then disable Vanilla mode to go out and play. It makes a lot of sense for that because once an owner is set, access control is given up to them, and the wearer couldn't set any other additional owners.

For those who absolutely can't have it like this, I have something to make it work for you as well.

Web Settings

Okay! Web settings aren't something new, but I realized that most people just don't know yet how to use them. I also realized that it would be really convenient to have some of these settings prepared as raw files to load straight into collars, and created a new directory on my git repository, so all you need to do is to grab a URL and used it to load the setting, just like that: <prefix> load url <url>

You can use these settings to do stuff, such as disabling the runaway feature, inverting Vanilla mode (to make it the owner's choice instead), or disabling the Highlander safety so you can wear more than one collar at a time.

​Obviously, these are all more advanced or "dangerous" things to do, but keep in mind that we are still playing with the normal Peanut version collars. If you love those ideas a lot, you should consider using the Heartcore version, which was also refreshed with the Peanut N°9 sources.

I will link the pre-made web settings section on the updated settings manual page.

No more unboxing!

The updater (when picked up in-world) doesn't have to be unboxed anymore which is a relief if you need to pick up a dozen or so updaters, for a dozen or so collars. Haha, oops unbox party! :D

This was mostly a challenge because, with all the open source licensing and user-rights stuff, I have to include a README file, and using networked vendors, I couldn't peddle the wares in a folder, so it even had to be boxed! I could have sent them as individual items, but that already resulted in...

"btw ur update only send u a notecard ???"
"Oh! You probably missed the other inventory offer!"
"?"
"You are getting a second inventory offer right after the card."
"why?"
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etc, etc....in the past. :I
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So! I just made the little peanut a bit more talkative and added a command "give card" that will have her hand out the readme and licensing files. I'm going to link all relevant information on the updates page soon too, then you don't have to wrestle with ugly to read notecards anymore. ♥

First of all I'd like to introduce the new version release of the collar: Peanut

With more parties all of a sudden claiming the OpenCollar name, and one of them using confusingly similar version numbers for their releases, I thought that it was best to use something different than numbers altogether for our own releases.

That's not as uncommon as it sounds (look at some Linux distros, or at Android for example), but it does sting a bit to have carried on with a meaningful version policy, when now people use it for petty competition where a higher number is only used to pretend the version is newer. Sighs...

Version numbers should be clear to recognize, and easy to memorize for humans. So! Our new version policy is nuts, and we are not progressing versions alphabetically, but by the size of the nut!

Let's take a look at what's new in Peanut. ♥

More space on access lists:

From Peanut on you will be able to add many more avatars to your access lists. Most importantly you can add them to any of the roles, with no pre-defined limits per role. You will notice a percentage value under the headline of the Access menu that tells you how many percent of your global storage is used up. We found this to not only be more robust, but also more honest than claiming that "there's now no limit", as each script can always only have a storage of 64 kilobytes.

Power-up for the vanilla mode:

The popular "Vanilla" feature has been re-worked. In the Peanut version the Vanilla mode does not use up any access list space at all, and is now a real mode, just like you even have Public mode.

In case you are not familiar with the Vanilla mode: When it is activated, the wearer of the collar retains full control over her collar, even when other Owners are added at a later point.

A less confusing RLV Relay:
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Let's face it. The RLV relay has been by far the most confusing feature in collars since the beginning. There were so many options, and modes and confusing "lists", most users just clicked around, and when things didn't work out as they should, they got super frustrated. This is no fun!

From Peanut on, our relay is slim and clever. You can choose if you want to be asked before you are grabbed by furniture, or you can choose that things just happen automatically, and because it is a relay that lives in a collar, the requests that are coming from avatars that are already on Access lists (such as owners, trusted etc..) will always go through.

If you get annoyed by requests from spammy furniture, or other objects that try to capture you, you can block them now more efficiently. If the request was anonymous, we can only block it for 15 minutes at a time, but if it wasn't we can block the avatar who was sending it. If you accidentally clicked the Block button, there is also a Reset button in the RLV relay menu that clears things up!

​More love for the titler app:

The Peanut titler does no longer require a dedicated "FloatText" prim for it to work. Seriously, screw that. We can now have a titler in any collar regardless whether it was built along oldie specs or not.

Additionally, mighty hacker cat George Black contributed a fun new feature that lets you set a percentage graph as a title. If you were hanging out at Arcadia lately and saw us running around with weird titles, such as "55% awake", "23% paranoid", "12% have to pee", etc.. that's the new feat! ♥

You can set it via chat command <prefix> graph <number> <title>, i.e. we graph 68 in love

And so much more:

Yes, in fact, there were so many meaningful and important improvements in Peanut that it won't be possible to list them all here. There were edits done in #RLV Folders and Outfits to make them more robust, fixes done in the hover height logic in the Pose player, usability improvements when making use of color dialogues, and some RLV restrictions, and much more.

As usual I'm noting all changes down in GitHub issues, add the issues to a Milestone (Peanut in this case), and then attach the code merges to the issues themselves, so you can look it all up.

Contributors to the peanut version are in alphabetical order:

• Garvin Twine aka "Otto"
• George Black
• stawberri aka "Pudding"
• Wendy Starfall

Availability and Links:

An update package is available cost-free in the following places. Click the blue links to get there!

• Our sanctuary at Arcadia provided by virtualdisgrace.com
• Our place at Bondage provided by the Dictator Shop

• Ahegao by AmiTrouble - In front of the reception desk
• Archaic by Grey Mars - On the pillar in front of the landing point
• Stockholm&Lima by Surrealia Anatine - In front of the apparel building

• Blacksilk Academy (vendor spot provided by Serjourn Daxter) - In the library, on the right wall
• Yiff Lounge (vendor spot provided by Zian Dragovar) - Inside the building to the left, on the wall
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• My own shop on the Second Life® Marketplace

Detailed instructions on how to use the update can also be found at www.opencollar.at/updates
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For a detailed change-log, please browse the closed issues of the Peanut milestone.
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And if you need my source code...

As I already mentioned above in the peanut availability, I'm providing a sanctuary for all of us: an inclusive, friendly, and safe environment for everyone, in the Arcadia region and Fire Flower group!

To explain why a sanctuary is needed in the first place, please grab a coffee or so, and read further:

What the heck happened to the OpenCollar group?

On the 21st of November former members of the OpenCollar project used their legacy credentials to take control over some of the old and large community groups on the Second Life grid.

This didn't happen with my agreement, none of my team were asked, or informed about something like that, and none of the virtualdisgrace.com members either. There was no dialogue whatsoever.

Instead, we were all removed from our group roles, in case of Otto, VirtualDisgrace and me, actually from our Owner roles, and were then muted, ejected, and prevented to re-join these groups.

​As it turns out, the founder of a Second Life group, can actually request to have other Owners of a group removed, via Support Ticket to Linden Lab. This is a hidden feature, and quite contrary to the information everyone receives when adding other residents to Owner roles.

In my case, this means that it was possible to con me into thinking that it was in everyone's interest that I continue the OpenCollar project, when I was really just used to make the operation a success, after these former members (who almost ran the project into the ground already in 2011) couldn't.

The OpenCollar group became so negative   : (

Protecting and moderating the OpenCollar group cost us all a lot of strength. There was always this weird, looming negativity ever since the summer of 2016. Politics were dragged into the group, often in a manner that made discussions derail in the worst ways. People were abusing the group (and our in-world place at the time) trying to trick other residents into joining fake fundraisers for American veterans. There was also lots of lame trolling frequently enough to really upset people...

All in all, I wouldn't call "losing control" of the OpenCollar group to be much of a loss, and I really just shrugged it, and carried on with my stuff, until I learned that there was, and still is, a lot of slander going on in the group against me, my team and our products. So I dug in, and did some research.

Cards, claims and conspiracy!

As it turns out there were some notecards sent through the group where nirea and Athaliah Opus try to justify these (cough) "events". However, these cards are weird and inconclusive, as if someone scribbled something on a napkin while having had too much to drink.

It doesn't come as a surprise that they are poorly informed, after all, these two weren't participating with OpenCollar in the last six years. That means until those recent events, not ever since the old web application and database, that were hosted on the Google AppEngine, were shut down.

A lot of the stuff written there seems to be either stemming from malicious gossip, or just completely made up, and then there is also an improvised wiki, that beside some weird and sexist remarks, has stated somewhere that nirea and Athaliah are the "founding directors" of some kind of OpenCollar company.

I have researched that, and there is no such OpenCollar company, and there never was one either.

It is true that Athaliah Opus founded all the old OpenCollar groups, but that makes her a founder of groups on Second Life, not some kind of "director", let alone would this entitle her to make claims on a name that me and my team have defended for over half a decade.

Do I want to "own" the OpenCollar name?

In fact, no, I do not. I would want for the OpenCollar name to be freely available, and to be treated similar to the Linux name, that can be used just like various Linux distros do it, such as Ubuntu Linux, Linux Mint, or Kali Linux. That was part of the core motivation why I have defended OpenCollar with teeth and claws, and I'm very unhappy that things went the way they did now! >:(

​​While I have obviously a fetish for legalese, I don't like lawsuits. I've been offered a large sum of money, by a dear mentor and friend (♥), to pursue a lawsuit after filing a DMCA notice on the OpenCollar groups on Second Life, but I don't think that this is who I wish to become. I don't want to "make it my lives mission to destroy someone", or things along the lines that were said by people to intimidate me, only to be the bitch dog that actually bit after having been provoked enough.

​I find all this to be so destructive and unnecessary. It's not computing for me why they did that, what they are really trying to achieve. The OpenCollar operation as I ran it did not generate any revenue, it had to be funded by community donations, virtualdisgrace.com and me. This is a kind of operation that has value because of other things than "making money", so if they try to salvage it for that, they will soon realize that their dream of spending next summer on the fancy, new yacht with a flock of happy, coke-brained bikini girls, turns out to be a dud.

Let's take a look at who actually was invested in OpenCollar in these last many years:

That statistic above is a "GitHub contributors graph". It shows the amount of commits a person has contributed, and it also shows when they did that, and the amount of lines that were edited. This is a very useful feature because it makes things very transparent. You can only influence these graphs by contributing to the project. That's the only way. In this case it really shows who "is OpenCollar" and who has been in the time span that you see in the headline of the graph. Of course there have been more contributors than those top 4, and you can see them all by following this link.

​Et tu, Brute?
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Now, if anyone would have told me that something like this was going to happen to me someday, and that it would be coming from a group of people who once used to be my friends, I'd have never believed it. I still have a hard time accepting this. Indeed, I feel a lot like that cat on the pic above!

A lot of my friends lost interest in me because they got bored when all I ever did was working on OpenCollar. What baffles me is that all of them, even those who I considered to be ideologically like-minded individuals, stranded at this weird sado-maso confederate cowboy sim. That's so creepy...

All this stuff... the alt-right talk, the confederate flags, all the complaints over the rainbow banner that we had, these absurd pro-Trump rallies that some tried to have at the collar temple, it all fits like the fist on the eye for a quirky, upbeat and open minded project like I intended OpenCollar to be.

That considered, I see why they wanted me gone.

My OpenCollar was supposed to be an inclusive, friendly, and safe environment for everyone. For people who can choose their own gender, for people who signed on from all over the world, for people who were curious and receptive for new ideas, for people who respected others lifestyles...

What I have been able to observe in the last few weeks, this new direction of the "official" OpenCollar company, is so weird. I found a very fitting YouTube clip (had a clip with a Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas scene there, but found one that fit way, way better and swapped it out ♥)

...and I think that with this clip, I should conclude this statement. People who needed to have facts and accurate information provided already received it, and everyone else is welcome to ask me.

What I'd hope to see is that users of OpenCollar are cautious, and well informed, before they blindly install updates on their collars that now come directly from the OpenCollar and OpenCollar R&D groups. That stuff is damaged goods, a revert of my old code at best, and has versions numbers above 6.x for low-brow, misleading reasons, rather than actually having created a new API version.

So, please be smart, go where your heart leads you, be with the kind of people who respect you, and who are honest with you. I will continue to offer cool improvements for the OpenCollar, as well as beautiful collar designs, some for free, and some for sale, because it makes me happy too. (^-^)/

Aaand... if you feel lost, lonely, confused, randy, hyper or simply just have a question, please join the Fire Flower ✿ group.