Friday, February 14, 2014

RR tutorial : Wriggle v2

Hi !

Today I'm going to show you an old new plugin : the Wriggle plugin.

Wait, is it old or new ? Well, it is an old plugin as it has been introduced into the RealRestraint brand years ago, in fact nearly since the beginning, but it is new because this tutorial is about the second version of it. I never had the time to make a tutorial for the first version, and although it was working, I've been so bad at making it usable that very few people knew it even existed.

Hence the total rewrite, and hence the tutorial. I know that such a plugin makes bondage even more enjoyable for the sub, and is a nice addition to being able to choose the pose thanks to the Anim plugin.

So what's this "Wriggle" thing anyway ?

You already know that since v1.22 of the RealRestraint products, you are able to change your pose while in bondage. For example, lifting your hands, kneeling or sitting down, rolling over, anything you can think of, that doesn't change the bondage itself. To do this, you simply use the RR Anim HUD (included with every arms and legs restraint) to browse through the many available animations, until you find the one you like.

But there are cases when you may want to go further, and you can't do that just with the Anim HUD. For example, you may want to lay down while you're made to stand with your legs tied, or the opposite (you are bound laying down and you want to stand up), or your hands are tied behind your back and you want to bring them to the front (or the other way around). But doing that changes more parameters than just your pose : the speed of movement (you hop faster than you crawl), the touch restrictions (which may be different when your hands are in front than when they are behind your back), and so on.

All these transitions are realistic, you can do them in real life, but without the Wriggle plugin you can't in SL. This is because they technically make you change the lock itself (from "Tight" to "Lie" and back, from "Hands back" to "Hands front", etc), and that means changing some restrictions and other settings along with it.

This is where the Wriggle plugin comes in handy. It allows you to try your luck at changing to another lock (when permitted), in exchange for some time and some energy cost. The same energy that is used for struggling. So in the end, that comes down to choosing between either trying to struggle out, or getting comfortable in bondage.

So, in short, the Wriggle plugin is like a bridge between one lock and another, provided that bridge makes sense.


Ok enough talk, let's do it ! The plugin itself is pretty easy to use, you generally have only one button to click, the real difficulty is deciding whether to click it or not.

Let's say my hands are tied behind my back with Siren ropes, and I want to bring them in front of me. In real life, that would imply trying to get them past my butt, then between my legs, and finally stepping out. The first part is what requires nimbleness and effort, and is not guaranteed to succeed.

Oh, of course I could raise my arms behind my back, change the pose a little...



... but I want them to go to the front instead.

Firstly, I go to the plugin itself by clicking on my ropes, then going to "Plugins..." > "Wriggle...". Note that only the wearer has access to that plugin and nobody else.


Ok so I have only one button at my disposal, and a few information on the menu itself, such as the energy left. Notice that this is the same energy that is written on the main page of the restraint, only in decimal (*) with a one-digit precision.

It also says... let me scroll down on the menu :


This little text is displayed as a short manual, it doesn't change.

So I click on "Hands front" and...



Aha, there is a lot more information here now. Let me explain.

Firstly, now that the plugin knows which direction to take (I had only one choice but in theory there could have been several), it knows the actual objectives and costs to reach it, and it displays them in plain text. We have :

  • The current lock, here it is "Hands back"
  • The current energy, it seems 34.0 has become 33.7, because I have made one attempt already
  • The current target, here it is "Hands front", because I want to wriggle my hands from the back to the front
  • The current cost, it is 3 + 0 = 3 "tenths of energy per try", in other words 0.3 energy point, which explains why 34.0 became 33.7 after the first try
  • The progress done, which is a glorious 0 (and I must reach 3) with... ouch, 10% chance per try. That's steep !


So, to recap, every time I click on "Hands front" to try to wriggle my hands from the back to the front, it costs me 0.3 energy, I have 10% chance of success, and I must get 3 successes in order to get there. Dandy.

Ok, let's try my luck today. I click on "Hands front" (what choice do I have anyway ?). Nothing, I just lose energy. I click and click, still nothing. I click some more, until...



Yes ! I'm making progress now. I guess this is going to take a while and cost me, since every try has only 1/10th chance of making progress at all. And the menu warns me that if I choose another target (I can't here, since I have only one choice) or if I move, I'll lose all my progress !

So, better not move and keep wriggling. I click and click and click, and eventually...



Making progress ! But my energy is going down, I'm at 26.5 now. It's not too bad, but it would seriously complicate my attempts to struggle out, if I needed to.

I click, click, click, and finally...



Woohoo ! I successfully wriggled my hands to the front ! Depending on the situation and on how my restraints are set, this may earn me a few perks like being able to touch things, and the like. It could actually seriously change things, this is not just for show.

And the menu now switches to asking me where I want to wriggle to. I've been able to wriggle my hands from back to front, I could want to go back. Notice the energy is not replenished :



This is one very important thing about the Wriggle plugin : when you successfully wriggle to another lock, neither your energy nor the sequence of struggles to take is reset. They stay the same !

Interestingly, the costs are identical (and my energy has decreased further), but the chance is twice as high now. This is because it is actually easier to wriggle your hands from the front to the back, than the other way around, but every attempt is just as tiring.


We're almost done, as you see there is not much to know about the Wriggle plugin, but there is one additional subtlety. Just like in real life, it is easier to wriggle your hands from back to front if your legs are free or loosely tied, than if they are tightly tied together. Even more so if you're hogtied. It is possible, but much harder.

To simulate this, every Wriggle plugin communicates with the other Wriggle plugins worn by the same avatar, and every time one of them is locked, the others are told about it. Every Wriggle plugin has a list of modifiers per lock that it transmits to the other restraints, in order to find out the final cost of every attempt.

This is the "+0" part you've seen on the menu until now. When other restraints are added, the "+0" becomes "+1", "+2" etc. Let's see :

I tie my hands behind my back again, but this time with my legs tied together.




I go to the Wriggle plugin of the hands and click on "Hands front" once :



See what I mean ? The "3+0" part became "3+2", because the legs add 1 to the cost and there is one additional restraint besides the arms ropes, bumping the cost from 0.3 to 0.5 per attempt.

The actual calculation is :
Current difficulty + Highest modifier + Nb restraints - 1

"Highest modifier" being the highest of all the modifiers coming from all the other Wriggle plugins.

Now what if I chose to be hogtied ?


I go to the Wriggle plugin and check :


Oh, it bumped to +4 now ! See how much harder it would make my attempt at wriggling my hands to the front ? Not impossible, but much more tiring !




Likewise, suppose I want to lie down in this bondage (and suppose I can't just tie myself that way, for the sake of the demonstration).


Once again, if the Wriggle plugin didn't exist, I would be able to kneel, to sit down...



... but not actually lie down, because if I could I should not have any guarantee that I could get back up to my feet. That's why I need the Wriggle plugin of the legs ropes to do this.

Right now only my wrists are tied, so I click on the legs ropes and look at their plugin :



Oh, it actually looks quite easy. Cost is 2+2 and 40% chance per attempt, the "+2" part coming from the wrist rope and the fact that there are two restraints in total. Piece of cake.

Of course piece of cake, I'm just trying to get my butt down on the floor. Anyone can do that. But the other way around is trickier ! Let me try that now. I want to go to the Tight position while lying on the floor :




Ah. Yes, that's more serious indeed. Cost is 3+2 and 20% chance per attempt. Not so easy anymore, but doable.

But what if my arms were bound much more tightly ? Like, say, in "Supertight" ?


How hard do you think this would be ?


Gosh ! It costs 3+7 per attempt ! One full energy point ! And still 20% chance, it's not actually harder but much more tiring. This is because in this bondage, I have less leverage with my arms than in a simple wrist tie. Makes sense, doesn't it ?

Of course, when bound in "Supertight", I wouldn't be able to wriggle my arms to any other tie, so if you looked at the Wriggle plugin of the arms ropes, it would not give you any choice, the menu would be empty.


On a side note, you can always attempt to wriggle, even when your energy has reached zero. You just can't struggle out until you recover some energy, and your chances of wriggling are brought down to a pitiful 2% per attempt. So it is possible, but likely to take a while. And remember, you mustn't move while wriggling or you'll lose all your progress !


Also, you may have noticed that since v1.24 you are able to use the RR Anim HUD to lie down when your legs are in Taut or Hobble. This makes sense because it is rather easy to lie down and to stand up when your ankles are not bound (or loosely), and if the Wriggle plugin were necessary for this, then it would mean you'd go into the actual "Lie" lock, which shows more restraints. It would not be realistic.


So, that's pretty much it. The Wriggle plugin is present in nearly all the restraints, even gags. Yes, you read that right : gags. But only those that don't change look when changing lock. This is because sometimes you want to loosen your gag yourself, because you know you have more chance at doing it than trying to completely struggle out of it. Or the opposite : sometimes the gag is not tight enough for you ! Or maybe you are wearing two gags and your captor was sloppy and them both to "Tight" before they left for the day, making you mumble twice when you speak. When you wear more than one gag at the same time, all of them except one (at most) must be set to "Total", making it so you only mumble once, at most, per chat message. The Wriggle plugin saves you in that case.

What do you mean "let's check it out" ?

No, don't... MMMmmph !!




Have fun !

Marine

(*) For those who make plugins for the RR products, don't fret. The energy stored by the main script is still an integer, the decimal is just additional information held by Wriggle itself, the interface to the plugins does not change.