Setting up the #RLV-Folder

Many people use their #RLV-Folders for their adult toys only. This way they loose a big deal of the potential of this great addition to Second Life. In this tutorial I'd like to show how all the items (at least the ones which you'd like to attach to your avatar) of an inventory can be placed in the #RLV-Folder so that its owner, other players and scripts can easily access them.

1. Set up the folder

Some viewers will automatically create the RLV-folder for you. In case yours didn't go ahead and create a folder named #RLV in your root folder (the highest place where you can create folders). #rlv or #Rlv won't work with most viewers, so make sure that you only use upper-case letters only.

2. One item per folder

Placing many different items in one folder appears to be an easy way to store outfits. After all you can just right-click the folder and attach all items in it to your avatar.

But this effectively renders auto-detach useless. When a script tries to detach one item from your avatar it might scan your inventory for the folder this item is in and will detach all the contents of this folder as well. This makes sense, because this way the script can detach for example your shoes (which are usually located at the left and right foot (I know, in RL that's obvious ;-) )) as well as the alpha and the shoe-form belonging to these shoes without worrying about the alphas of other clothes, your hair, etc.

Also this way you can't swap or (un-)dress single items in an outfit using scripts.

Therefore I advise to put each item in a single folder.

3. Naming folders

Sorting

You can add special chars in front of the names of folders to change their order. For example a ? or a ! will place them higher in a list. Only use special chars when needed and don't use too fancy ones. Some scripts and viewers show unexpected behavior when using them.

Invisble folders

A . will render the folder invisible to scripts which scan folders, but is will still be accessible to scripts which attach or detach folders.

A ~ will work the same way a . does. Typically folders given to you by other objects will start with a ~ so you might want to avoid using this character yourself to avoid confusion.

Protected folders

Adding (nostrip) at the end of a folders name will make it impossible for scripts to detach them. Use this for important things, like your relay, your AO, your hair, etc.

Unique names

Also make sure that the names of your folders are unique. Having a folder "Blue" in one subfolder and another folder "Blue" in a second subfolder might confuse scripts.

It is also important to keep in mind how scripts search folders. They will only the first result which matches their search criteria.

Example:
If you have the folders

"Pretty Blue Dress"

"My new Blue Dress by Some Creator"

"Blue Dress"
and you want to attach the last one your script will have problems to locate this folder, because if it searches for it it will only find the first folder. Therefore you should include enough information in a folders name to avoid confusion, for example the creators name, the date you bought it, etc.

Also: some popular scripts treat spaces as separators of search parameters, meaning that a search for "Blue Dress" might return "Dress Blue" as well, since it contains both words. As said above: make the names unique.

Understandable

When you are into adult activities you might want to give other players access to your folder-structure (no, other players cannot move, edit or delete your items, that's a myth!). Make sure they can understand the names of your folders and start with the relevant word first. Example: "Gag Ball Red Rubber MoDesign" is faster to understand than "Modesign Red Rubber Ball Gag". Especially because menus chop of texts after a certain length.

4. Organization

For your scripts to work it doesn't make any difference where you put the folders. In theory.

But in reality you don't want to have too many sub-folders in one folder. At least if you want to navigate your menu with dialogs. Scripts have memory limitations and they may chop of menu items if there are too many. Also it's a pain to navigate dozens of menu-pages.

As a rule of hand I wouldn't put more than 30 sub-folders in a single folder. If you need more create additional folders in between.

Also, like stated above, other players might take a look at your folders. You might want to make it easy for them to find what they are looking for. Place the stuff they might be looking for at the first positions (take a look a t Sorting above).

And don't worry about the script-load on the server for scanning your inventory. This is done by your client.