Z&A Christmas decorations

Hello all! Yes, I'm still here, still around, Z&A still exists, etc... In terms of all things SL this year has been a bit of a quiet year for me, with RL being in charge, as such I've not been around to build and make new stuff. I did start a new project, but had to put it on hold and perhaps it'll turn into something next year.

All that aside, given that it's a couple or so years since I've formally done it, I thought it was time to drag the Z&A Christmas decorations back out:

As is often the case with Christmas decorations, they're a bit old and dusty now, but they should bring a smile. So if you've never grabbed a copy before, please do head over to the main store and come grab a copy. They are all copy-permission so you can decorate your home or hangout with festive RLV silliness as much as you want.

A little something that I hope will help

Given the current situation around the world, many of us are needing to stay home, stay indoors, isolate and find other ways of keeping ourselves engaged and active. Over the past couple of weeks I've watched as people have used their own talents and interests to amuse themselves, distract themselves, and in doing so have shared this to help others.

I'm sure some of us in SL's RLV/kink communities will be leaning on SL more as a distraction, as a way to escape from time to time. So, with this in mind, I'm offering a little package of Z&A products that might help fill your time in SL.

It's not much, but it's offered in the hope that these things will bring a smile, allow virtual connection, let people form and reinforce bonds in the sort of way only SL allows.

You'll find the giver box next to the "Need Help?" doll near the landing point of the main store.

Stay home. Stay safe. Stay informed.

Ten years of Z&A

I've told the story of the birth of Z&A a few times, even here on this blog, so forgive me if you've read parts of this before. But, as I start to write this (back on the 15th of February), 10 years previously I was well into build mode, starting to make things based around some scripting I'd being playing with by way of learning the RLV API.

The earliest script I have in my inventory, where I was doing something with the RLV API, is dated January 7th 2010. The oldest script I have in my inventory that is me testing out talking to an RLV relay from a prim you sit on dates from February 8th 2010. The prims for the first actual device I made show February 8th 2010 as the creation date too.

This consisted of 13 prims, a single texture roughly thrown on, and nothing lined up terribly well, now I look back at it. But it was a start. From this, along with some prim-flinging on the part of Zardia, the start of the original product lineup grew.

The idea of actually opening a shop and selling the result of all of this building was Zardia's. I wasn't initially too keen on the idea. But, she pushed and prodded and persuaded and found a likely shop and... well, I ended up being convinced.

You can read more about those early days, and how things grew from a small rented unit to the shop being on the region that would become Shackles, in this blog post from back at the end of 2010.

Since then it's been a hell of a journey. Z&A has seen quite a view changes to Second Life (the introduction of mesh probably being the biggest), and has changed quite a bit itself over the years too. In those 10 years I've re-made all of the original hold-and-display furniture. I've made and then re-made a full range of cells. I've made and then re-made a full range of RLV vehicles. I've made, re-made and expanded a range of gags and hoods and other restraints. And that's not everything.

Z&A wasn't just about creating RLV products either. We were also responsible for creating what became Raven Park: a femdom-themed BDSM-friendly RLV hangout which hosted many a fun themed party. And, of course, we created and managed The Femdom Hunt, a very popular grid-wide hunt that took place seven times between 2011 and 2017 and which enjoyed the support of a very enthusiastic community of creators, hangout-owners and hunters.

There's so much I could write about and document; there are so many photos I could post; there are so many highs, and a good few lows, that made for lasting memories. Mostly though, what matters is that Z&A happened, gave me a lot of enjoyment, had my life intertwine with some very important people, and also helped me make it though some pretty tough times out in RL. Being a content-creator in Second Life was easily the most important form of stability I've had in the past decade.

I have to admit that the time and need to create has tailed off a little. I'm not done. I'm not finished. But I don't spend anywhere near as much time building in SL as I used to. This is more down to RL having lots of (very nice) distractions. That being said, given that we're coming up to Z&A's official 10th anniversary, I couldn't let that go without tinkering and making a gift or four, could I?

So, starting today (Saturday 22nd February), running through the anniversary of the opening of the first shop (Monday 24th February), and most likely until the following Saturday, I've got 4 gifts out for everyone in the Z&A shop, the detention centre, and the playground. Feel free to TP over to Z&A and explore a little and, as you do, grab yourself a gift. They're not hard to find.

In case you're wondering what the gifts are... I won't spoil all the surprises, but two of them are a third re-working of two my my first proper RLV builds (so you got a good hint from the start of this post), complete with more materials work (the last re-working was done before everyone was comfortable with ALM!) and texture options. They're a full and complete experiment in how I might refresh my main line of products over the next year or so, if time allows.

All four gifts are filled with RLV goodness, all are copy-permission so you can fill your homes and playgrounds with them, and all are built with the same love and enthusiasm as my first ever builds. And they're all made available with huge gratitude to everyone who has ever visited a Z&A location, shopped with Z&A, taken part in a Z&A event, offered support and encouragement to Z&A or has been part of my journey.

Thank you. Thank you all. It's been a wonderful and enriching decade of kinky building, kinky laughs, kinky community-building and kinky friendship-making. I hope these little gifts add to your kinky contribution to the grid.

A Z&A gift over at ~AC

A couple of years back, Raven Park had a dance with a Rocky Horror theme. The costume that Anna made for us, for the dance, went on to become an ~AC product. That one product then turned into a small range, the last addition of which was released by her this weekend.

So, to help celebrate her finishing off that range of products, I thought it was time to drag out a product I've made available as a gift before (the last time at the Raven Park dance).

If you fancy a bit of Rocky Horror RLV role play, head over to Anna's shop and slap the box you'll find in a corner of the main room:

Once done, you should be all set for a night of murdering, cannibalistic, fetishistic, cross-dressing fun!

Z&A's 8th birthday party photos

Yesterday afternoon we had a bit of a bash at the Z&A main store, in celebration of Z&A being open and selling kinky RLV stuff on the grid for 8 years. There's an album of images over on Google Photos. Here are some highlights:

Many thanks to everyone who came along, and to Miss Eve for providing a couple of hours of brilliant music. Hope to see you all back on Raven Park in a couple of weeks.

Z&A Christmas gifts

Just because it's Christmas it doesn't mean that subs and slaves don't still need locking up with RLV; some might say that it's more important than ever. It is nice, however, if it can be done in a festive way. So, for those of you who have never had the chance to pick up the Z&A Christmas RLV devices, now's the time to get down to the main store and grab them:

Here you'll find an RLV Christmas tree, candy display, gift box, snowman and stocking. All free to anyone who wishes to grab a copy (and they're all copy, so you can decorate your plot or region with as many as you like).

PS: While you're there, if you're looking for other festive RLV ideas, don't forget that there's the Z&A Sleigh available for testing up in the vehicle test area.

Z&A AnyChain

Today I'm releasing a free product that, I think, might be handy to some. Its intended purpose is to solve the little problem of some items, that would work well as a collar or cuffs, not coming with any sort of LockGuard/LockMeister script inside them. This problem is obviously easily solved by adding such scripts; but what if the items are no-mod, or you just can't be doing with the hassle of adding scripts all the time?

Z&A AnyChain is my attempt at a solution:

In the package you get a set of chain target objects, each designed to be worn on your body and positioned where you'd like chains to go. The idea being that you add those cuffs you really like, but which aren't LG/LM-compatible and which are no-mod, and then place the relevant AnyChain target object where the chain should go.

Along with these objects is a HUD. With this you can show/hide the chain target objects. The HUD also lets you save the chain target object positions into 10 different save slots; this means that you can position the chains for 10 different combinations of non-LG/LM cuffs/collar/etc.

Of course, the nice thing about this is that you don't have to be using attachments that look like actual cuffs. Perhaps you'd like to use some jewellery, perhaps even some item of clothing that'd make sense? Or even something I've not thought of.

In this initial release AnyChain provides points for a collar front and back loop, as well as wrist and ankle cuffs. In later versions I'll likely add more points; or perhaps make it simple for people to add their own. This first release is mostly an experiment, to see if it even makes sense.

Hopefully it'll solve a problem for someone; it did for me.

Coming soon: The Femdom Hunt VII

Just a little reminder to all Z&A customers that, starting the 13th of next month, the Femdom Hunt is back with The Femdom Hunt VII:

As with every other hunt before it, you'll find a great mixture of shops and actual Femdom-based locations that can be found all over the grid. Each one will have gifts to find.

Both Z&A and Raven Park are taking part (considering we run the hunt, that's not really much of a shocker is it?). I've made three gifts that I'm really rather proud of (there'll be two from Z&A and one from Raven Park), one of which I'm very excited about as it's something I've being meaning to make for quite some time and the hunt finally gave me a reason to get scripting.

So... make a note in your diary: starting from October 13th you get two weeks to collect lots of fun gifts.

Z&A Leash Posts & Points

I've just added a new little free product to the main store and the Second Life Marketplace. It's a small collection of leash posts and points that are based on objects that I've made over the past couple of years for other builds around Raven Park. Rather than have them just sat in my inventory, I thought it might be helpful to have them available for free in the shop.

I hope they've of some use to others.

Z&A Random Object Thrower

A couple or so weeks back we had a Raven Park dance themed around a music festival. As part of the build I thought that, given we'd all be dancing on the stage, it'd be silly fun to have the audience throw random stuff at us from time to time. It didn't take too much work to knock together a script to make it happen and, having done so, I thought it could be fun to turn it into a general tool and make it available as a free product:

I'm not quite sure what people might use it for generally (perhaps you might like to fill it with fruit and veg and have it throw them at someone locked in some stocks) but it seemed a shame not to share it and let you decide.

You can find it with all the other free products in the main store, or just grab it from over on the Second Life Marketplace.

Z&A HUD Manager

Today's release is another addition to the small collection of free tools that exist because there was a little problem that needed solving and solving it with some scripting was fun.

In this case the scripting session was to solve a little problem Anna had: because she's a fan of mesh bodies and has recently acquired herself a mesh Bento head, she's suffering from HUD overload. HUDs for makeup, HUDs for skin applies, HUDs for controlling various aspects of the head, etc... All of them sat in inventory, needing to be added and removed, or sometimes needing to be kept on through an outfit change.

The issue of surviving an outfit change wasn't so much of an issue because she already used the Z&A HUD Locker. What was left was the problem of how to quickly and easily add and remove sets of HUDs depending on the job at hand. Last weekend, with a few hours spare, I set about making her a little HUD that would try and streamline the add/remove/lock/unlock process.

The result is the Z&A HUD Manager:

The HUD Manager (which is itself a HUD) requires the use of RLV and, for now at least, also requires the use of Firestorm or a related viewer (it won't work with the original RLV viewer at the moment for reasons I won't bore anyone with here -- but anyone who knows RLV well will likely understand the choice I made that means this is the case).

Full instructions on how to set it up and use it are included in the package and, because it's a fun pet project, I'm sharing it with everyone for a grand price of L$0.

Anna's already finding it very handy. I hope you will too.

You can find it in the free products section of the main store, as well as on the Second Life marketplace.

Z&A Christmas Gifts

Now that it's rather close to Christmas it's time to make the Z&A RLV Christmas gifts available in the main store. If you don't already have an RLV gift box, candy cane display, stocking, Christmas tree or snowman, this is your chance to pick one up and add a dusting of RLV to your festive decorations.

You'll find the vendor boards for them in front of the counter:

Just head over to the main store and touch each vendor for your copy of the gifts.

PS: Talking of all things Christmas, don't forget that you still have a chance of winning a Z&A product or two by entering the photo contest over at The Velvet Thorn.

Halloween gifts

Given that it's getting to that time of year again I thought I'd put the Z&A Halloween gifts back out in the shop. The first is a silly RLV attachment that turns you into a ghost, of sorts. Bit of a rubbish ghost really, but that's the idea. ;)

The is a Z&A hold and display (well, not display much in this case) device in the form of a grave:

To get them just pop over the main store and slap the boards you'll find in the free products section:

Do note that the grave is limited to 1 per avatar so, if you picked one up last year, it will remind you that you already own a copy rather than deliver it.

Hope you have some Halloween RLV fun!

Z&A Avi-Look HUD

The Z&A Marketplace contains a good few free tools -- as much as I love making RLV-based items I also like to share any little tools I make for my personal amusement, or to make SL a little more fun or easier. One such tool I made a couple of years back was the Avatar Height HUD. Partly made out of curiosity, also partly made as a tool that could be useful for region owners, it did what it said: it let you check the height of avatars around you.

In the past few days I've rewritten it so that it's a slightly more general purpose tool. It's now called the Z&A Avi-Look HUD:

It allows you to pull up a list of up to 50 avatars who are on the same region as you, and then when you select an avatar it lets you quickly inspect a few key bits of information about them:

As well as height, you can also see their script memory and time, their render weight (as reported by the server) and also get a list of all their non-HUD attachments, showing who created them and where they are attached.

The main list of avatars can be configured so that it's sorted in a few different ways. While it is mostly going to be useful to sort by distance from you, there's other options if you're trying to quickly track someone down a different way:

You can find this HUD freely available on the Second Life Marketplace as well as in the free product section of the Z&A main store.

Z&A's 6th birthday party

Some time around now, six years ago, scripts were being written, prims were being glued together, names were being decided, logos were being designed, and all sorts of other little jobs were falling into place as the entity now known as Z&A was in the early stages of being born.

Rent was first paid on the first shop in the 19th, the name and logo followed around the 21st. Z&A didn't officially open for business until the 24th. So while the whole process was spread out over a couple of weeks in February 2010 it's the 24th that's marked in the calendar as the birthday.

Because this weekend's Raven Park dance is the one closest to that date it's being moved over to the Z&A main store and will become the Z&A birthday party. As before there'll be great tunes from Eve Terr and, of course, a little birthday gift to you from Z&A.

There's no theme as such, just come dressed as you wish; likely the more "you", or the more fetish, the better (for most people that's probably the same thing anyway). All that matters is you come and help Antony and friends celebrate six years of Z&A being on the grid, helping to make it a little more RLV-filled and a little more kinky.

Here's the details:

Where: Z&A Productions main store

Date: February 20th 2016

Time: 3pm to 5pm SLT
Music by: Eve Terr

Another Z&A Christmas gift

A couple or so days ago the traditional Z&A RLV Christmas gifts went out, with the addition of the revamped Candy Display. This range has been expanded with another gift. This, again, is one of the very original gifts from 2010, dusted off and remade with the new device system; this needed to be done because we needed the prop for the Christmas dance and it seemed a shame not to share.

So here it is:

Ideal for hanging your stocking stuffed with your sub or slave.

As before, just head over to the main store and you'll find it under the Christmas tree.

Z&A Christmas gifts

Now that we're getting close to Christmas it's time to pull out the Z&A RLV Xmas gifts again. To add to the revamped tree, snowman and gift box from last year we've reworked and reintroduced the candy display as well:

You'll find them all around the foot of the tree in the Z&A main store. You can't miss them, just look for Zanda on your radar. ;)