In which I went to find more variants of some boots I have, just to discover I actually should never have had any of them in the first place
I found a whole bunch of boots on Craft-World and Astralia, but I always had the feeling I didn't have all variants. So I tried to find out where they originally came from. This wasn't exactly easy because none of them still bear their original creator entry.
Something told me to pay Littlefield Mall a visit, also because that's one place I hadn't checked in a while that only offers legal content. I knew that the creator of some of these boots is Ada Wong, and I should have figured from that that she might have more than that one beachwear store on Coney Island.
Now, one thing is particular at least about Littlefield Mall, maybe even also about the three adjacent shopping sims: The contents offered in the stores can only be acquired by Littlefield Grid residents. Hypergridders shouldn't even be able to pick anything up, much less take it with them.
That's because Littlefield Grid has special agreements with Second Life creators to distribute their creations. But while some Second Life creators only demand their creations be offered no-transfer, maybe also only to members of a hard-to-join group, those who supplied Littlefield Grid only did so under the condition that only grid residents can have their creations.
As it turned out, Ada Wong does have a store at Littlefield Mall. And she has scripts in all her sales boxes which not only provide the only way of acquiring the contents of the boxes, but which also only give these contents to grid residents and inform Hypergridders only even looking at the box contents that they're Littlefield exclusives.
This means that while the layer swimwear I got from Ada's shop on Coney Island is legal, her unrigged mesh boots and skates in my inventory are not. Apparently, someone has copybotted them from Littlefield Mall. And apparently, hardly anyone knows about this limitation because at least one female starter avatar box offered at Lbsa Plaza, OSgrid's official welcome and landing sim that's also to guide and supply newbies, contains a pair of Ada Wong boots. Maybe I'll notify whoever made these boxes. I mean, it isn't like Lbsa Plaza offers the usual copybotted Second Life content otherwise; OSgrid officially has a strict anti-content theft policy.
Anyway, there were still four pairs of boots whose creator I hadn't been able to track down until that visit. I actually suspected them to have been stolen from Second Life in pre-mesh times. What I didn't know was something I should have known if I spent more time on Littlefield Grid, especially outside Ruritania: They come from Camryn Darkstone, the wife of the Littlefield grid owner Walter Balazic. She has contributed to Littlefield Mall herself, and she has two stores there plus a few boxes at the market square.
These four pairs of boots, however, were absent not only from Littlefield Mall, but from the three neighbouring sims as well. I couldn't figure out whether I was allowed to have these boots. So I sent Camryn a message. Now I'm waiting for a reply.
As for Ada's stuff, I think I'll remove it from my inventory. I might stash it away in boxes first, just in case, also because the one shop at Astralia Shopping City that used to offer her ankle boots has since been removed and replaced with a new building that only offers outfits stolen straight from Second Life. That means that Ada's store at Littlefield Mall has become the only remaining source for at least some of the variants.
It's a pity, though, because legal boots of these kinds are hard to find in OpenSim. Aaack Aardvark offers rigged mesh ankle boots at his Arcadia Store, but their style doesn't fit all kinds of outfits. Albeit in different ways, the same goes for the few pairs of ankle boots which the grandmistress of footwear, Taarna Welles. She has made knee-high boots as well, in ten colours even, but even though the soles are easy on the ground, sometimes you want stilettos.
There's also a footwear shop at Needful Things which resides on Pangea now, and that shop offers several kinds of boots that I haven't seen anywhere else. However, Needful Things doesn't only offer legal content, I can't figure out who created these boots, and that self-same footwear shop does offer boxes that clearly come from Second Life, and that are all over the Hypergrid.
Oh well, maybe Maxine will turn out to be a good mesh body with a good dev kit that'll spawn a lot of creativity. After all, we might need a whole lot of new clothes. And even though new pumps and sandals will be more urgent because boots are fairly universal, maybe some new rigged mesh boots will come along. Preferably also with medium-height heels.
In the meantime, I could finally try to make me an alpha mask for Snik Snoodle's ankle boots.
#
OpenSim #
OpenSimulator #
Metaverse #
VirtualWorlds #
LittlefieldGrid #
VirtualClothing #
VirtualFashion
