sTag

About sTag

sTags are a set of tags that can make NPCs and events identify your avatar in games or tools within Second Life. Identification may be good as it can help games and tools understand what YOU are and HOW you look.

To do so, you can set those tags in any attachment you wear (as long as they are Modify and the description of the object is not already in use), and they will be able to detect it.

Let's get started.

How to sTag

As explained above, sTags are something you put in the description of an attachment you wear. But it's not just that.

The tags have to be specific, most importantly, they are categories!

So, how does one sTag an attachment?

Well, the way to sTag is by first prepending "TAG" at the beginning of your attachment's description, that is the base, it is required for sTags to work.

The basics of sTag

A basic sTag starts with "$", and then follows up by a category and a value, separated by an underscore. sTags can be either just category_size, but some other can be catagory_subcategory_size too. The available sizes are "none", "tiny", "small", "average", "large", "huge" and "entirely", or for short, n/t/s/a/l/h/e.

"Entirely" or integer "6" size is not often used and will be discarded by most objects that only uses 0-5 sizes, unless it is used for things such as "Dominance level" where 0-6 applies.

You can see the PG variants here, and the Adult variants here.

For example, if I wanted to say.. "I'm a Panda, my subspecies is Ursine, my gender is female, my hair is large, my tail is tiny, my breasts are large, and my butt is large", I would write it as follow: "TAG$spec_panda$subs_ursine$sex_female$hair_l$tail_t$bits_b_l$bits_r_l".

Notice how the bits have 2 underscores, which defines the category, the subcategory (the affected bits section), and the size? We'll talk about that further down. Or you can read it on the Github page about Adult tags, up to you.

If possible, I recommend you always use the short letters instead of the full word for the sizes.

Here's why: Script within Second Life have a limit of how much characters they can read from an attachment's description. That limit is hardcoded to 127 characters length. Anything higher will be discarded.

If you really need to have more tags, consider splitting them between different attachments.

Follow me so far? Good.

Adult Tags

Let's talk about why the bits section are split between 2 underscores: category_subcategory_size

I will make it as simple as I can. The bits category is "Packed". What does this mean? It means this entire category is compressed to be smaller in script size. This is possible thanks to a packer, and cache. I will not get into details about this. The compression requires all of them to be merged. The "bits_" category is the base that connects them all, make them smaller behind the scene by putting them all together. The "breasts", "rear", "penis", and "testicles" are the available subcategories, which each respectively affects adult related body parts. Finally, what comes after the second underscore is the size, like before.

The only exception is "vagina" ("$bits_vagina" or "$bits_v"). Why? Because this one is just a true and false, it indicates weither you have one or not, and has no sizes.

Remember, the body parts subcategories can also be shortened to a singular letter for space saving: breasts (b), vagina (v), rear (r), penis (p), testicles (t) as shown in the demonstration TAGs in the section above.

This completes the preliminary introduction to sTags.

Understanding "!" Arrays

If the length of your description really burdens you, or you run out of attachments for a reason or another. There is always the possibility to shorten your need for categories and values.

A example would be.. Let's say your body colors are not unique, you have more. You're mostly grey.. some white there, maybe a touch of green in this area.. Normally you would put them like "TAG$bdyclr_grey$bdyclr_white$bdyclr_green". The first color in this list is your "dominant" color, what you are most covered with respectively, and then second, and third, etc.

This can seriously impair your ability to add more tags since you have to retype the category every single times, taking that precious description length.

That is where Arrays comes in handy!

An Array "!" defines a chain of one category. If you prepend it to the beginning of the category like such "$!bdyclr", then anything that follows after will be accounted as part of "that" category without having to retype the category's name everytime. Example: Instead of what you saw above, you'd be having "TAG$!bdyclr$grey$white$green". Simpler, right ?

Remember though, this chain will keep going until you STOP it. To stop a chain, you must terminate it with "$!", otherwise the categories that follows after will not work.

Okay, cool, what about the "bits", can these be chained too ?

The answer is YES! They can, but I can understand how they may be confusing. Unlike the regular categories above, these ones are usually mixed. Something like "TAG$!bits$b_l$r_l$p_a$t_a". Why? Because the "bits" is the chained category, what comes after are merely the subcategories respective to the affected body part, and sizes where applicable.

That should cover the Arrays, hopefully. You can always ask in the group chat for help from someone else who may have set those up before too.

About outfits

The outfits, categorized as "ofit_" as seen in the PG sTags page on Github, is to identify what you are wearing. This, again, can help NPCs and events recognize your appearance and what you are wearing. It is a relatively important set of tags to use as games like Game of Thongs (GoThongs) could make use of them when you are dealing with those pesky little goblins and other monsters.

Generally speaking, unlike all the other tags, these one should NOT be placed anywhere that has to do with your body. If possible, and assuming your clothing are Modify, and their description is not used, I strongly recommend them to be placed on individual clothing pieces. If they are not Modify, you will have to use another attachment as a replacement to hold the tags. That is unfortunate but can happen, like any other meshes or objects that may be no Modify (such as your Body, unless you're fortunate enough to use one that is modify, like Reborn by eBody).

Here is an example. "TAG$ofit_underpants_thong" (as per the list of words the ofit_ uses). I would put this in my underwear's root description, it would indicates to the objects or NPCs that I am wearing bottom clothing, and this piece specifically is a "thong". I could also add more to it, like leather "TAG$ofit_underpants_thong_leather", my thong is now bottom clothing made of leather. Makes senses ?

Finally, like the vagina exception, those outfits have no sizes. They are merely just true and false values to indicate if you are wearing them. You can find the full list of values on the Github page.

NEW: sTag Builder: https://jasxsl.github.io/sTag/

(This Builder page is inaccurate and uses data that GoThongs may not use. Refer to the above text to know how to properly tag your own attachments. Especially regarding Adult bits !)

That wraps it up so far. This page is not definitive and I will consider suggestions carefully to improve the readability and understanding for those who may be having troubles.