Preface

Outbreak is an urban survival role-play community. In the spirit of survival, and a growing need to show how dire life is becoming as each day goes by, we’ve built new features into the HUD and around the sim. Overall, the goal of each new feature is to catalyze role-play situations between players and groups.

Updated HUD - Hunger, Thirst, and more...

In this next version of the HUD, we’ve made some enhancements to the interface as well as added the concept of hunger and thirst. The sections below will detail the additional features.

Health

This circular indicator represents the overall well-being of your character. A number of actions can negatively impact this - from sustaining injury in hostile situations, stamina spent while scavenging, to the incremental effects of dehydration and starvation

To improve your health, we highly recommend you visit the hospital and role-play with staff. The medical staff are the only characters who can retrieve a “Hospital Treatment” kit for you for significant healing. Laying in recovery at the hospital will also incrementally improve your health.

Alternatively, you can purchase a small first aid kit at the lobby of the hospital without direct RP with another player. Resting and socializing at a business will also incrementally improve your health - to a certain point.

As your health increases within businesses or a hospital, the health indicator graphic will flash on your HUD. If your character consumes an excess of intoxicating goods such as drugs or alcohol, the health indicator will turn and may begin to dehydrate you incrementally.

Fullness

This new indicator is colored orange and depletes as your character becomes hungry. There are a number of goods that have been released to help stave hunger and can be found in official businesses. Remember, you must role-play with a worker at the business so they can retrieve a good, often at a price or favor.

While we begin rolling more goods out and assigning leads to particular kinds of commodities to traffic on the island, we’ve setup a temporary direct vendor for apples through Eve the NPC at Sam N Ellas!

Hydration

This new indicator is colored blue and depletes as your character becomes thirsty. There are a number of goods that have been released to help quench your thirst and can be found in official businesses. Remember, you must role-play with a worker at the business so they can retrieve a good, often at a price or favor.

While we begin rolling more goods out and assigning leads to particular kinds of commodities to traffic on the island, we’ve setup a temporary direct vendor for bottles of water through Eve the NPC at Sam N Ellas!

Combat

The new icon helps represents its true nature - a combat feature that uses the initial balance you setup your character with, along with the experience they’ve accrued through their time in Outbreak to help determine who might be the winner between a two players going at it.

When targeting a character now, you have a dialog menu with options of selecting nearby avatars instead of a free-form text box. Note: We are aware that some menus show duplicate avatars, but it won’t impact which duplicate you select.

Inventory

The backpack feature will show the amount of cash and various bullets you currently hold. Remember you can trade bullets and cash through the HUD. Other goods are actual physical objects in your SL inventory that you can transfer as you would anything else in Second Life.

When targeting a character now to trade money or bullets, you have a dialog menu with options of selecting nearby avatars instead of a free-form text box. Note: We are aware that some menus show duplicate avatars, but it won’t impact which duplicate you select.

Guide

This feature shows the latest rumors and news for the sim.

Tradeable & Consumable Goods

Each item of goods is an actual physical object that requires rezzing on the ground to consume or wearing if it’s a weapon. Every consumption of an item renders experience to a character that is used towards earning unique role titles, advantage in hostile situations, and a few other perks we’re working on.

Today, you can find the following “house” goods at businesses:

Sam N Ella - Grilled Steak, Apples, and Bottles of Water
Coach’s - Moonshine
Eights Apartment - Corn
Hospital - Small First Aid Kit, Hospital Treatment Kit
Dollhouse - Prescription Pills
Scavenging - Honey, Small First Aid Kit

We will be releasing a number of both critical and fun items through crate vendors which are detailed in the next section.

Trading & Economy

The concept of thirst, hunger, and health were introduced to encourage player-to-player role-play. Cash and bullets don’t have to be the only form of currency - you can barter goods and role-play services, too.

Each item is designed with fluctuating supply limits and pricing based on story arcs and to prevent certain goods from being flooded into the island.

Sim-Supplied Goods

Most businesses have “house” goods that employees can sell to customers with a daily supply limit. A transaction would play out like this:

1. Patron comes in and asks worker for goods.
2. Worker quotes them any price (cash, bartering goods, or services) and collects from patron.
3. Worker then pays the vendor for good. The good will be transferred to the worker.
4. The worker will then transfer that good to the patron.

Remember, patrons don’t generally know the actual cost of an item so feel free to try to make a profit! Also, patrons are encouraged to haggle, or in lieu of cash, do or promise favors. We challenge you to get creative in your interaction with others.

Group Leader-Supplied Goods

Every group on the island (business and bands) will be assigned a particular type of commodity that is necessary for survival and comfort on the island (ie. Produce, Meat, Alcohol, Weapons, Water, Gas, Generators, etc.). The leads of each group will be empowered to purchase a crate of their assigned goods which they can then rez out for their members (listed on their roster) to sell to potential customers. Each purchase of goods will go back to the lead so they can purchase more supplies.

Player-to-Player Bartering / Trade

Each good is a no-copy / no-mod object that can be transferred to another player’s SL inventory. Whether you’re transferring cash through the HUD or bartering other goods/services, we encourage you to use your goods as another form of payment. Remember, each item has a limited supply and may run out for any given time, giving you an opportunity to sell at profit!

What’s Next

We’re looking for leaders! Whether you have an idea for a band that can take on a commodity to traffic on the island, or taking over an existing business which are now all crucial for the survival, please step forward. You can give your idea a shot by simply using the menu above to propose a group.

The next updates coming to Outbreak include the crate vendors mentioned above (working on packaging all the new weapons and new commodities),  NPC Hunting (think of infected, but for random animals that will award meat and experience), and new builds on the island.

We’re also working on releasing a story section on the website which will outline these new systems, explain the story of the island, and much more. We’ll need help with coming up with some content - if you’re interested in helping, please reach out to us.