News and Updates

We got a lot of feedback on the recently-released HUDs, and today we’re releasing some minor updates to fix a few bugs, and to give you more options for how you use your HUD. Here are the changes we’ve made:

1. We added the old scanner back in as an option. Now, you can choose to use the new, robust scanner with detailed information about nearby avatars, or the old scanner that only lists thier names and proximities. You can change this by going to Settings > Scanner > Scan Type > then select ‘Full’ or ‘Lite’. The Lite scanner is the old version, the full scanner is the new version. The Lite version of the scanner can also be used while your HUD is collapsed, just like before.
2. We re-added the two buttons that show when the HUD is closed: scan and settings, for quick access. These buttons don’t show when the HUD is open, because they are on the main HUD body. We’ve also added the old scan functionality, so that you can get text or web stats for other avatars nearby, without going through the new scanner links.
3. There was also some concern over the number of scripts in the HUD. We think number of scripts is not a good indicator of performance, because it depends what those scripts are doing. Most of the new scripts in the HUDs were doing very little, and were only used to receive link messages and update text on the scanner. Regardless, we’ve removed 16 scripts from the HUD by combining the name and proximity columns on the new scanner.
4. We fixed a couple of bugs in the Rage HUD and claws. If you detached your claws or relogged while they were transparent, it wasn’t possible to turn them back on. This has been fixed in the Rage 2.1. We’ve also fixed some strange behavior in the Lycan jump, where the control event was getting triggered for a teleport within the same sim. The previous controls were up + down at the same time. In order to fix this issue, we had to change the control. Now, it’s hold left mouse button + tap up and down at the same time. It’s also now possible to deactivate the lycan jump, in case it interferes with controls on another item under Settings > Jump. We’re really sorry that we let these problems slip through!

Finally, if you still prefer the older version of the HUD, you are welcome to continue to use it. It will not be discontinued, or disabled, and we will continue to support it. We hope you like these updates, and as always, let us know what your thoughts are.

Today we’re releasing updates to all three Bloodlines HUDs: The Thirst 4.0, The Rage 2.0, and The Human HUD 2.0. You can learn more about the new features on each HUD by visiting their respective instructions pages. The major update is the scanner, which gives more information about nearby avatars, including their Bloodlines status, race, clan, and soul status. The new HUDs also include convenience buttons to bite/claw (or offer a claw or bite in the case of the human HUD), set liege, glamour/terror, or get the stats of a nearby avatar, by clicking their name on the scanner.

See the image above for a diagram of the new features of the Thirst 4.0. Some of the other new features include:

1. Clan/Pack/Guild settings have been broken out into a new button. So, instead of going to Settings > Clan/Group, just press the Clan/Pack/Guild button.
2. Animation settings have also been broken out into a new button. So, instead of going to Settings > Animation, just press the new animation button.
3. Shortcuts to your web profile and a quick button for your text stats have been added.
4. To get text stats or a web profile on another avatar, click their name in your scanner list, then press the stats button on the info window that pops up. This button will respond to your setting of text/ web stats under settings.
5. Get someone’s clan profile quickly by clicking their name in the list, then going to more options > clan profile.

We hope you enjoy these new HUDs, and dwe welcome your feedback!

I’m sorry to have to use this forum to address rumors, but I just wanted to reassure everyone that despite the fake screenshot of a chat going around (with a Wikileaks logo, really???), Bloodlines is doing great, and we have no intention of shutting down. In fact, we have lots of exciting updates planned, and I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you about them. Above you can see a picture from my actual lab where I’m working on bulk apples, to come in sizes of 6, 12, 24, and 48. We’re also working on bulk blood shots, moonshine, and changing the way tanks are sold and registered so they can be sold through affiliate vendors. This will also make it so you can place apple trees on your land. We’re also planning a major HUD update, The Thirst 4.0, The Rage 2.0, and The Human 2.0, all with a few new toys and a new look. Stay tuned to this blog for more information about these exciting updates! Also, if you don’t see it on this blog, please take it with a grain of salt, and feel free to send a message to myself or Mars in-world if you have any questions. Thanks! -Lyle

Announcing a really fun addition to the Bloodlines game: The Haunt! The Haunt is a location system for Bloodlines-friendly locations. If you have a shop, bar, castle, cave, or any other location where you welcome Bloodlines players, the Haunt is an easy way to let everyone know where you are. Each haunt sign gives you a profile on slbloodlines.com with a custom image, about text, an SL map of your location, and a link so that visitors to your profile can teleport directly from the website! It also comes with an events management system. Set the name, description, and time and date of your event, and it will appear on the Bloodlines events calendar on the main haunt page. Your haunts will also show up on your Bloodlines profile. If you’re a group leader, you can set one of your haunts to be the main headquarters of your group, and there will be a link from your group profile to your haunt profile.

In-world, you can place a notecard or object in your haunt to be given out when visitors click on your haunt sign, you can add a landmark to change the landing point when avatars teleport from the website, and you can add a texture that will change the sign texture on the font to help advertise your location.

The Haunt also features a stylish and detailed mesh build that we think will look great on your land. Land impact is only 3. You can purchase the Haunt at any Bloodlines store at Liquid Designs, Liquid East, Liquid Badlands, Liquid South, or Liquid Frontier.

We hope you have fun with this system, look for more exciting updates soon!

UPDATE: 6/29/2012: A few of you expressed some concerns about privacy on your profiles, so we have given you an additional option for how to display your attack lists. Through your profile editor, you can set it so that it displays the old way, with attacks listed by the date of the first attack, or the new way, with names sized according to the number of attacks from or on that person.

ORIGINAL POST:

We’re excited to announce new Bloodlines profiles on the Thirst, Rage, and Human websites! Now, you can upload a profile photo, say something about yourself, and choose a font for your name to display in! Also, if you’re a clan leader, you can edit your clan profile with a group photo, and a clan emblem. If you upload a clan emblem, it will display on all of your clan member’s profiles, and link back to the clan.

To edit your profile or clan profile, just log into the website, and then mouse over your name in the upper right corner of the site to get the dropdown menu. In the dropdown menu are links to your profile, clan profile, and to your editor pages where you can edit your profile. More exciting updates are coming soon

We’d like to give you a heads up on a new feature on the Bloodlines website: web profiles! Very soon, you will be able to customize your Bloodlines web profile with a profile photo, about text, and you can even choose from a selected number of very cool fonts for your name! Also, clan leaders will be able to write about their clan on the website, and upload a group photo and clan emblem for their clan. Clan emblems will show on the profiles of all clan members, and the group photo will show on the new clan profile. We thought you might want to get your profile photos ready, so here are a few guidelines:

Profile photos are square, and will be resized to 180 x 180 pixels.

Clan emlems are square, and will be resized to 100 x 100 pixels.

Clan group photos have a 2:1 aspect ratio (width:height), and will be resized to 400 x 200 pixels.

We are also working on a new feature for the website called “Haunts”, where you will be able to register your Bloodlines bar, club, castle, roleplay area, or hangout on the Bloodlines website. You’ll be able to promote your location and your events there. Then, residents will be able to view a list of events going on at Bloodlines Haunts at any given time, and teleport right from the website. So, get your Vampire Castle, Blood Room, Lycan Bar, or Human Hangout ready for visitors! Stay tuned for more details on this!

Today we’re releasing a new way to buy Vital Blood, Lumens, Cider, and to easily refill your empty containers, instantly: Reserve Accounts. You’ll notice three new vendors in the Bloodlines Thirst, Rage, and Human stores: for Vital Blood, Lumens, and Cider. When you purchase from any of these vendors, you’re buying metrics that go straight into your Reserve Account. You won’t be delivered anything in-world when you purchase from these vendors. However, you can view the contents of all of the metrics in your reserve account by going to your Blood Cellar, Lumen Vault, or Cider Tavern pages on slbloodlines.com. You can get to these pages by clicking on the Tank, Prism, or Barrel icons on your Bloodlines web profile.

Once you have some Vital Blood, Lumens, or Cider in your Reserve Account, you can use it to refill your containers at any Bloodlines refill station.

To use the refill station, you need to be wearing a Refill Key. Refill Keys are free, and you can get one by clicking the Refill Key vendor near the refill station. If you use the station without wearing a Refill Key, the refill will still work, but your tank won’t update with the new amount. If this happens, you can get your tank to update by re-rezzing it, or by drinking from it or filling it. Once you are wearing your Refill Key, and you have purchased the metric that you wish you refill, follow these instructions to use the refill stations:

1. Click on the refill station, it will give you a menu asking you to confirm that you want to use the refill station. Click “Proceed” to confirm.
2. Make sure the container you want to refill is rezzed within chat range of the refill station. Click on your container, and then click “Select” on your container menu.
3. If your container checks out, you will get a menu that will give you options for refilling your container. Select the amount you want to fill, or ‘Max’ to fill the container to the max (or up to the amount that you have available). Or, you can select ‘Other’, and follow the instructions to select a different amount.
4. Once you select an amount, your container will automatically be refilled from your reserve account.

Here are a couple things to note:

• Metrics in your Reserve Account don’t contribute to your wealth.
• Reserve Accounts can only be accessed through refill stations. You can’t move metrics into your Reserve Account from existing containers, you can’t drink directly from your
  Reserve Account, and you can’t move metrics between Reserve Accounts on different avatars.
• Having metrics in your reserve account won’t prevent you from being destroyed by the Curse, just like having metrics in containers doesn’t protect you.
• Essentially, Reserve Accounts don’t affect or interact with anything else in the game, they just give you a convenient way to refill empty containers.

Refill station locations:

• Liquid Frontier (click to teleport now)
• Liquid Badlands (click to teleport now)
• Liquid South (click to teleport now)

Next up, we hope to release more convenient ways of obtaining Apples, Blood Shots, and Moonshine! Stay tuned, and good hunting to all!

Some people have been expressing concerns regarding privacy when logging into the slbloodlines.com website. There have been some unfounded rumors going around, such as that the new Bloodlines HUD “logs your IP”, which is false. It may be possible for some items within Second Life to get access to your IP address using shared media, depending on what viewer you’re using, but no Bloodlines item currently uses shared media features within SL. For more information on shared media and what you can do to protect your privacy, see this linden blog post on shared media. The website does collect hardware and software information when you log in for the purpose of maintaining sessions between the server and your client (browser), but this is not different than any website that you can log into. Keep in mind that you are not required to log into the website in order to play Bloodlines. The reason we created the website logins is to deliver cool new features like profile photos, customized profiles, clan profiles, and a richer way to interact with each other on the website. In order to provide these features, we need to put authentication in place, so that only you can edit your own profile. You have the option of logging into the website if you want access to these upcoming features, but it is by no means required.

Some have also expressed concerns about privacy when changing their password in-world. Also, some people have been trying to log into slbloodlines.com with their Second Life password. Do not try to log into slbloodlines.com with your Second Life password, it won’t work. We don’t know what your Second Life password is, and can’t authenticate you with it. Your password for slbloodlines.com is a different password that you create with your HUD by going to Settings > Account > Register. Right now, when you change your password, you do it over chat on a randomly selected channel. It is technically possible for someone to hear this password if they have a channel scanner. So, we advise you to only change your password when you are out of chat range of other avatars. We will be issuing another update soon that will make an attempt to make this process more secure. Please do not make your password for slbloodlines.com the same as your second life password; use a unique password. We don’t store passwords in plain text, we only store passwords as encrypted hashes, so not even we can see the password you have chosen, and if an attacker were to gain access to our database, they would not have the passwords you have chosen either.

We take your security and privacy seriously, and we take measures to keep your information as secure as possible. If you have any questions about privacy or security, please see our privacy policy, or feel free to contact Lyle Maeterlinck in-world with questions.

Tonight, we’re excited to announce the following updated Bloodlines HUDs: Thirst 3.5, the Rage 1.3, and the Human 1.1. You should be auto-delivered your update when you log in. If not, you can get the updates from any update terminal at Liquid Estate (Liquid Designs, Liquid East, Liquid South, Liquid Badlands, or Liquid Frontier). There are several notable new features on the HUDs:

1. You can register an account so you can log into slbloodlines.com by going to settings > account > register. You can also change or reset your password using this menu. There isn’t a great deal you can do by logging in at the moment, but this update will allow us to bring lots of cool new features to the Bloodlines website.
2. Charisma sending has been removed from the HUDs. We’re sorry about the inconvenience on this, but it was just being too badly abused by people logging in hundreds of alts or bots in order to game the stats. Now, you can send Charisma by logging into the website, and pushing the +1 Charisma button on your friends profiles. This won’t give us the ability to absolutely stop people abusing the system with alts, but we will be able to implement controls to make it more difficult to game this stat.
3. Glamour and Terror: this is a fun new power that you can use with your human minions. If you Glamour (with the thirst), or Terror (with the Rage) your minions, you will be able to bite or claw them without receiving further confirmation for one hour. If you agree to be Glamoured or Terrored, you can break this at any time by going to Settings > (clan or group) > Resist Liege. This will also be broken if you unliege from your liege.
4. You will probably also notice some minor updates to the website: now the groups and group rosters are listed on separate pages, and the groups page has a search function now. For a sneak peek at the types of updates coming to slbloodlines.com, check out The Fortune Hunt.

We hope you like these updates, more exciting updates coming soon!

UPDATE 4/1/12:

Just an update: we are planning HUD updates for tonight. This is not an April Fool’s joke. More updates to come…

UPDATE 3/30/12, 5 PM:

We’ve reviewed everyone’s feedback on the impending HUD updates, and as a result, we’ve got a new proposal. All the updates below are going to be put into place, except for the ability to Glamour someone before they are a part of the game. We agree that this will probably cause too much confusion. So, Glamour will only work on your own direct human minions, and it will only last for an hour, unless broken by your human before that limit. Also, it will not cost blood or lumens in order to use. So, we’re not going to implement the option of Glamouring someone before they have joined in order to prevent them from using the Wormwood. To be clear, your human minions will have to agree to be Glamoured, and will be able to break the Glamour if they wish. For now, this will just be a fun new power that you will be able to use when role-playing with your humans if you wish.

PREVIOUSLY:

Later this week, we’re going to be updating the Thirst, Rage, and Human HUDs with a few new features and fixes. All HUDs are going to be getting the ability to register and manage accounts for logging into the Bloodlines website. If you already own a Blood or Lumen scanner, you already have an account, and the account you can manage with your HUD will be the same as the account you can manage on your scanner. This is so that everyone can have an account to log in. In the near future, we’re going to be building some new features into the website that you can use only when logged in, such as customizing your Bloodlines web profile, and this HUD update will allow us to launch those new features.

As part of this update, we’re going to be moving Charisma voting to the website. So, instead of the button on the HUD, you’ll be able to log into the website, and on everyone’s profile will be a button to send them a charisma point for the day.

We’re also going to be adding a new power: Glamour for vampires, and Terror for lycans. Of course, hybrids will be able to use either one. Glamour / Terror has different effects, depending on the status of the victim (who will have to agree to Glamour / Terror request for it to work). If you Glamour or Terror a new player who has not yet worn a HUD, it will prevent them from drinking the Wormwood potion in order to free their soul from limbo. That means that their soul will always go to you first if you bite them and then they join. Using a Glamour will cost a vampire 1L of vital blood, and a Terror will cost a lycan 10 lumens. Only humans and new players can be Glamoured / Terrored.  If you Glamour or Terror a human who has already joined, you will be able to bite them without asking, until they break the Glamour or Terror, which can be done with your HUD.

Let us know what you think of these updates, or if you have any thoughts for changes you think we should get into the HUDs for this release.

Happy hunting!